Overview:
Electric Vehicles are a key part of our tomorrow and how we get there. If we can get all the fossil fuel vehicles off our roads, out of our seas and out of our skies, we'll have a much better environment. This community is where we discuss the various different vehicles and news stories regarding electric transportation.
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This video is the best advertisement I've ever seen for not replacing my old car without any smarts and mechanical-everything that's important.
In fairness, it's not really a criticism of electric vehicles, but rather a criticism of "cellphone cars". I have nothing against EVs, I just wish they came with simple controls that made them good vehicles.
There are quite a few EVs that come with simple controls (respectively). It's just the companies spawned to make EVs that decide to reinvent the wheel.
I've had a Chevy Bolt EUV and a Hyundai Ioniq 5 - both have physical buttons for most of what I want.
I have a '24 Leaf. I'm a huge fan of the driving experience. It feels simple, has a physical speedometer and HVAC controls. Unfortunately, the battery tech is outdated and the charging tech shouldn't even be legal to sell in the US because it's almost unsupported in the US.
Car companies are so out of touch with this stuff. I want what you want. An car with an battery that doesn't feel like an inconvenience.
I saw Marques Brownlee's review of the Xiaomi SU7 yesterday, and the contrast with this Lucid review is amazing. MB spent his time gushing over how amazing and bug-free the software was, how great the UI/UX, and all the little quality-of-life details in the hardware and design.
Somehow I don't trust Xiaomi being bug free, having used their phones for 5+ years
Marques Brownlee is just a salesman. All these auto reviewers are salesmen. Even when they say something negative, it's nitpicking and about something stupid, by design.
None of them discuss chronic reliability issues or design aspects that impact reliability and serviceability.
I wouldn't buy anything a YouTuber ~~video salesmen pretending to be reviewers~~ recommends tho.
And, especially not this guy.
I still wish we didn't have to worry about cars being bug-free... That's something we rarely - if ever - had to worry about in the past.
It's always been a problem. Design flaws from day one. Ford put flawed automatic transmissions in their Focus and Fiesta models for 6 years. Top selling at the time, now these cars are rare.
I kinda wish car reviews had paid a lot more attention to the UI/UX of actually using a car through the early 2000’s to now as opposed to just how much it made vroom vroom. All cars do that. Not every car smoothly connects to your phone when you start it up every morning, or remembers the settings you set last time or doesn’t have some sort of crazy proprietary connector. These are the things you actually do hundreds/thousands of times in the life of owning a car and those daily frustrations have been ignored forever by reviewers over how much they can fellate the car’s driving capabilities (long after nearly every car on the road drives well enough to pay attention to other aspects of ownership)
Well, if you don’t count mechanical problems. Cars of yesteryear had their problems, too, and if you didn’t want to be a mechanic as a hobby, they could be a bitch. Lucid, in particular, isn’t at scale and isn’t profitable. They are still working out the kinks in the process and product.
I got an EV 6 years ago and am never going back. I plug in at home, never have any routine maintenance to perform, and spend far less on it than I ever did my old cars. The software issue people complain about isn’t even on my radar, but that may be because I grew up in the 90s and everything has been going digital for 30 years.
You have regular maintenance on that car. Make sure you rotate the tires. Brake fluid should be replaced ever couple years. There is often oil in places like a differential that should be changed.
i know most people don't do the above, but you should. Some of that might even be listed as a lifetime fluid - but they define lifetime as seven years or something rediculassly short.
My maintenance on this car is substantially less than it was with an ice car. No oil changes, radiator flushes, or anything associated with brakes. I change my tires every 50k miles, my wiper blades, and wiper fluid. These were the only maintenance items I need to do . I took the car in to the manufacturer at the 5yr mark to do an inspection and was told nothing was out of order and needed addressing. No hydraulic fluid or oil changes, no lubrication, no brake pads.
Just drive and spend less on electricity than you spend on gas.
I would not call all those things substantially less. My last car went 250k miles with only one brake pad change. There should be grease fittings in the steering system to lube - though maybe they just expect you to replace parts that wear out early from lack of lube - not unreasonable when they can last 100k miles without.
my phev is saving me a ton of money in gas, but maitenance is tiny either way. However you still need to do it even though as I said most people don't bother and get by.
The cars of yesteryear broke down but you could fix them - or have them fixed. Good luck with buggy closed-source software.
Not to mention, the cars of yesteryear didn't spy on you, and didn't require a subscription to turn on the heated seat or whatever.
You can still fix anything that breaks on an EV. You just need updated skills. And you don’t need to fix issues as often, because EVs are more reliable than old junkers.
Most ICE companies refuse to make a reliable transmission. EV transmissions are one gear, no clutch.
I have had this car for 6 years and haven’t had any issues that were more egregious than an ICE car. I’ll heed your warning when it actually materializes. Until then, I’ll enjoy the lack of problems and maintenance ICE cars have. Fortunately, I’ve been able to pay off my car note and save money because of the lower total cost of ownership.
I'm hoping slate actually makes a decent minimalist EV truck / suv. https://www.slate.auto/en I've paid the 50 dollars to "reserve" one but am still skeptical.
One of many reasons I ordered a Slate
I replied without seeing your response. I have high hopes for Slate. Also I believe Rivian is going to make cheaper models in the next couple of years.
Everyone should have high hopes for Slate EV. Especially the people that don't want one.
The early reviews agreed it’s got great hardware, which is a ln important starting point. Tesla still had/has significant build issues after years of experience. But it’s fair to criticize the software, especially when it makes up so much of the vehicle experience.
The first half of the video is all complaints I can live with, but I’d get annoyed with the issues towards the end. Savagegeese also has a complaints video and his as I recall had several issues that would drive me nuts.
The complaint about CarPlay grabbing another phone during a drive by happens every damn day with my partner’s car, which was made by a major manufacturer. It should associate by key, but that sounds complicated /s. The other CarPlay bug he mentioned where it forgets the phone also happened.
I still think I’d buy one if I was in that price range for cars. The problem is that I think people like me might see some of the reviews and stretch to get one and be really disappointed. I hope they fix the software bugs but they’re on a tight budget and also working hard on developing new models.
The Tesla S and Lucid Air designs were headed by the same guy. Needlessly complex systems. EVs need to simplify closer to a golf cart.
This video made me appreciate the software on Teslas a little bit more.
I like to shit on every single change they do, but they came out with the Model 3 in 2017 at full sprint with a fully working software suite (excluding "FSD").
If their Model 3 software was in this state back then I would have returned it.
Yeah I mean it sucks in other ways but at least it is functional.