Software that is completely unnecessary. There is zero reason a battery powered vehicle needs to be much different software wise than an ICE. They do not need 20" touchscreens packed with a custom infotainment system written by hardware focused developers.
The Megane E-tech has functionality in its satnav that lets you plot a route with charging stations on the way, showing how much capacity you will have left when you get to them. Not essential, but very useful for somebody who is new to EVs.
Software that communicates with power companies to allow the car to charge overnight at advantageous rates, or even feed energy back into the grid. Again, not essential, but good for the customer and helps with the transition to green electricity.
I have that in my ICE car and I never use it (map of gas stations correlated with remaining fuel). That’s not specific to an EV.
Any of those features can be in a smartphone attached to your dashboard. Sure you have some benefits in accessing the car data, but they are small.
And it’s especially unnecessary for a big use case for EVs: commuters and grocery getters. It’s only needed for cars intended to do road trips.
And yeah, a phone app is more than sufficient. I do trips infrequently enough that it’s totally unnecessary to be built-in.
Your ICE has a significantly longer range, and the road network has evolved so that you can be reasonably confident that you’ll find a filling station when you need one.
Today I’m driving an EV that doesn’t have it, and I’m missing it. Different EVs have different ranges and not every filling station on the autobahn has chargers. On the other hand, there are lots of places just off the autobahn which do have chargers. It’s a different game. Your mileage may vary of course.
Electric cars need software to smooth out motor output to create an enjoyable driving experience. They also need to manage battery health and regenerative braking.
Edit: cars like the Ioniq N seem to be the exception while most cars have problems like the Mercedes EQS that people report has unpredictable braking which means you can’t learn how to control it.
The first thing is something ICE vehicles also do. A BMS, figuring out regenerative braking, and maybe one or two other things are the only things that need to be different. Car makers have shoved all the software they can into EVs without the experienced developers to do it on the hopes that they can fix shit in the future and charge subscription fees for it.
Yeah but when ice vehicles aren’t perfect it’s not a huge deal for the average driver. When an electric car isn’t smoothed out well you have the same problem but it’s amplified any times because of the instant torque.
Turns out making drivable iPhones is a shitty idea compared to the highly simplified electric motorcycles that work well? Huh. Who’da thunk?
We are locked into the big heavy vehicle paradigm. People have become so accustomed to moving around in a 2t vehicle they have forgotten about the alternatives. Lithium batteries are not a good fit for this type of vehicle and most of the time the use case is single occupant, where the bicycle is king of efficiency.
Thanks to badly written software, you can literally design “planned obsolescence” into your products.
“The computer says you need to replace your 15,000 dollar battery pack.”
“But my car is only six months old!”
“Yeah, but the Computer SAYS-”
Nissan leafs and toyota Prius have been around in big numbers for more than a decade.
It’s the enshitiffication that all modern cars are doing: cramming way too much tech into something that is for moving people around, not entertaining them
Yup, I drive a Toyota Prius and am looking at Nissan Leafs. My wife and I hate all the smart crap in cars, and it’s pretty much everywhere now…
don’t make them into smartphones. problem solved, you are welcome auto industry.
I think a big part of the issue is that the Chinese market is fucking huge, and the Chinese market also seems to love gimmicky software crap in their cars, and often emphasizes that over hardware features and other general aspects of, you know, being a car. It’s an unfortunate and obnoxious case of carmakers following the money.
The headline is very misleading.
This is NOT just about build quality of EVs or engine problems or problems inherent with EVs, it includes minor annoyances that aren’t quality problems. Also, this is from reported problems on a SURVEY, not actual problems taken to a dealer to fix. Dodge has the worst rating here while Ram has the best, because Ram owners don’t report problems on surveys and not because Ram has better quality (though it likely does as well).
And most of the issues are with tech that is included in higher end cars (rear collision avoidance, rear seat safety belt alarms, lane keeping assist, automatic braking assist, etc), and almost all EVs in the US are higher end cars that are chock full of these up-sells. People are also complaining about entertainment system software and phone pairing, which isn’t different from EV to ICE.
Finally, Tesla is one of the worst on the list while also making up the majority of EVs. So the company that has notoriously bad quality and bad design choices strongly skews the metric, since they ONLY make EVs. If Tesla made an ICE it would be just as bad.
Volkswagen just paid Rivian a truckload of money because VW couldn’t figure out how to write EV controller software. It’s ridiculous.
The good news is programming everywhere is garbage.
I just want an EV company to make the equivalent of a shitty Toyota Prius.
A Nissan Leaf?
They’re discontinuing it in 2026.
Chevy Bolt EV/EUV
General Motors accidentally made a good car so that’s why they had to kill it.
I was pleasantly surprised how good the Bolt was and still liked it after 3 years of leasing it. I was ready to get another one after the lease was over, but the pandemic changed my decision (working from home meant I didn’t really need a nice car and definitely wasn’t driving enough for the price plus-up for EV to make sense, so I got a used beater).
How did you feel about the L3 charging rate? 50kW isn’t super fast.
Barely noticed it. The only time most people would use that are on long road trips, which I only take about twice a year (most of my road trips are between 100-200 miles one way, which can be done with filling up at the destination). So if I used L3, it was for 30 minutes while grabbing lunch on the road and getting half the charge “filled.” 99% of my charging was L2 at home or at destinations.
Which has been discontinued. They have said they’ll bring back a EUV for the 2026 model year, but we’ll see if that comes to fruition.
I bought one just before the end. No ragrets. There are definitely some software quirks (the rear cross traffic alert always points the wrong direction) but overall I like it.
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FYI you can get these relatively cheap from Hertz if you don’t mind the base model. Sure it was a rental, but many of them have <15k miles
Sorry, theyre banned here because china made em
This isn’t software that is exclusive to EVs.
Pure poetry from AndyJHawk:
Like the Honda e before it, it’s a vehicle too tiny for America’s truck-shaped digestive system.
A friend bought a new BMW, with all the bells and whistles. The app for the car is like a game, where you have to subscribe to get the juicy content.
You can subscribe to different feature-packs. They sure made the effort, that the $$$ system works flawlessly.
Like, the app surely is buggy and things may not work as expected, but you only get to try it out, when your money is on their account anyway.
Wow, Dodge is worse than Telsa and almost down to Polestar.
I own a Mach e. Seeing Ford that high is terrifying to think how bad it can get because as high as Ford is on that list, it sucks pretty bad.
Another quality VERGE article i see…
