Cars used to be entirely mechanical objects. With hard work and expertise, basically any old vehicle could be restored and operated: On YouTube, you can watch a man drive a 1931 Alvis to McDonald’s. But the car itself was stuck in time. If the automaker added a feature to the following year’s model, you just didn’t get it. Things have changed. My Model 3 has few dials or buttons; nearly every feature is routed through the giant central touch screen. It’s not just Tesla: Many new cars—and especially electric cars—are now stuffed with software, receiving over-the-air updates to fix bugs, tweak performance, or add new functionality.
In other words, your car is a lot like an iPhone (so much so that in the auto industry, describing EVs as “smartphones on wheels” has become a go-to cliché.) This has plenty of advantages—the improved navigation, the fart noises—but it also means that your car may become worse because the software is outdated, not because the parts break. Even top-of-the-line phones are destined to become obsolete—still able to perform the basic functions like phone calls and texts, but stuck with an old operating system and failing apps. The same struggle is now coming for cars.
Software-dependent cars are still new enough that it’s unclear how they will age. “It’s becoming the ethos of the industry that everyone’s promising a continually evolving car, and we don’t yet know how they’re going to pull that off,” Sean Tucker, a senior editor at Kelley Blue Book, told me. “Cars last longer than technology does.” The problem with cars as smartphones on wheels is that these two machines live and die on very different timescales. Many Americans trade in their phone every year and less than 30 percent keep an iPhone for longer than three years, but the average car on the road is nearly 13 years old. (Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment about how its cars age.)
The writer owns a tesla.
All communication disregarded.Thank you for saving me the click. 🤝
Why, though?
We don’t know why people buy teslas yet.
Because Teslas have dogshit reliability and all have OTA updates, whereas other brands don’t suffer from these issues.
other brands don’t suffer from these issues
Yet
Maybe it’s not enough for them to buy a new car? I mean it’s 6 years old; I’m pretty sure Tesla was the only player in the EV scene back then.
I’m pretty sure Tesla was the only player in the EV scene back then.
Absolutely not.
I bought a BEV back then. It was a VW Golf. Still driving it. The leaf, eNiro and i3 were contenders for me.
not sure where that data comes from , but Nissan has sold over 700,000 leaves.
I also call the team the Toronto Maple Leaves.
That’s when I bought mine, and it was either get a Model 3 with ~270 miles of range or a Nissan Leaf or a tiny BMW iQ, both with like 80.
For the record, if the software updates stopped where they’re at today, I’d be fine with how the car functions until the end of its life. In fact, I kinda wish they’d just leave things alone at this point because I don’t want any extra features out of the thing.
For the record, if the software updates stopped where they’re at today, I’d be fine with how the car functions until the end of its life. In fact, I kinda wish they’d just leave things alone at this point because I don’t want any extra features out of the thing.
And therein lies the rub, you don’t get to choose, the corpo does and you have to trust them (you do trust them, don’t you?). Pretty much like you’re renting, not owning. As the article points out this is similar to phone ‘ownership’, hopefully in the fullness of time there will be a GrapheneOS equivalent for cars…
There were other options that just weren’t well advertised/known. KIA Niro/Hyundai Kona, Chevy Bolt, and Jaguar I-Pace all existed in 2019 in addition to the 2 you mentioned.
Oh yeah, I do remember looking at those too, but iirc they were all still at a significant range disadvantage compared to the model 3. Dunno about now, though.
The all had 200-250 mile ranges. Less than 320, but fine for most folks. Now there are so many good EV options, the only downside is cost nowadays. We need a good, compact, inexpensive EV with decent charging speeds. The Bolt almost does that, bit the charging speeds are real slow
I have a 2017 Leaf. It absolutely has its drawbacks compared to most modern cars, but it did exist 6 years ago.
Because that dumbfuck Nazi isn’t worth listening to. Did not ‘hide his power level’.
Isnt this all cars and not just evs?
This article highlights a Tesla problem, not an EV problem.
The issue when you build a car around software is the software gets outdated and the the car is garbage.
Open sources EVs can be kept on the road just as easily as gas vehicles, as long as the gates are open to access the software.
Tesla has created their own issue, which will destroy them.
Other EV’s have this problem too, so it isn’t just a Tesla problem.
I think the main issue is what happens when software support ends. There are tons of industrial and medical equipment with outdated software that work well today, mainly because there is an air gap between their computers and the Internet. That air gap may need to be enforced onto cars as default in the future.
Well, the AM transmitter in the old car won’t work anymore as well.
Cars do age the same in terms of user experience - they are simply frozen in the state they are. (And at least within the EU can be operated fully offline)
The author seems to be more concerned that his car might not get “new features” anymore - and that bothers hims as the “free update” culture is extending to a lot of things. Technology advances but nothing has changed about that - that was always the case and now we can at least update some things.
While I would love to have a carnaker offer a open source plattform that would make people able to update and modify the entertainment/navigation part of their car I actually spoke to a car makers product manager about it - and sadly the multitude of regulations cars fall under in their various markets makes that basically impossible.
More important would be that we campaign for other things in terms of laws (some are in place in the EU but are currently under pressure):
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Manufacturers need to provide security updates for online functions for 10 years after the end of production.
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Manufacturers need to provide navigation updates for 5 years after the end of production
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Cars need a designated fully offline mode
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Driving data obtained must not be used for commercial purposes. (Currently already implemented in the GDPR)
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Important and often overlooked: Manufacturers must provide service software tools for cars for ALL repair shops and for at least 20 years after end of production. AND we need to work towards an open source industry standard.
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If we can push towards green electricity generation, I would be up for an electric car. Where I live our electricity isn’t green so it feels kind of…counter intuitive in a sense.
My main gripe with any new vehicle is touch screens. If there’s a touch screen in the thing ima flip a table. Give me physical buttons please. Oh I guess my secondary gripe is trying to make cars compact in ways that make it impossible difficult to work on yourself.
I want smaller cars, but I also want something that people can work on easily.
Over bloan. Software does not age but security does. Other things that do not age well is specialty tech hardware components. Batteries are a question too.
I know my volt at 10 years does not have a viable oem battery replacement (back ordered and nutty price). I can get a reasonable after market battery though.
A) Your car is not an EV. It’s a Hybrid.
B) All hybrid cars were/are bad investments.
You take a car, make it more complicated by adding an entire second power and drive system, and then expect it to not cost a fortune to maintain later?
Fucking stupidity.
Not at all. The Volt is great. No major issues. Not sure why your loosing your shit over something you seem to know nothing about.
Prius is one of the most reliable cars on the road. Of course, Boomers loves to tell me the BATTERY WON’T LAST and IT WILL COST $50000 TO REPLACE. Fucking stupidity.
You take a car, make it more complicated by adding an entire second power and drive system, and then expect it to not cost a fortune to maintain later?
Fucking stupidity.
Almost as fucking stupid as not looking up the long term reliability on a Prius, or a Volt. There’s good reasons why city cab companies buy them.
Cabs don’t drive like you do. Neither based on distance driven, nor the constant stop and go driving that optimizes hybrid use case.
Full electric is better for a lot of taxi locations, which is why a lot of Cab companies are now starting to switch their fleets over.
Even Uber ditched it’s Uber Green branding for Uber Electric.
Every single Waymo on the road is fully electric at this point after they phased out their hybrid units a couple years ago.
FairCar when?
Pretty much all the cars that weren’t made in the last decade or so.
Putting aside from the implied EV context, I’m not sure I’d go that far. They were repairable, but had a lot of proprietary design in them as well.
I would still go with one of the “legacy” manufacturers for myself, though.
Every single person with a working brain has been complaining about making cars more and more “connected” and reliant on software - it makes the cars LESS safe and less repairable. Heater or AC won’t work? Sorry, you gotta subscribe to unlock that. Any customer who looks at that and says “That makes sense, the company can’t give that out for free” is a fucking idiot who deserves to be scammed out of their money
i wonder when first teslas start bricking up just so people have to buy new one
They already brick any Tesla with a salvage title from using a supercharger.
Software-dependent cars are still new enough that it’s unclear how they will age.
Not at all. They die young.
This article is nonsense. However, electric cars have a lot to overcome before they’re able to actually take over the whole market. Personally I don’t know anyone who wants an electric car. They’ve already came out and said that they didn’t have enough material for enough batteries for everyone in the US to have an electric car. The power grids can’t support everyone having an electric car. The batteries usually go bad around 10-15 years old, which are very expensive to replace which also prevents people from wanting to buy one because it costs more to replace the battery than most vehicles cost to replace the engine and the engine lasts much longer than 10 years (unless it’s a Hyundai or you don’t change the oil). So a lot of people would just put it up for sale and try to buy another car but nobody would buy it for what it’s worth. Again, they have a lot of issues to correct before everyone having an electric car is even remotely feasible.
They’ve already came out and said that they didn’t have enough material for enough batteries for everyone in the US to have an electric car
17 million last year, 60 million in total globally. Where do you get your information.
The power grids can’t support everyone having an electric car.
sure they can. They support everyone having a toaster or a dryer.
The batteries usually go bad around 10-15 years old
How many ICE cars make it to 400,000 miles?
prevents people from wanting to buy one because it costs more to replace the battery than most vehicles cost to replace the engine and the engine
This has been true in ICE for decades.
Lmaooo your logic is so broken. The new new electric vehicle batteries are only rated for 15-20 years at the most. Not including the reduced lifespan that they have already been proven to have in the cold northern states and the issues that salty roads introduce to that. But just for arguments sake the average American drives 13,500 miles a year. Which comes to just over 200,000 miles in 15 years and 270,000 miles in 20 years. And that’s IF you get the maximum life. I know PLENTY of people who have well over 300,000 miles on their gas vehicles and diesels last even longer. And the batteries cost around $10,000 on average but the range is $5,000 to $20,000. Engines range from $3,000 to $7,000 new and you have options for used or remanufactured for cheaper (which you can’t do for batteries). And you can’t literally just Google it, our electrical grids CANNOT currently support everyone having an electric car. Hell California can’t even make it through the summer without grid outages due to overuse just from air conditioning lmao. If you just Google it you will find out that they have already done studies that show we need to put around 2 trillion to 4 trillion dollars into our electrical infrastructure (neighborhood transformers and house electrical panels) and main transmission grid systems in order to support everyone switching to electric vehicles. And it would take a few decades to get it all completely done. But realistically given we had the funding already setup we could likely have most people ready to go in about 15 -20 years and everyone done by 30 years. But we don’t so it’ll be at least 30. And once more and more people get electric vehicles and they improve designs and improve batteries, then it’ll likely take less power and batteries will likely be cheaper and easier to make. And once all of that happens, then gas powered vehicles will start to completely fade away. But they’ll still be the better option (for the general population) until all of those things happen
