No touch screens, no telemetry, no cellular modems, no wifi, no apps, no subscriptions, no infotainment.
You want gas in your electric vechile. Better drive it to taco bell then.
I bought the Kona (2024) and it’s the best car I could ask for. It has some smart things of course, but I have no subscriptions, no phone requirement, I mostly just listen to FM radio. It’s been the best car I’ve ever owned.
Features look nice. I guess I’m just gonna have to get over my “crossover” hate and buy a car that looks like a low-top roller skate lol.
We tried to find a small EV everywhere. Bolt was sluggish and had weird controls, leat just hasn’t been updated in 10 years, and so we landed on the kona. Definitely larger than we wanted, but batteries are big. At least worth a test drive I’d suggest
leat just hasn’t been updated in 10 years
I thought I read the Leaf got a fairly big update recently. I’ll have to check on that when I have some time.
I was searching a few years ago, so makes sense they’d update it right after I got mine
makes sense they’d update it right after I got mine
That’s how my life works too haha.
And also why I’m so hesitant to settle for a body style I dislike (seriously, crossovers: be a sedan, be an SUV, or be a station wagon; trying to be all 3 is just failing at everything…but I digress lol). As soon as I settle and buy one, I just know they’ll bring back sedans.
I would have loved a sedan, but none exist here. I figured that hopefully by buying a Kona it would show that at least one american is buying the smallest car he apparently can. It was a good tradeoff.
As for sedans making a comeback, I doubt it. Sadly, I think the industry has firmly moved away from them.
I think that was this year, so in 2024 it was super outdated but it’s better now. I think it’s also a crossover now unfortunately
I had the opposite experience between the bolt and the Kona! The smaller bolt is a bit faster and I found drove more on the car side of the car/SUV split than the kona, and while the button placement took getting used to it has one for almost everything. We also bought while the tax credits were in effect so it was $10k cheaper for 4 miles less range.
The leaf JUST got updated finally after they made the Ariya (much bigger, already discontinued because it wasn’t profitable enough.)
But yeah I think if anyone wants ANY new car without any of those features, good luck. You’re required to have a screen for a backup camera for anything since I think 2012? So there’s gonna at minimum be something.
Reansult 5, soon Twingo and VW ID.Polo. Hyundai Inster … at least in Europe. I guess in the US they’d rather sell you some oversized childcrusher instead of giving customers reasonably oriced compact options.
Yup, pretty much. Those were the only three “small” versions, everything else was giant SUV sized.
That’s dire. In Europe a lot of new compact EVs have been coming on the market in 2025 and 2026. Manufacturer’s finally got the message. They even started to bring prices down with no nonsense offers. I just had a look, not even VW wants to sell its new ID.Polo in the US. You know, finally VW is building good cars with good interior again, after having gotten rid of the remaining traces of the “copy all the Tesla nonsense” disease and then they don’t even attempt to sell them in the US.
Also no Hyundai Ioniq 3, no Opel Corsa Electric (or other Stellantis variants), Cupra Raval, Mini Cooper SE, or some of the Chinese offers (BYD Dolphin, Firefly Firefly, Dongfeng Box etc)? But there is the Fiat 500e on the market, isn’t it?
I like my Kia EV6. We were in the market for an EV and test drove all of the ones we could try. I liked the KIA because it had a lot of physical buttons for my regular things. There’s no real subscriptions except for things we don’t use. There’s a touchscreen for a lot but I can get by without using it mostly
Kia allows you to disable data acquiring in options.
The Smart ForTwo EV was just what you asked for. It did have a cellular modem. But you could just unplug it very easily.
And make it small on the outside and as big as possible on the inside, with the back seats level with the trunk when folded down
Fully open hardware and software would be nice. I don’t plan to tinker with it. But it would give peace of mind to know that it can’t be enshittified and that discontinuation of the model will not leave me out of luck for spare parts.
if you’re american isn’t that the chevy bolt?
The bolt has buttons and no real smart features but it also has an infotainment tablet. It also still has gps and Wi-Fi and whatever else as options, so I don’t particularly trust it not to be tracking everything. It’s certainly miles better than most of the competition but it’s still a modern car.
There are guides to disabling OnStar effectively which should assuage those concerns. Well, for the 23 and older models. Not sure about the new stuff.
A quick terminator on the cellular antenna makes it receive no cell signal - the other features that don’t rely on cellular all continue working.
As I understand it, one of the other advantages of the bolt is that it’s fairly easy to disconnect. There’s a dedicated fuse you can pull which will disable the telemetry as well as the microphone and a lot of the related infotainment system functions like gps. Or for those who want more of those functions, you can open the panel behind the screen, unplug the antenna, and replace it with with a terminator so that it thinks it’s intact but has no signal.
Of course, it will still try to send data home through your phone if you let it. Apparently it can do that through android auto and carplay if they are connected via bluetooth but not over USB.
I’m quite excited for the Slate to be released. Electric truck, optional SUV conversion, decent price, minimum frills, customize it yourself if that’s your thing. That sounds so much better than wheeled tank with built-in privacy concerns.
I just wish there was a version with a full size bed. Not that any of the other light truck options are any better in that regard.
Cars also need to be smaller for the sustainable transition. We need to disconnect ego from car. Consider it’s spending about 95% of its life parked.
Smaller cars or busses. Or trains. Our trams. Or electric bikes. Or push bikes.
Basically there’s lots of options that don’t make it look like you’re going to war.
Backed by amazon? LOL if you think it won’t still have a cellular radio and full tracking suite installed.
Slate has stated that they will not have a cellular or other type of connection. It does need some type of connection to do software updates, and that will be from your phone using their app to the truck via USB.
They’ve also stated they won’t track your driving data. You can opt in to share data about the truck’s health through the app for servicing purposes, but that’s all. They’ve also promised not to sell any kind of data to third parties.
That could always change, but I’m on the wait list for one and there are people on the slate forums who are serious about privacy and are watching this and seem pretty happy for now.
Software updates via the phone app 😒
That’s better than ICE cars having to go to the dealer to update their software, which is the current industry standard.
I don’t recall the last time my Saturn Ion needed a software update
Given they stopped making them before smart phones were a thing I imagine not, but that’s also why your SiriusXM no longer works if you’re not a brokie and got a level 3 trim.
There’s a reason I said ‘current industry standard,’ things from almost the last century barely qualify as vehicles by modern standards, and your car couldn’t pass a safety inspect for sale in almost any country today.
Think I’d be driving a car that’s old enough to smoke if I wasn’t a brokie?
I was more poking fun at the idea of a car needing software updates in general. It’s like a toaster or a television needing an update. It’s a machine that should be able to perform its functions entirely offline
Slate is the 2nd best choice rn.
First best is buying an older car for cheap and spending some money to repair/upgrade
Not exactly a choice, they don’t actually exist yet.
Yeah, I’ve been watching that. It is supposed to start fulfilling orders this year (last I read anyway), but it’ll be at least next year before I can probably look into one. And even then, I’d want to let some other/braver people test them out for reliability and repair-ability.
And it’s only
$20,000…$25000…$30000. soon I’ll have one parked next to my Aptera, and Tesla Roadster.This exactly. Slate sounds nice until you realize they’re asking $30K for a vehicle with manual locks/windows, no fucking radio, and 150 miles of range.
I don’t like the idea of not having a decent screen for Carplay but I think the upside of this one compared to many other vehicles is that it won’t depreciate as badly. No infotainment to go out of date, etc.
There are quite a few EVs that satisfy those criteria on the market!
e-bikes are such a wild west of manufacturers. what’s a good resource to get good reviews?
That’s easy: they are all garbage.
Might fine question, and honestly, I don’t know. I’m old-school, still riding an acoustic bike. If I were to buy an electric bike, I think I’d spend the money to stick with the long-time brands, mostly for availability of parts and quality battery packs. There are a lot of cheap bikes with obscure brand names, and occasionally, I see news articles about their battery packs starting apartments and houses on fire. But, also, since the battery packs are generally custom-fit to the frame, having a source of replacements available is a good idea. That brings to mind a suggestion: If you have a local bike shop nearby, it’s worth stopping in to talk to the mechanics (not the sales staff) about what’s good
There are so many issues to consider. Who makes the motor? Who makes the battery? Will you still be able to buy that battery in 5 years? Will it still work if the company that sold it goes out of business? You can get cheap Chinese e-bikes for 1/4 the cost of American-branded e-bikes. But, sometimes the American ones are just Chinese ones with a sticker slapped on that doubles the price.
From what I’ve been able to figure out, motors made by Bafang and batteries made by Bafang or Samsung are thought to be ones that should still be around in a few years.
Then there are all the other issues to consider: hub drive or mid-drive? Pedal assist or throttle? Rear derailleur, internally geared hub, or continuously variable transmission?
I’ve been thinking of getting one and am ready to part with my money, but I can’t justify the price of some of the North-American / European labelled bikes, but don’t want to waste money on a Chinese one that might only work for a few weeks.
Even more variables which I hadn’t considered. Heep us posted if you get one
Wonder if electric motorcycles are in any better of a state
What I did was get a Craigslist special and slap a hub in there (along with a shitton of accessories)
It looks like you can buy a fully assembled ebike for the price of just an ebike conversion kit.
Honda-san I beg of you, revist your classic designs and drop an electric motor in to them. You will become more rich
Bonus points if you can make it so that all the aftermarket suspension parts that already exist for those classic designs still fit. Ultra-bonus points if the body is externally identical so aero and body mods still fit.
Will it come with a supply of muumuus to decorate my beautiful body?
On a broader note, this is a failure of capitalism in which products can never be perfected.
There are sooo many technologies that we fully figured out years ago but they can’t just make it optimal and move on.
This is why we have washing machines using internet for whatever reason.
The flip side is the kind of stagnation where you get a soviet-era hunk of junk that’s still in operation, but horribly inefficient.
I wouldn’t really take the soviet union as example for the flip side tbh
(Not in positive! In negative)
I think those days are coming to an end, especially now that gas is expensive everyone is buying up the older evs that dont have those things like the older Chevy bolts
Chevy Bolts have almost every piece of modern tech in cars. Display screens, limited physical dials and buttons, car and pedestrian sensors, cameras everywhere (though luckily none in the cabin facing the inside), GPS, OnStar, and data telemetry. The last two can at least be mitigated by terminating the data line antenna cables to stop the car from phoning home all the time.
OnStar is the worst for privacy, it tracks everything you do, even your weight.
I would also like “turn” please
That requires a premium subscription.
Slate EV
Gas, you say? Are you sure?
How do they generate electricity where you come from?
Mostly coal in the US
Is that where they come from? Because anyone with a wrinkly organ in their skull knows that EV is just gas with extra st3ps
But like a lot more efficient to burn it in a power plant than millions/billions car engines that don’t capture the energy well anyways. And then at least renewables can be used in the power grid as well.
Ok. How well does that work with aging electrical infrastructure in places like Boston or Milan?
I mean, like, I totally get you vibing.
You improve the infrastructure? And while we’re at it, build more infrastructure for walking, cycling and public transport instead of inducing further demand for cars
So tear it all down?
Unfortunately infrastructure was built when the world was new. What we all got is what we get, now and forever.
The amount of electricity generated by renewables an ICE car can use is always 0%. That is not true for EVs.
