CarPlay and affordability. I was totally smitten last year with the R1S during a test drive. I'm not a car person but felt that spark people must feel when they obsess over their vehicles.
But it wasn't pushing-six-figures smitten, which is where you're at when you get a new one with customizations.
Electric cars are supposed to be simple. Give me something in a shape of a Civic, with the engine replaced with a motor and a battery good for 150 miles, and sell it for $10-12k new. Don't even need an entertainment cluster, give me a place to put a tablet or a phone and just have a bluetooth speaker.
Instead, we are getting these boutique, expensive vehicles packed full of tech, but in the end, they still fundamentally suck as cars compared to gas alternatives, especially hybrid. I got a Prius Prime for my wife last year, the car is way better than any EV on the market in terms of usability. Driving to work and back can all be done in EV mode easily, and then when you wanna go somewhere, you can keep the car above 80 mph easily and get there faster without worrying about where to charge.
The only part an EV doesn't have is the engine and gearbox. Admittedly, these are pretty major components, but it's a technology mature enough to be extremely reliable if the manufacturer cares to make it so.
But what an EV has instead is a massive battery, charging electronics, a DC-DC converter keeping the 12V battery charged, and various electric motors and actuators for the air conditioning and coolant loops. These are significant more reliable than oily engines in lab environments, but the automotive environment tests the mettle of seemingly resilient components.
> Electric cars are supposed to be simple. Give me something in a shape of a Civic, with the engine replaced with a motor and a battery good for 150 miles, and sell it for $10-12k new. Don't even need an entertainment cluster, give me a place to put a tablet or a phone and just have a bluetooth speaker.
I think this is more or less the pitch behind Slate (https://www.slate.auto/en), though it's more of a truck/SUV form factor.
> still fundamentally suck as cars compared to gas alternatives
i can assure you my expensive EV does not suck as a car compared to gas alternatives, its better in almost every way. insane performance compared to any gas car, superb handling, way better driving UX tech, silent, clean. & 400mil range is just fine for me thanks. Yes it cost a lot.
The cost of the entertainment cluster comes from the integration work. If it was just a backup camera and a carplay/aa head unit and absolutely nothing else then maybe it could be OEMed from the same companies who sell aftermarket systems for $100 or so.
Yep. I certainly wanted an R1S, but ended up in an EV9 due to CarPlay plus huge lease incentives. No regrets, and will probably get another after this lease is up.
Cars used to compete on distinctions between driving experience/fuel economy/reliability/etc. In comparison, differences between electric cars is mostly superfluous. They're very interchangeable.
For the next generation of car buyers, infotainment and features are going to be the main features. And if you are handing all of that away to the tech companies, your entire company is going to just become another captive hardware partner of the tech giants.
I don't know. I would argue that driving experience and reliability are still very much going to be things in the electric car market. I'm an EV9 owner and we have issues w/ the suspension making it feel sloppy over some bumps. There's going to be a ton of nuance in terms of how all of these different electric vehicles drive, ride, and are experienced. And those are all going to come down to the vehicle manufacturers themselves, not just the technology partner for screens.
It's maddening that $100k purchases get totally nerfed by bad software. Absolutely crazy to me that I can go out find a super nice car I want and have to walk away because of bad software or no carplay support.
I hear this a lot and it's surprising to me. We have three cars in our family (two with carplay and the Rivian) and carplay always feels like such a downgraded experience compared to that of the Rivian.
I have a plex server and use Prologue for audio books. What would my experience on Rivian be like? I am guessing I would have to connect to the infotainment system as a bluetooth speaker? Would I be able to easily skip forward/backward and see the current chapter?
I've been using car play for the better part of the past decade and don't know what it looks like in vehicles without it.
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I'll take a car infotainment system that doesn't need CarPlay/AndroidAuto to be usable (and lacks it) over one that requires a phone attached via CarPlay/AndroidAuto to be usable.
I use Android Auto on rental cars all the time.
My daily driver is a Tesla (Model S /w MCU v2) that doesn't have it. And doesn't need it to provide a usable experience.
If the software has the same library as your phone, then I could why you see it as on par.
Android Automotive has a much smaller library than Android Auto, so the selection for audio apps, such as podcasts and music, are much more limited. The options for map software is smaller too. Also Android Automotive doesn't necessarily use your phone's existing internet connection. Depending on the maker, you have to subscribe to a separate data plan.
I've only rented Teslas but I can see how most people would consider CP/AA to be unnecessary given the quality of their integrated software. But for me, the two things Tesla can't do (and CP/AA can) is
