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What advantages are you looking to get for a super stripped down EV? Less potential maintenance cost? Cheaper? It's pretty clear for more car buyers the market

What advantages are you looking to get for a super stripped down EV? Less potential maintenance cost? Cheaper? It's pretty clear for more car buyers the market has spoken and folks want more infotainment/screens/AI/whatever, so it seems that type of vehicle is definitely going to become less and less common.

crocodiletears 7y ago
I don't think there are any strict advantages to such an EV with respect to day-to-day use. In fact, there are probably some disadvantages Mantainability is a plus. But the big feature would be not worrying about your car getting remotely bricked for some arbitrary reason, or losing some essential function because your OEM's servers are down. If a company is capable of constantly monitoring your machine, and updating it OTA, I don't doubt that their liability with respect to whatever you do to your car increases significantly. Depending on how you like to drive, and where you drive, not fighting the smart driver 'assist' features of vehicles could be a feature as well. I read a commenter on HN some time ago about GPS-assisted headlamps preventing them from providing much needed illumination to something (wrecked vehicle, iirc) off the side of the road. Personally, I've played enough Assassin's Creed and GTA to know I wouldn't trust a smart system to predict my intent in a life/death scenario.
- Kirby64 7y ago
  If you really want to remove the 'big corp spying on you' aspect of Teslas, you can always pull the SIM card or ask for the non-SIM version. It's apparently an off-menu option, but you can request one without a SIM card, so effectively all the cell network stuff is disabled. Then, if you are worried about updates bricking something... just don't update it and never connect it to the WiFi? Seems like that gets you most of the way there.
  - Tilian 7y ago
    It's still a big pile of black-box systems where it's unclear what kind of data they collect and where they send it to whenever you connect it to a network. Never connecting it at all does defeat most of the points people like about Teslas.
    - Kirby64 7y ago
      Sure, but OP was asking about a stripped down EV without any of that stuff. Also, besides traffic navigation and streaming stuff, what do you actually miss by not connecting it to the internet?
  - crocodiletears 7y ago
    I think it's less a privacy concern, and more a durability concern. By way of example, I once found myself stranded at 3am about 45 miles from anyone I could get help from with a cracked radiator, no radiator cap, a gimp alternator, and no cell reception. I was too poor to afford a tow, had work the next day, and was in no position to get the vehicle properly fixed in a timely manner. The answer to the problem was a soda can, an oil rag, a backup battery, a few rolls of duct-tape, and periodic stops to replenish my watered-down coolant whenever the engine began to redline. Doubtless there was a more elegant solution to my problem. But that's what I came up with, and that's what I used in spite of my check engine light's protests. A smarter vehicle might well have noted how much damage I was doing to it, and refused to even start for me. The problem itself probably wouldn't turn up in an EV. But knowing with confidence that I can jury rig my car with 'incompatible' but available parts, or limp it home without triggering a safety mechanism that can only be reset by an authorized mechanic has become important to me, even if my commutes are broadly limited to city limits anymore, and I can afford a mechanic now. Similarly, it's important to know that your car can be worked on by unlicensed mechanics in a pinch. Part of that is being confident that you won't lose that option in an OTA update, and that your car won't actively look for open WiFi hotspots in order to check for that (smart TV's are rumored to do this, I would assume a car is at least that advanced). There are also issues of trust to be had around cameras replacing mirrors without offering a good fallback to the driver. The market has spoken, it doesn't really care about these things, so ultimately I don't think a dumb car'll be an option going forward. But those are what I believe to be reasons to want one.
    - Kirby64 7y ago
      Pretty sure most vehicles (even Tesla's) will let you drive them in some sort of limp mode even with coolant or battery issues. Not sure how that's any different. Anything beyond that (e.g. motor or battery problems) aren't going to be fixed like that no matter what EV you buy. Also, those pretty much all can't be hot-serviced on the side of the road anyways on modern cars since everything is more compact, less accessible, etc.
yellowapple 7y ago
Has the market really spoken, though? If it's literally impossible to buy an EV that doesn't have all these gimmicky screens and AI features in 'em, then there's no way for the market to actually speak.
- Kirby64 7y ago
  That might be the case in the EV space, but the ICE space is pretty well documented. All the major car brands are striving to increase the infotainment segment of their cars more and more. Compare a 2020 Camry to a 2008 one. You almost can't buy a car without at least a 6" screen for the infotainment outside of the cars trying extra hard to appeal to the budget market.
  - yellowapple 7y ago
    > You almost can't buy a car without at least a 6" screen for the infotainment outside of the cars trying extra hard to appeal to the budget market. That's exactly my point. Your only options are "nice car with touchscreen" or "mediocre car without". There's no opportunity for the market to, you know, actually speak.
    - Kirby64 7y ago
      Because the market already spoke a long time ago. It used to be the fancy infotainment screen was extra on cars. Turns out the take rate on those is high enough, so it just became standard.
      - yellowapple 7y ago
        But that's the thing: because the market spoke once a decade ago, does that mean there's no room for revisiting that discussion? Tastes change, technology changes, the economy changes, people change, everything changes. It's much like the current 4k TV market. Once upon a time, The Market™ spoke in favor of putting "smart" functionality in TVs, and so manufacturers added computers with greater and greater complexity and visual pizazz and apps and such. Then, the Chromecast and Roku and Fire TV and such became popular, and - better yet - ended up being much easier to upgrade as technology marched on (you only have to replace a $35-or-so dongle or box instead of having to replace a whole multi-hundred-or-thousand-dollar TV). On top of that, the cable companies started to dip their toes in offering these "smart" features in their own set top boxes, as did Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony with their gaming consoles, and there were and still are zero TVs able to replace either category of device. So now you have a bunch of TVs with smart features that go entirely unused (or, worse, actually break, taking the TV with it) because other devices offer better versions of those features and can actually be upgraded without replacing the entire TV. Unfortunately, since The Market™ has already spoken, there is now to my knowledge exactly one 4k TV manufacturer that offers consumer-grade TVs without smart features (Sceptre), and certainly not on store shelves (I had to buy mine on Amazon, with all the risk of damage and theft that entails, and the only Prime-eligible one was the 50"). Literally every other 4k TV - including any at a brick-and-mortar store, be it Best Buy or Fry's or Wal-Mart or what have you - has smart features that cannot be removed and that are either 1) already outperformed by $20-100 devices on those same exact shelves or 2) going to be outperformed within a year because technology marches on and no TV offers a way to upgrade the computational hardware.

crocodiletears 7y ago

I don't think there are any strict advantages to such an EV with respect to day-to-day use. In fact, there are probably some disadvantages Mantainability is a plus. But the big feature would be not worrying about your car getting remotely bricked for some arbitrary reason, or losing some essential function because your OEM's servers are down. If a company is capable of constantly monitoring your machine, and updating it OTA, I don't doubt that their liability with respect to whatever you do to your car increases significantly. Depending on how you like to drive, and where you drive, not fighting the smart driver 'assist' features of vehicles could be a feature as well. I read a commenter on HN some time ago about GPS-assisted headlamps preventing them from providing much needed illumination to something (wrecked vehicle, iirc) off the side of the road. Personally, I've played enough Assassin's Creed and GTA to know I wouldn't trust a smart system to predict my intent in a life/death scenario.

Kirby64 7y ago
If you really want to remove the 'big corp spying on you' aspect of Teslas, you can always pull the SIM card or ask for the non-SIM version. It's apparently an off-menu option, but you can request one without a SIM card, so effectively all the cell network stuff is disabled. Then, if you are worried about updates bricking something... just don't update it and never connect it to the WiFi? Seems like that gets you most of the way there.
- Tilian 7y ago
  It's still a big pile of black-box systems where it's unclear what kind of data they collect and where they send it to whenever you connect it to a network. Never connecting it at all does defeat most of the points people like about Teslas.
  - Kirby64 7y ago
    Sure, but OP was asking about a stripped down EV without any of that stuff. Also, besides traffic navigation and streaming stuff, what do you actually miss by not connecting it to the internet?
- crocodiletears 7y ago
  I think it's less a privacy concern, and more a durability concern. By way of example, I once found myself stranded at 3am about 45 miles from anyone I could get help from with a cracked radiator, no radiator cap, a gimp alternator, and no cell reception. I was too poor to afford a tow, had work the next day, and was in no position to get the vehicle properly fixed in a timely manner. The answer to the problem was a soda can, an oil rag, a backup battery, a few rolls of duct-tape, and periodic stops to replenish my watered-down coolant whenever the engine began to redline. Doubtless there was a more elegant solution to my problem. But that's what I came up with, and that's what I used in spite of my check engine light's protests. A smarter vehicle might well have noted how much damage I was doing to it, and refused to even start for me. The problem itself probably wouldn't turn up in an EV. But knowing with confidence that I can jury rig my car with 'incompatible' but available parts, or limp it home without triggering a safety mechanism that can only be reset by an authorized mechanic has become important to me, even if my commutes are broadly limited to city limits anymore, and I can afford a mechanic now. Similarly, it's important to know that your car can be worked on by unlicensed mechanics in a pinch. Part of that is being confident that you won't lose that option in an OTA update, and that your car won't actively look for open WiFi hotspots in order to check for that (smart TV's are rumored to do this, I would assume a car is at least that advanced). There are also issues of trust to be had around cameras replacing mirrors without offering a good fallback to the driver. The market has spoken, it doesn't really care about these things, so ultimately I don't think a dumb car'll be an option going forward. But those are what I believe to be reasons to want one.
  - Kirby64 7y ago
    Pretty sure most vehicles (even Tesla's) will let you drive them in some sort of limp mode even with coolant or battery issues. Not sure how that's any different. Anything beyond that (e.g. motor or battery problems) aren't going to be fixed like that no matter what EV you buy. Also, those pretty much all can't be hot-serviced on the side of the road anyways on modern cars since everything is more compact, less accessible, etc.

yellowapple 7y ago

Has the market really spoken, though? If it's literally impossible to buy an EV that doesn't have all these gimmicky screens and AI features in 'em, then there's no way for the market to actually speak.

Kirby64 7y ago
That might be the case in the EV space, but the ICE space is pretty well documented. All the major car brands are striving to increase the infotainment segment of their cars more and more. Compare a 2020 Camry to a 2008 one. You almost can't buy a car without at least a 6" screen for the infotainment outside of the cars trying extra hard to appeal to the budget market.
- yellowapple 7y ago
  > You almost can't buy a car without at least a 6" screen for the infotainment outside of the cars trying extra hard to appeal to the budget market. That's exactly my point. Your only options are "nice car with touchscreen" or "mediocre car without". There's no opportunity for the market to, you know, actually speak.
  - Kirby64 7y ago
    Because the market already spoke a long time ago. It used to be the fancy infotainment screen was extra on cars. Turns out the take rate on those is high enough, so it just became standard.
    - yellowapple 7y ago
      But that's the thing: because the market spoke once a decade ago, does that mean there's no room for revisiting that discussion? Tastes change, technology changes, the economy changes, people change, everything changes. It's much like the current 4k TV market. Once upon a time, The Market™ spoke in favor of putting "smart" functionality in TVs, and so manufacturers added computers with greater and greater complexity and visual pizazz and apps and such. Then, the Chromecast and Roku and Fire TV and such became popular, and - better yet - ended up being much easier to upgrade as technology marched on (you only have to replace a $35-or-so dongle or box instead of having to replace a whole multi-hundred-or-thousand-dollar TV). On top of that, the cable companies started to dip their toes in offering these "smart" features in their own set top boxes, as did Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony with their gaming consoles, and there were and still are zero TVs able to replace either category of device. So now you have a bunch of TVs with smart features that go entirely unused (or, worse, actually break, taking the TV with it) because other devices offer better versions of those features and can actually be upgraded without replacing the entire TV. Unfortunately, since The Market™ has already spoken, there is now to my knowledge exactly one 4k TV manufacturer that offers consumer-grade TVs without smart features (Sceptre), and certainly not on store shelves (I had to buy mine on Amazon, with all the risk of damage and theft that entails, and the only Prime-eligible one was the 50"). Literally every other 4k TV - including any at a brick-and-mortar store, be it Best Buy or Fry's or Wal-Mart or what have you - has smart features that cannot be removed and that are either 1) already outperformed by $20-100 devices on those same exact shelves or 2) going to be outperformed within a year because technology marches on and no TV offers a way to upgrade the computational hardware.