If you want something more car-shaped, the Renault Zoe has very few tech feature.
Similarly, Kia Soul has a reversing camera… and that's about it! No radar, lane assist, carplay or anything like that.
Cstomers only want 3 things. A comfortable ride, a safe journey, and $thing. The problem is, everyone's one more thing is different. I want DAB radio, you want cruise control, she wants lane assist, he wants automatic parking.
Creating a dozen different SKUs for all those things is complicated. Getting regulatory approval for every variation is expensive.
So most manufacturers sell only a few variations of their models.
> Cstomers only want 3 things. A comfortable ride, a safe journey, and $thing. The problem is, everyone's one more thing is different. I want DAB radio, you want cruise control, she wants lane assist, he wants automatic parking.
This is the correct answer. And on top of this, new cars also compete with used cars. The very few people who don’t want any $thing are often not picky buyers and are more likely to just buy a cheaper used car. They wouldn’t be a buyer even if automakers did build a car for them.
For some reason new electric cars have to be expensive. A 2024 leaf with the 212mi-range battery starts at 36k, a Model 3 starts at 38k. I want cheap and minimal, like a honda fit without the infotainment garbage and manditory data collection.
> Cstomers only want 3 things. A comfortable ride, a safe journey, and $thing. The problem is, everyone's one more thing is different. I want DAB radio, you want cruise control, she wants lane assist, he wants automatic parking.
Every car has a radio. And DAB support has no real effect on cost and I don't think the radio chip is what OP has in mind for "low tech".
The rest of that has a very clear divide. Cruise control is low tech and negligible cost, especially on an electric vehicle. Lane assist and automatic parking are high tech and need pricey extra parts to implement.
And this logic doesn't explain why plenty of low tech non-electric cars exist.
Someone else already replied about how the examples you gave changed to add flashy high tech stuff.
Wouldn't it be fun if electric cars were the same way as PC's. Plug and play the parts you want, switch motor / battery.. choose a new chassis as you wish. And LED lights of course.
The only reason that exists for PCs is the same reason we even use the word “PC”: they’re all just legacy holdovers from manufacturers copying IBM.
And really, the subset of the market that still follows these standards is small, and shrinking. The vast majority of PCs today are laptops with few, if any, swappable parts.
Pretty much the only segment where this still exists is the enthusiast subset of the gaming PC market.
Yes, if you want to go low-tech, Renault (and Dacia) is a good option.
Before recent legislative troubles (lol), France was also working on a law that would give consumer unions (think iFixit but with publicly available finance) the right to give "repairability indexes" on multiple products, including cars, that would have to be presented to the buyer, even second-hand buyers.
They have terrible rear visibility because modern crash standards (and the laws of physics) require that. 80s cars had much better rear visibility, but the roofs would easily flatten and those cars were generally deathtraps for any kind of crash. Modern cars handle crashes much better with stronger roof pillars and a high "beltline" (the line between the metal parts of the doors and the windows) and side-impact protection beams in the doors, but that comes at the cost of visibility.
Luckily, modern technology solves this, and more, if you get the backup camera (now legally required in US) and the rear blind-spot-detection radar. Visibility with those is much better than it was in the old days, as long as you know how to use them. However, they do all come at a cost, especially the blind-spot radars.
> Similarly, Kia Soul has a reversing camera… and that's about it! No radar, lane assist, carplay or anything like that.
According to Kia’s website, the cheapest Soul you can buy has CarPlay/Android Auto. Standard feature on the “LX”, 8in touchscreen.
Does it even cost anything for an automaker to allow phones to use the screen for CarPlay/Android Auto? The cost savings must be so miniscule, and the convenience of being able to use your phone to navigate/listen to music and other audio is immense.
Erm, have you ever seen a German car? Pick any Audi, Mercedes, BMW and god forbid a Porsche and you'll have an options catalogue of epic proportions.
Different SKUs is an absolute non-issue in the car industry when it comes to tech gizmos and other optional extras. You want different suspension? No biggie. Manual vs automatic? Sure. Different kind of entertainment system? Of course. Different (branded) speakers? Yup.
It can be done, but at a high cost. None of those cars you listed are inexpensive by any means.
By contrast, budget-friendly Japanese cars don't have options like this; you get maybe 3 option packages to choose from and that's it. Manufacturing is much simpler and gets better economies of scale when everyone gets the same thing.
And yet, in the late '80s or early '90s, the future was supposed to be made-to-order cars that were delivered to your door. If anything, we've regressed from the level of customization that was available decades ago.
There are new EU rules that apply to new cars. All of them have to have some safety related features including automatic braking, rear view cameras and equipment to check your alcohol level. The latter does not do anything yet but it has to be there as prepation for the future
Not sure about other regions, but in the EU, low tech cars are not allowed.
Required safety systems include emergency breaking, emergency lane-keeping, intelligent speed assistance (car must use cameras or GPS to determine current speed limit), driver attention warning systems and many more.
That fancy screen is really not a cost factor. These days you can buy after-market screens with Car Play and Android auto support for 100 EURs or less. But all the safety systems needs lots of sensors, and also the ability to auto-brake and auto-steer in emergency situations.
> These days you can buy after-market screens with Car Play and Android auto support for 100 EURs or less.
Wish this was true. I wanted to buy one for myself, but even the most expensive aftermarket CarPlay units are absolutely terrible. Laggy & unresponsive touch screens, underpowered internals, gaudy designs etc.
I wonder why it’s still such a challenge to make something that feels as good as a first gen iPad from 2010.
> I wonder why it’s still such a challenge to make something that feels as good as a first gen iPad from 2010.
Cars have a unique set of operating requirements. During the course of a year, my car could be -40F or 160F inside, depending on if it’s winter or summer. Electronics that operate reliably in that temp range are expensive.
So the unit economics of electric cars are quite different from gas cars (ICE = internal combustion). Electric car companies don't make money on low cost cars -- and neither can ICE cars!
Basic ICE cars are essentially sold at cost, sometimes as loss leaders, because the manufacturers make a long-tail of money supplying parts and maintenance for the cars over their lifetime; for 10-20 years they now have a (variable) recurring revenue stream. So a lot of automakers' incentives are to get as large of a fleet as possible.
Electric cars inherently have much less of a maintenance burden because there are way fewer moving parts in a motor versus an engine. For example, there's no oil changes ever 3k miles or timing belts to replace ever 30k miles.
That means, for electric car companies, business model options are
a) introduce SaaS subscriptions for electronic features (a - la Tesla Autopilot premium, supercharger network subscriptions)
b) introduce unnecessary complexity to increase maintenance revenue (gullwing doors)
c) sell at a profit margin off the factory. Can have higher margins and higher total profit for luxury cars versus basic cars
And Tesla's recent push towards robotaxis of their existing fleet would be a totally killer disruption of the unit economics by generating recurring revenue off their fleet.
So all the incentives for electric cars point towards high tech luxury, not basic eco-cars. There may be an exception to the rule in some countries, and those may be related to government subsidies.
> Basic ICE cars are essentially sold at cost, sometimes as loss leaders, because the manufacturers make a long-tail of money supplying parts and maintenance for the cars over their lifetime
Not just that but fuel economy regulations, (like CAFE in the USA) mandated average fleet fuel economy that must be met for automakers to avoid fines. GM had to sell a bunch of Cavaliers to be able to sell a bunch of (profitable) Silverados and Suburbans. With hybrids and EVs these days, regulations no longer favor the small car.
> a) introduce SaaS subscriptions for electronic feature
All the manufacturing are talking about is the need for the 'vehicle as a platform' to sell subscriptions, services and driver data. I've seen so many PowerPoints about this, it's nauseating.
> Electric cars inherently have much less of a maintenance burden because there are way fewer moving parts in a motor versus an engine.
A modern ICE outlasts the rest of the car. You might replace the alternator or water pump, but those are made by third parties not the OEM. You will replace the oil, but again, the OEM doesn't make that.
The dealers make a lot of money on after sales, but (except Tesla) those are independent third parties. The manufacture doesn't get much after sales.
OEM parts do sell for more than third party. And so there is money in OEM parts, but after 5 years most people are buying replacement parts from the third party (the OEM doesn't make those parts - they are buying from a third party and putting a markup on them). Sometimes people will buy OEM parts instead of a third party as OEM tends to give much higher quality vs random third party.
The big reason screens matter for electric cars is planning long range trips with stops at a battery charge location. Without the map/screen in-car you can’t integrate battery level with routing. Maybe you’re fine doing this manually, but range anxiety is the big reason consumers who can afford electric don’t buy electric, so it seems self defeating to remove features that help with that. The screens and stuff aren’t that much extra, often it helps save more on tooling/logistics for plastic buttons and dials.
Additionally, CarPlay/Android Auto is a hard requirement for me and many other consumers these days. I wouldn’t consider a car - gas or electric - without it. I opted for a Mercedes gas car in part because there was no overall good electric car with wireless CarPlay in my price range.
> The big reason screens matter for electric cars is planning long range trips with stops at a battery charge location.
But that doesn't explain why automakers are moving the regular controls from physical buttons to the touchscreen. That's the part that I consider a serious problem.
Buttons are surprisingly expensive; not just the button itself but the wiring and the labor. Let's WAG at $20 per button. $20 * a few dozen buttons is real money.
No need for all that custom UI tech in the car, just provide a documented API and open-source app you can run on your phone or even dedicate a tablet for it.
Proprietary screens and their supporting computers will be obsolete quickly, will break easily and be exorbitantly expensive to fix/replace, and of course there's a good chance they will also surveil everything you do, mostly for the benefit of the manufacturer.
Just say no to smart appliances, especially something as central as your personal transport.
I have no confidence that auto/carplay of today will work with whatever phone I have in 12 years. Car makers want to ship their cars and forget about them. They hate warranty work. Tesla does software updates but the others don't want to (they do but only when they must or if they can charge for them - the maps on my 12 year old car are way out of date because like most car buyers I won't pay to update them). I'm not even sure that phones in 12 years will have communications (usb, bluetooth, wifi) compatible with the infotainment system in today's new cars. I am sure I will not be using today's phone as 5g towers will be shutting down.
Thing is, we do have that "document API". CAN bus has been a thing for a long time (and is still in use even today), and has documented ways of communicating with everything modern Body Control Units and Engine Control Units do. For everything else, we have the ever valid DIN size standard. Both of these together make for an easy to upgrade system, including options to use Open Source head units. Just looking for a radio and nothing else? Go for it. Want all the fancy bells and whistles that Android Auto or Car Play provides? You got it. Even the steering wheel controls have a standard.
So the question is, why do they keep re-designing the head unit as a monolithic brick, and make it non-replaceable? I can't say for sure why, but my guess is that they've since added their own team for "Smart this" and "subscription that", and removing those sources of revenue is far more expensive than rebuilding the head unit each year.
Lived in China 2009-2022, when I arrived they were just starting to experience the boom - and forced China-style adoption (aka "all gas scooters are banned starting from tomorrow" out of blue) - of electric scooters. At that time I wondered, why not just "put two scooters together" with a shell, and voila, a car!
Fast forward to 2020s and that's exactly what's going on. There is a lot of EV "cars" cars in China that barely qualify as a car (e.g. Wuling Hongguang) and cost as low as 20,000 RMB (~US$3,000).
I would not want to buy those, though. The current EV boom is forced by planned economy with huge subsidies, which always attracts "wrong crowd" in China. There are hundreds of brands right now, but once the subsidies dry up, 99% of them will shut down, leaving unsupported hastily slapped together cars to rot.
Which would you prefer - a brand new basic car with the minimum legal features (so you get a backup camera, tire pressure monitoring, airbags ...). Or a 5 year old car with features like air conditioning, radio, infotainment, heated seats and so on? The reality is people who are cheap buy used cars anyway as for the same price as a bare bones new car they can get all the luxury features as well. People who care about their image demand all the luxury features and will not be seen in a car more than 3 years old.
If we changed something (either legal, planned obsolesce, ???) so that cars only last 3 years, there would be a large market for bare bones cars as people who are cheap would buy them. (and many people who today buy new cars would be forced to buy a much cheaper car since their car no longer as more than scrap value). However the economics of cars mean anyone who would buy a bare bones car buys used.
In time the used market will be filled with these cars that bare bones fans don't want. That will push down the price of recent used cars which means trade-in value lowers and new car fans can afford less which increases the barebones demand in new cars.
I used to work in luxury automotive infotainment. The general feeling is that luxury customers want luxury level systems. EVs are still considered by the industry to be upper-level vehicles. Which is to say they still believe they’re catering to with more money.
We’re not going to see a low-tech EV for a long time. In my opinion, we’re not ever going to see one. And respectfully to you and all the other folks here who feel like you, I don’t think you represent the average driver in this regard.
China spins out a lot of variations on a theme, there's bound to be limited run versions with little more than the absolute bare essentials to have a functional EV - the asian phone market is an indicator of the kind of range that is just not seen in the western markets.
> By "we" I'm guessing you mean the tariff protected domestic north american and european markets.
Yes, I apologize for the western-centric approach there, though I would extend that position to the UAE and Saudi-Arabia.
The NA OEMs are not interested in bringing very low-cost vehicles to market. And the low-cost OEMs from Europe haven’t really been able to reach the American market. aside from a very outlier products.
As usual with these kinds of things, European standards bodies to the rescue [1]:
>Euro NCAP – Europe’s leading automotive safety industry body – has stated that from 2026 new guidance will be introduced over physical buttons and touchscreens.
>Euro NCAP’s rules are not mandatory for manufacturers to follow, but the threat of losing points will likely impact the decisions of many of the leading brands in the years ahead.
Although I would prefer a hard ban of touchscreen-only car controls in EU countries, which would obviously have more of an impact.
Readit News
If you want something more car-shaped, the Renault Zoe has very few tech feature.
Similarly, Kia Soul has a reversing camera… and that's about it! No radar, lane assist, carplay or anything like that.
Cstomers only want 3 things. A comfortable ride, a safe journey, and $thing. The problem is, everyone's one more thing is different. I want DAB radio, you want cruise control, she wants lane assist, he wants automatic parking.
Creating a dozen different SKUs for all those things is complicated. Getting regulatory approval for every variation is expensive.
So most manufacturers sell only a few variations of their models.
The Renault Zoe has been discontinued, replaced by the Renault 5 e, which has ADAS and lots of other electric features.
Starting with model year 2023, the Kia Soul also has all the tech required by law: https://thebrakereport.com/kia-enhances-adas-for-2023-soul It also has Car Play now.
This is the correct answer. And on top of this, new cars also compete with used cars. The very few people who don’t want any $thing are often not picky buyers and are more likely to just buy a cheaper used car. They wouldn’t be a buyer even if automakers did build a car for them.
Every car has a radio. And DAB support has no real effect on cost and I don't think the radio chip is what OP has in mind for "low tech".
The rest of that has a very clear divide. Cruise control is low tech and negligible cost, especially on an electric vehicle. Lane assist and automatic parking are high tech and need pricey extra parts to implement.
And this logic doesn't explain why plenty of low tech non-electric cars exist.
Someone else already replied about how the examples you gave changed to add flashy high tech stuff.
Radar cruise control is not, and may be what the OP was thinking of.
And really, the subset of the market that still follows these standards is small, and shrinking. The vast majority of PCs today are laptops with few, if any, swappable parts.
Pretty much the only segment where this still exists is the enthusiast subset of the gaming PC market.
https://www.tiktok.com/@hu_changwen/video/736154455749586460...
That’s no longer true for the most consumer laptops.
Before recent legislative troubles (lol), France was also working on a law that would give consumer unions (think iFixit but with publicly available finance) the right to give "repairability indexes" on multiple products, including cars, that would have to be presented to the buyer, even second-hand buyers.
And the reversing camera is necessary because modern cars have tiny submarine like windows.
Luckily, modern technology solves this, and more, if you get the backup camera (now legally required in US) and the rear blind-spot-detection radar. Visibility with those is much better than it was in the old days, as long as you know how to use them. However, they do all come at a cost, especially the blind-spot radars.
According to Kia’s website, the cheapest Soul you can buy has CarPlay/Android Auto. Standard feature on the “LX”, 8in touchscreen.
Does it even cost anything for an automaker to allow phones to use the screen for CarPlay/Android Auto? The cost savings must be so miniscule, and the convenience of being able to use your phone to navigate/listen to music and other audio is immense.
Different SKUs is an absolute non-issue in the car industry when it comes to tech gizmos and other optional extras. You want different suspension? No biggie. Manual vs automatic? Sure. Different kind of entertainment system? Of course. Different (branded) speakers? Yup.
Anything is optionable.
By contrast, budget-friendly Japanese cars don't have options like this; you get maybe 3 option packages to choose from and that's it. Manufacturing is much simpler and gets better economies of scale when everyone gets the same thing.
> Citroën’s Ami, a small $6,000 electric “car,” is apparently coming to the US as part of new electric car subscription service.
No thank you.
Required safety systems include emergency breaking, emergency lane-keeping, intelligent speed assistance (car must use cameras or GPS to determine current speed limit), driver attention warning systems and many more.
That fancy screen is really not a cost factor. These days you can buy after-market screens with Car Play and Android auto support for 100 EURs or less. But all the safety systems needs lots of sensors, and also the ability to auto-brake and auto-steer in emergency situations.
https://bmdv.bund.de/SharedDocs/EN/Articles/StV/Roadtraffic/...
Which is a rather recent development and certainly a protectionist move and will hinder adaptation massively.
You need the full suite for lane controls, attention monitoring, emergency brake systems, etc...
It is simply impossible to now release low tech cars and it is a political decision by the EU that is highly questionable.
https://cinea.ec.europa.eu/publications/eu-road-safety-towar...
Wish this was true. I wanted to buy one for myself, but even the most expensive aftermarket CarPlay units are absolutely terrible. Laggy & unresponsive touch screens, underpowered internals, gaudy designs etc.
I wonder why it’s still such a challenge to make something that feels as good as a first gen iPad from 2010.
Cars have a unique set of operating requirements. During the course of a year, my car could be -40F or 160F inside, depending on if it’s winter or summer. Electronics that operate reliably in that temp range are expensive.
Twizy and Ami are not regular passenger vehicles. I am sure there are less requirements for them.
Deleted Comment
Basic ICE cars are essentially sold at cost, sometimes as loss leaders, because the manufacturers make a long-tail of money supplying parts and maintenance for the cars over their lifetime; for 10-20 years they now have a (variable) recurring revenue stream. So a lot of automakers' incentives are to get as large of a fleet as possible.
Electric cars inherently have much less of a maintenance burden because there are way fewer moving parts in a motor versus an engine. For example, there's no oil changes ever 3k miles or timing belts to replace ever 30k miles.
That means, for electric car companies, business model options are
a) introduce SaaS subscriptions for electronic features (a - la Tesla Autopilot premium, supercharger network subscriptions)
b) introduce unnecessary complexity to increase maintenance revenue (gullwing doors)
c) sell at a profit margin off the factory. Can have higher margins and higher total profit for luxury cars versus basic cars
And Tesla's recent push towards robotaxis of their existing fleet would be a totally killer disruption of the unit economics by generating recurring revenue off their fleet.
So all the incentives for electric cars point towards high tech luxury, not basic eco-cars. There may be an exception to the rule in some countries, and those may be related to government subsidies.
Not just that but fuel economy regulations, (like CAFE in the USA) mandated average fleet fuel economy that must be met for automakers to avoid fines. GM had to sell a bunch of Cavaliers to be able to sell a bunch of (profitable) Silverados and Suburbans. With hybrids and EVs these days, regulations no longer favor the small car.
All the manufacturing are talking about is the need for the 'vehicle as a platform' to sell subscriptions, services and driver data. I've seen so many PowerPoints about this, it's nauseating.
A modern ICE outlasts the rest of the car. You might replace the alternator or water pump, but those are made by third parties not the OEM. You will replace the oil, but again, the OEM doesn't make that.
The dealers make a lot of money on after sales, but (except Tesla) those are independent third parties. The manufacture doesn't get much after sales.
OEM parts do sell for more than third party. And so there is money in OEM parts, but after 5 years most people are buying replacement parts from the third party (the OEM doesn't make those parts - they are buying from a third party and putting a markup on them). Sometimes people will buy OEM parts instead of a third party as OEM tends to give much higher quality vs random third party.
They sell you battery packs for $20,000 around every 8-10 years.
Additionally, CarPlay/Android Auto is a hard requirement for me and many other consumers these days. I wouldn’t consider a car - gas or electric - without it. I opted for a Mercedes gas car in part because there was no overall good electric car with wireless CarPlay in my price range.
But that doesn't explain why automakers are moving the regular controls from physical buttons to the touchscreen. That's the part that I consider a serious problem.
No need for all that custom UI tech in the car, just provide a documented API and open-source app you can run on your phone or even dedicate a tablet for it.
Proprietary screens and their supporting computers will be obsolete quickly, will break easily and be exorbitantly expensive to fix/replace, and of course there's a good chance they will also surveil everything you do, mostly for the benefit of the manufacturer.
Just say no to smart appliances, especially something as central as your personal transport.
So the question is, why do they keep re-designing the head unit as a monolithic brick, and make it non-replaceable? I can't say for sure why, but my guess is that they've since added their own team for "Smart this" and "subscription that", and removing those sources of revenue is far more expensive than rebuilding the head unit each year.
Fast forward to 2020s and that's exactly what's going on. There is a lot of EV "cars" cars in China that barely qualify as a car (e.g. Wuling Hongguang) and cost as low as 20,000 RMB (~US$3,000).
I would not want to buy those, though. The current EV boom is forced by planned economy with huge subsidies, which always attracts "wrong crowd" in China. There are hundreds of brands right now, but once the subsidies dry up, 99% of them will shut down, leaving unsupported hastily slapped together cars to rot.
If we changed something (either legal, planned obsolesce, ???) so that cars only last 3 years, there would be a large market for bare bones cars as people who are cheap would buy them. (and many people who today buy new cars would be forced to buy a much cheaper car since their car no longer as more than scrap value). However the economics of cars mean anyone who would buy a bare bones car buys used.
We’re not going to see a low-tech EV for a long time. In my opinion, we’re not ever going to see one. And respectfully to you and all the other folks here who feel like you, I don’t think you represent the average driver in this regard.
Have a look at last years low end BYD domestic market EV offers, there's a crazy amount of choice in style, design, and no frills offerings.
By "we" I'm guessing you mean the tariff protected domestic north american and european markets.
The domestic BYD Seagull sells for under $10K USD on home soil and isn't being exported much ATM:
https://www.drive.com.au/news/2023-byd-seagull-unveiled-not-...
China spins out a lot of variations on a theme, there's bound to be limited run versions with little more than the absolute bare essentials to have a functional EV - the asian phone market is an indicator of the kind of range that is just not seen in the western markets.
Yes, I apologize for the western-centric approach there, though I would extend that position to the UAE and Saudi-Arabia.
The NA OEMs are not interested in bringing very low-cost vehicles to market. And the low-cost OEMs from Europe haven’t really been able to reach the American market. aside from a very outlier products.
>Euro NCAP – Europe’s leading automotive safety industry body – has stated that from 2026 new guidance will be introduced over physical buttons and touchscreens.
>Euro NCAP’s rules are not mandatory for manufacturers to follow, but the threat of losing points will likely impact the decisions of many of the leading brands in the years ahead.
Although I would prefer a hard ban of touchscreen-only car controls in EU countries, which would obviously have more of an impact.
[1]: https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/news/driving-tech/is-the-beginni... (5th Mar 2024)