Technology

Maybe if they'd focus more on making them functional vehicles instead of smartphones on wheels, it would simplify that problem.

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.

Turns out making drivable iPhones is a shitty idea compared to the highly simplified electric motorcycles that work well? Huh. Who'da thunk?

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-"

And since when have you known any computer to be problem-free?

Software that's not made from overworked engineers working 80 hours a week pressured to work even faster to complete this week's sprint.

I'm so tired of "computers are buggy and everyone accepts that". No! Computers don't have to be buggy, you just have to not shove trash software on it made by morons doing the bare minimum.

I have software that's been running on servers for literal years, not a single bug. The hardware's been sized appropriately and I wrote good, sustainable and maintainable code. My computers all can easily do weeks and months of uptime. I pick up my laptop and open the lid and 100% of the time it wakes up from sleep and it's ready to go.

The overwhelming majority of "production" and "enterprise quality" code I work with is total garbage that should never have been written and its author never hired in the tech space. We repeatedly get reports on how X car manufacturer was pwned for not following best practices that are a decade or two old.

Corporate greed makes EVs suck because it's developed for as cheap as possible and the target is "good enough customers tolerate it". Shit barely works properly when going through the happy path and the error path just... usually crashes your car.

I've had to reboot my car at red lights way too fucking often and it's not even an EV. 2020 model and the infotainment reliably crashes if I have a Slack or Zoom call going because it tries to read the phone number off my phone over Bluetooth and doesn't know how to handle a null phone number = the radio crashes.

It's not fucking rocket science.

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

don't make them into smartphones. problem solved, you are welcome auto industry.

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.

The good news is programming everywhere is garbage.

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.

I just want an EV company to make the equivalent of a shitty Toyota Prius.

This isn't software that is exclusive to EVs.

Look into used Bolt EVs, many are in the 12-14k range after tax credit, 230 miles on a charge, no bells and whistles, drives great. Many have new batteries after the recall that happened a few years ago.

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.

Pure poetry from AndyJHawk:

Like the Honda e before it, it’s a vehicle too tiny for America’s truck-shaped digestive system.

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.

Wow, Dodge is worse than Telsa and almost down to Polestar.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Like in past versions of the survey, battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles performed worse than their gas equivalents in just about every repair category measured by JD Power.

“Owners of cutting edge, tech-filled BEVs and PHEVs are experiencing problems that are of a severity level high enough for them to take their new vehicle into the dealership at a rate three times higher than that of gas-powered vehicle owners,” Frank Hanley, senior director of auto benchmarking at JD Power, said in a statement.

JD Power attributes this to major design changes in Teslas, such as the removal of traditional feature controls like turn signal and wiper stalks.

And when car owners try to find relief from terrible native software experiences by mirroring their smartphones, they run into even more obstacles.

Someone who buys a Ram truck every few years is going to report way fewer problems with their experience than someone who is taking a risk on a new brand — or even a new powertrain.

We’re in the midst of a huge shift from traditional gas-powered vehicles to high-powered computers that run on enormous batteries.

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