I had similar experiences with a modern Volvo. (XC40 T8 EV). Modern cars seem to be absolutely terrible.
It's like all those Single Page Applications on the web that are just downgrades over the classic Server-Side Rendered apps. Sure, you have more features, but at what cost? Reliability.
I think the last generations of cars before the touch buttons and screens were the last "okay" generation. Somewhere in 2010s, all cars were converted to be "smart cars", and they are all terrible. Who walks into a BMW dealer and sits down, surrounded by how many displays, and think: Wow! That's neat! And then you go to drive and it just notifications, beeps and boops.
I just want a luxury car that is grand, silent, feels nice, is nice to drive, and doesn't blast my eyes with screens.
I once connected my Volvo to pull a trailer. First, it reminds me to update the software. I click it away. It then gave me 2 notifications about some assist features not working and rear warning not working or something, idk. It also occasionally reminded the child locks are enabled, which I do not need reminders about. Then it is cold, so you get a cold weather warning. And then the windows are a bit wet because I didn't clear the camera properly from ice, so you get a warning about the cruise control not working. So 10 minutes in, I had received 6 notifications from my CAR! I didn't even use cruise control, I just wanted to pull my trailer a short distance. And some of these notifications block the navigation and require interaction to close. While driving!
If I was to buy a car these days (which I'm not, I don't have nearly enough money for that), I'd want something with as little "computer" in it as possible. Just a box with 4 wheels and an engine, or maybe a battery and a motor, maybe a heater for when it gets a bit cold, and I'll throw a bluetooth speaker in the back seat if I need something to listen to
Just to note the trade-off here: modern cars are much safer in crashes than even cars from ~20 years ago, and the less computer you want, the further back in time you need to go to find suitable cars. There are nuances to the safety thing: some brands were/are safer, more popular car designs today tend to have some features that may worsen safety (taller cars are less stable, heavier cars handle worse, big heavy cars are worse for pedestrians).
It feels a bit counterintuitive to go for a Bluetooth speaker over 3.5mm?
Your low tech car will feel like a emotional prison. Of all the annoying modernities you want the worst one? If you want to make a deal with the devil I would choose rear camera.
Think about it. All the headache and time to pair Bluetooth devices over a dead simple connector.
I would aim for a pre 2016 car. I think that has some margin to the Internet of Shit product lines?
This is going to become nearly impossible in Europe, it may already be in some places due to regulations restricting old vehicles due to emissions. ADAS requirements and other laws forcing manufacturers to implement all sorts of restrictions: just as an example, from 2024 on all new vehicles must implement ISA (Intelligent Speed Assist) that limits speed based on GPS and signs recognition. Anecdotal, but many cars built since mid 00s are ticking timebombs due to their endless electronics faults that will cost drivers a massive bill at some point if not multiple times over their lifespan, good luck finding those proprietary boards that have dozens different variants incompatible with each other for one single car model and have not been produced for years or decades. And if most car manufacturers are utterly incompetent at engineering lasting electronics, let's not get into software that they dedicate the least paid and most desperate SwEngs to work on. Coming to an abrupt halt from cruising speed on an highway is a common failure mode I've seen more than once dictated by insane ECUs programming, for example. I'd like to believe miniaturization and just maturity in the industry will make those sort of issues less prevalent for newer cars, but I'm not hopeful about it.
All software is like its makers full of attention-whoring.
Its a nasty side-effect of the "identify with your work" ethics.
Thus i propose a new job, the ux-castrator. His only job, is to traverse the software and excise out tumorous attention hogging growths and limitations based upon thee.
Back to the chasm from which you came daemon, for the user needs not see you, know you, be aware of you and your works. You are a cog and until needed by your use-case, a invisible cog add infinitum. Not a bringer of gifts, not a master-of-metrics, no, bound to the circle of usefulness for all eternity and all the dark patterns shall not have you escape the runes.
It's usually a product-management failure that causes this. If you make your UX sufficiently invisible your department becomes invisible, and you get de-prioritized for promotion.
Management by metrics makes this worse, by forcing staff to game the metrics.
> just want a luxury car that is grand, silent, feels nice, is nice to drive, and doesn't blast my eyes with screens.
'92 BMW 325IS. Coupe. Strait-six. RWD. 5-speed Manual. Cornered like on rails. Never once suprised me with a random shift at a dangerous moment. Had a great little trip computer. No screens. No bluetooth. About 7L/100km. I took it skiing. I took it rock climbing. It drove me to my exams. It drove me to my first real job. I slept in it more than want to admit. It had 320,000km on the clock when i had to sell it.
It was full of little optimizations, like how in fifth the speedo and tac would match each other. Or how the center console was angled about 25 degrees towards the driver so all the buttons were equidistant. Or how the armrest perfectly matched the shifter and the stiching on the steering wheel was positioned to give grip in the thumb hooks. Biult in germany, the dash was so simplified that it didnt have mph on the speedo, nor did it even have the letters "kph" or "rpm"... just numbers on a black background. If you need to be told which is which, you dont deserve to be driving such a car.
If you are listening BMW: I would pay a premium for a new biuld of that car. Everything i see at your dealerships, all your plastic cars, are total junk.
Of course you get some issues with 33 year old cars. I let my 31 year old mx5 go but slightly regret it - it needed ~£3000 spent to renovate but then they keep their value as classics. Getting replacement parts can start getting tricky.
Sounds almost as if the car was designed to cater for the user of it that holds the responsibility of hurtling a metric ton of metal at unnatural speeds instead of being a living room on wheels. Who'd have thought of such revolutionary ideas.
They just don’t die. My 16 year old one seemed end of life 10 years ago and when I holed the sump, I was resigned to getting it wrecked.
After driving it for a few months it didn’t die so I took it to a mechanic. I got told off for my dry sump technique and told not to do it again. It got a new pan and some oil, that was it. It’s done 5 or so years of light service since. It’s been stolen, carried masses of firewood, too many dogs and too much concrete.
I mean, my 9 year old Clio drives fine with pretty basic software. Whereas when I see a Tesla on the road I try not to get too close out of fear it will do something random and dangerous.
The cold weather alert especially gets on my nerves. I appreciate the heads up, but I don't appreciate the HUD crying wolf about stuff that doesn't require my immediate attention.
This is my biggest bugbear with VW (and related) cars. The "it's below 4ºc" message has the same warning tone as messages about tyre pressures, engine malfunctions, etc.
Oh, and in the winter, if the front sensors are iced over, it has the worst ear-stabbing incessant EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE... sound at low speeds until I go out and fix it. I have not found any other way to shut it up. It might be at high speeds too, because it is so awful that I cannot not go out and fix it, so I'm not sure. Luckily it hasn't happened yet where I couldn't stop somewhere.
There was a good (?) video on the subject the other day, it was mainly about Volkswagen / VAG but highlighted the software problem.
Cars are / were basically Frankenstein monsters under the hood, with dozens of onboard computers / chips all needing to work independently yet collaboratively and talk to each other. VW set up a new subsidiary and hired 3000 people to build the car software system of the future, reducing the 70-odd computers to 3 or so.
But we all know software, it uh, didn't go as planned.
Anyway, iirc Toyota or Mazda, one of them, was at the forefront of bringing regular buttons back to cars. And I hope there's going to be new car companies that iterate on the thing again and build simpler cars again. It should be a lot cheaper too, because it feels like they bolt on more and more electronic features to try and upsell the car. Building a car with the features and numbers of 30, 40 years ago should be doable at a fraction of the cost. And that development is coming actually, but it's coming from the likes of China and India. It's not profitable to bring them to the west though.
Auto programming is the prime example of Conway's law.
Like, you have 10s of critical applications that you want to keep simple and not crashing or bugging out. So, just give them each a computer.
No way for the shitty wiper department's buggy ECU to ruin your day in the brake ECU by blocking all the hydraulic lines. You can even put them on different CAN buses!
I'm afraid a lot of the tech is either necessary by law or necessary to get a decent safety rating these days, so you can't make the simple cars from yesteryear.
Now, screens aren't required by law or safety ratings, but there's no getting around having a lot of software in there, and thus a screen to configure all that stuff.
What are they even counting as a 'computer' to get to 70?
I know that in the door there's going to be a microcontroller, to connect the buttons, the lock and the window motor to the CAN bus (or whatever it is they use these days). Is that a computer? Are they proposing to get rid of it?
I think google's prev ceo once said something like,
"Computers should have been invented before cars". They took it wrong, computerizing cars before reaching level 5 automony was a mistake.
I spent 2 * 1 hours in a 'fresh' car some time ago, it was a nasty experience. It had all these 'backseat driver' functions, like trying to figure out and then misjudging somehow what the speed limit currently was or trying to influence where on the road I place the car, as if it could know better than I do what would be appropriate.
The 'lane assist' was just absurdly awful, it only figured out where the car was sometimes, when it could 'see' the line on the edge of the road clearly enough for long enough, and then pushed away from it under the assumption that I don't have a precision of a few centimeters in relation to it. So once it suddenly pushed the car closer to a heavy truck during an overtaking. And it's not needed, since the edge lines are rumble strips or you feel the tire slip off the asphalt into gravel.
It was also obvious that the screen in the middle section ('infotainment'? idk.) was designed by a junior on a huge monitor sitting right in front of them, because the clock was really small and in the upper right corner. Took me a minute to figure out how to make it stop incessantly send out visual noise about what was on some radio channel even though I had stopped the playback from it. It's for good reason many cars has dark orange LCD and not bright off-white on light blue gradients, for one it's a nuisance when the light outdoors is dusky or misty.
This was an Opel, don't remember which one. Next time I hand in my friendly relatively low-tech car from 2006 for repairs I'll bring a friend to drive me instead of borrowing another one of these disgusting Scrum cars.
>like trying to figure out and then misjudging somehow what the speed limit currently was or trying to influence where on the road I place the car, as if it could know better than I do what would be appropriate.
These "features" are now mandatory in the EU so you can look forward to a lot more cars implementing them as they try to sell global cars.
> And some of these notifications block the navigation and require interaction to close. While driving!
/rant For some reason, some idiots, piece of crap human beings, think that it is ok to bombard you with notifications, with no way to make them go away.
It is everywhere: on phones, on TVs, on cars.
Dear SW coders, please, read human interface guidelines from Apple from 20 years ago and X user interface guidlines.
Do not draw transient windows without an OK or Cancel button.
/end rant
I have the same car and the thing I like most about it is that it doesn't have a giant screen and looks more like a traditional car. I can't say I've had the same issues (or any issues besides the slow infotainment system). I do agree that the amount of notifications are excessive but that seems to be the case with all newer cars.
It all doesn't quite work well enough to justify all the new tech. My 7 year old car is pretty good, it has a small 8 inch screen which does car play/android auto and has nice buttons and dials for all controls. No distractions!
I have SOS Inoperative in car. Contacted the dealer, it seems like it can be software issue - where update will fix it… But I have to pay for it. Pay for a software bug!
For me it's just another stupid notification to close after getting in car, just after "no seat belts fastened in rear" - yeah, 'coz nobody here!
Giving me notification about unnecessary things, but when one module failed and got car in limp mode - nothing showed, I was just shocked when car couldn't accelerate as expected… during overtake. Yeah, safety.
I test drove a Lexus NX350h and RX350h not too long ago, and modern Lexus cars also have an issue of taking fancy tech too far:
- By far the worst part of the current Lexus design is the steering wheel controls. Instead of physical buttons dedicated to one function, you get two four-way touchpads on the steering wheel. They don't have a fixed function since they can be customized and have two "pages" each - you have to look at the HUD to see what function they're mapped to. Even if you know what they're mapped to ahead of time, you still have to touch the controls to "wake" them up on the HUD and can't simply just click the button. It's a complete hassle if you want to skip a song or adjust cruise control speed.
- The climate controls are almost entirely touchscreen based. The temperature controls have a knob but they're quite mushy and don't have well defined steps.
- The doors are no longer physically controlled inside or outside, but instead are electronically controlled with buttons since this is linked to safety sensors to prevent someone from opening a door in front of a car. I honestly think the door controls are fine, but this is something that pretty much every review complains about.
On the other hand, regular new Toyota models don't have the above issues. Camry, Crown, etc. all have physical steering wheel buttons and climate controls.
>"It's like all those Single Page Applications on the web that are just downgrades over the classic Server-Side Rendered apps. Sure, you have more features, but at what cost? Reliability."
Except the cases where there is a need to support some ancient / exotic browser this is total BS. There is no special sauce in SPA that makes it less reliable contrary vs backend rendered.
Such model doesn't exist. Do you mean XC60? And if so then it's not an EV, it's a PHEV.
Anyway, Volvo made a collosal mistake of going with the Android Automotive operating system. It looks good but it's genuienly a pile of steaming crap. When Volvo had Sensus(their own OS) yeah it wasn't pretty but it was stable and it worked day in day out. I have a 2020 XC60 T8 with sensus and I literally have had zero issues with this car. But the new AOSS models? Oh boy, the main advice on facebook Volvo groups is to just start your drive by hard resetting the system to avoid freezes during operation(!!!!!). If you don't have GSM signal you don't get maps since the car doesn't store them locally anymore. The cars randomly lose cameras, sound stops working until full reboot, and whenever there is an OS upgrade(which is often) you have to roll the dice on what else it's going to break today.
>>I just want a luxury car that is grand, silent, feels nice, is nice to drive, and doesn't blast my eyes with screens.
Honestly find the same car but with Sensus instead, you will find the experience a lot more like what you're looking for.
The XC40 T8 EV does exist. I know, because I owned one. It was a 2022 model I think, got it late 2021. The renamed it a few times after that. I basically had one of the first XC40 EVs on the local market. I ordered it before they were in the showrooms.
EDIT: I looked up the invoice; they called it a "XC40 Recharge Level III P8 BEV AWD AT". I think it had a P8 TE badge ("Twin Engine"). So it wasn't T8. I got it Sep 2021. It was also the first model with the Android system.
I disagree with that. I really like the Android infotainment system because 1) voice control actually works and 2) built in Google maps is all I want in a car and they work very well.
As far as I can tell the issues they have had is with their poor software engineering team and picking extremely mediocre hardware that is too slow to run it.
As an owner of a 2020 V90CC (which was the last of the Sensus models), I have to disagree. I’m never buying another Volvo based purely on the terrible software experience that Sensus provides. Only being able to use half the screen for CarPlay, random crashes, features that simply don’t work, map updates that are permanently “installing”, blasting me with 1-2 seconds of radio at full volume at random when I’m playing from my phone.. zero acknowledgement from Volvo on the issue (we can’t replicate it).
I’d take the android auto version any day, but I’ve just replaced the car with a different brand. Unfortunately you can’t escape the relentless notifications and beeps no matter what the brand is these days, but at least the software is stable in the new car.
I just want CarPlay and for the car to get out of the way. Where’s the CarPlay 2 vehicles? They can’t come fast enough.
> yeah it wasn't pretty but it was stable and it worked day in day out.
I've driven a V40 with Sensus for 10 years and noticed a 'watchdog reboot' while driving _twice_. Which means the map goes out and comes back in a few seconds; the digital gauges run another OS (QNX I believe) and remain rock solid...
I have owned Model S since 2018, now driving my second one (Raven).
The first one was just poor manufacturing Tesla has been known for forever.
Second one is however the disaster. So many sounds while turning the steering wheel, driving on tiny slopes, braking etc. forced me to convince the service center to replace the suspension, arms & half-shafts (all under warranty). None of these steps helped, service center proposed to try another service center "where there may have more experience" and called the squeaking the feature of the vehicle.
I visited 3rd party garage, got more information about possible sources and concluded it is probably impossible to fix it.
So here I am, driving the $80k car that squeaks like 30 years old rusty Ford, attracting attention at the parking lots.
Won't be buying a next one for sure.
The error was to buy a second one after "the first one was just poor manufacturing".
I never saw manufacturing quality improve over time from car companies.
After my Nissan car started to have transmission problems that would cost thousands of dollars to fix (among various other small issues), I sold it as quickly as possibly and swore I'll touch the make again.
I am too tall/long legs to feel comfortable in the Model 3, range of 75D was a bit limiting when traveling with family and I couldn't and still cannot imagine driving ICE car again. The manufacturing did not bother me too much in the interior as all cars I ever owned or rented had loose, squeaky plastics, and body panel gaps were tolerable for me.
Let's remove Musk from the equation, because you can like or (most probably) hate him, but I own a Tesla and I have the opposite experience. Everything worked out of the box. Just one piece of hardware started to fail (the charger plug making some noise) and they changed it in warranty.
First: has the author tried a tesla before buying one? I'd never buy a car without trying it. Because comparing it to a Clio just because the Clio worked, well, seems a bit off. a Clio is a car, a fully functional Tesla is a gian iPad with wheels. There's a huge difference.
Second: when you buy a car, do you ask yourself, how will I fix it in case anything goes wrong? Buying a car in a country where there's no service is a huge no-no.
Third: No doubt that a car with all these defects _must_ be changed, or fixed immediately at no cost of transportation, or offered a compensation to get it back. I think the owner should _also_ contact a lawyer and try to get a refund. I'd not accept this kind of treatment.
Agreed, the quality of the product should speak for itself. We've got people saying they're unreliable, and we've got people saying they're reliable, and that's true for literally every car manufacturer on the planet, so this doesn't tell us much. Anecdotal stuff aside, there's studies done on these things, thankfully, and Tesla consistently ranks poorly. See for example this one (this is just the first one that popped up when I googled "car reliability study", it's probably better if you find your own sources):
Adding another source: TÜV Report 2025 (in German)
In Germany you have to get your car checked every 24 months for its road worthiness (think general doctor checkup but for your car). If it fails, you are not allowed to use it until it's fixed.
At the first general inspection after purchase 2-3 years out, 14.2% of all checked Tesla Model 3s had issues. Comparing that to other models that are on record in sufficient numbers, its a high rate of failure. VW ID.3, for example, had 5%.
And yet Tesla has industry leading brand loyalty, what do you think is a better predictor, an opaque number computed by Consumer Reports from an unknown formula that combines feedback about non reliability items from users who bother to respond to consumer reports questions, or what 87% of consumers decide after experiencing a Tesla?
Surely the problem lies in a high variance in the production of later models.
Like when you visit a stellar restaurant and come back years later to realize the magic sauce was a chef who left.
Also, yes, it sounds risky to buy a car without being able to drive it back when it immediately breaks. I can also see myself as a victim of that because of experiences like yours and mine: Teslas are the most purchased EVs, they're everywhere, surely you'd know if their reputation is tarnished for other reasons than the mascot being unpopular.
it's a known problem with 2024 models, the article points to that. So while tesla may be aware of it, the public unconscious might not be (like the author wasn't), as its a new-ish, and frankly absurd problem to have.
"first gen" Model 3s didn't have an emergency rear door release for when the electrical one failed. they've since added that to more recent generations.
but- a car company that doesn't see the need to have emergency rear door releases has systemic issues. someone, anyone involved in approving that design could have said "no. i will not sign off on this", but they didn't.
it makes me wonder what other corners they cut, and whether those cut corners could kill a driver or passenger- because they're not going to cut corners on anything that would be immediately apparent in daily use: it would be detrimental to sales.
You are replying to an anecdotal blog post to say that a comment that is just an anecdote is not a useful contribution?
You think it's useful to have a blog post to reveal the shocking truth that mass manufactured products aren't 100% reliable? A lemon could be produced by any auto manufacturer and the customer could have the same experience
> Second: when you buy a car, do you ask yourself, how will I fix it in case anything goes wrong? Buying a car in a country where there's no service is a huge no-no.
From middle of Slovakia to Budapest, Hungary is as far as Houston to Austin drive. No border or customs controls. Vehicle insurance issued in one, is valid in both. You only have to spend few euros to buy a vignette (road toll). I don't see your point.
The Musk aspect is pertinent in the respect that he's mythologised for his innovation in Tesla and SpaceX while his detractors state that he merely bought into innovative companies, and they had to actively manage him to minimise his interference.
So in one view, he is indeed the guru of legend, and is responsible for the successes of Tesla and SpaceX, so a good candidate to refactor the federal government.
However, if he's responsible for their success, he's responsible for their failure. And this is a massive failure in manufacturing, in quality control, in after-sales service, and in just plain ol customer service.
But, if he's just a canny investor and his best companies succeed by insulating the company from him, then why the fuck is he touching the federal govt systems?
As for "buying a car in a country with no service" - the parts shortage looks to be global, so local market wouldn't help that.
"has the author tried a tesla before buying one? I'd never buy a car without trying it" This reads like gaslighting, trying out a car that works and getting one that doesn't wouldn't have changed their outcome.
I too have the opposite experience. I've had my late 2022 Tesla Model Y and I like it just as much as I did on day one. In fact I like it more now, since the car has received several new, big features after lots of software updates.
I live within 15 miles of two Tesla centres, and so far I've only had to use them once for a minor sensor issue, which was serviced at my property at no cost to me. If I didn't have any Tesla centres within a couple hours' drive I probably wouldn't have bought the car.
The safest bet in EVs is to buy one from the Korean manufacturers - they have the tech figured out (and have had it for a few years), they make everything from 'car but electric' to 'Jetsons spaceship', they're reasonably priced, they have cheap and abundant parts, have mechanics who know how to work on them, and they don't have an 'X' factor CEO.
I like the concept of this, but they just don’t feel to be “nice” places to be in like some of the European marques. The Volvos are about the most comfortable “normal” cars I’ve been in, the Kia’s / Hyundais/ MGs / Toyotas feel like sitting on badly covered sofas on a wishy washy suspension platform, without enough sound deadening.
Those are completely different marks, from completely different countries, and completely different aims and feel.
And as someone who drove multiple cars, from multiple East Asian and European marks, I suggest you try drive newer cars, because your opinions don’t match 2024-2025 MY cars from those brands (except for maybe MG, and Toyota, but both aren’t designed or sold for the driving experience. Toyota leaves it for their Lexus brand, and Chinese marks don’t even try to compete on that yet).
We have a Hyundai Ioniq 5 and we test drove lots of cars, and love, love how this one feels. Great suspension, grips to the road, crazy fun acceleration. Granted, some 100k+ luxury sedans probably beat it out, but we're really happy. Volvos were ok? I didn't super like them, a bit more cockpit feel to them. Maybe that's the difference between us? You want it to feel more like a cockpit of an aircraft and I want something chill and comfortable?
The Kia's we tried were mostly great (The EV6 felt like a cockpit though) - the EV9 was awesome but we couldn't convince ourselves to get such a large vehicle.
I drive a 2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5 and I wouldn’t recommend it. I’ve had to deal with plenty of bugs and there’s some weird (although probably minor) UX issues, but the kicker is it’s now been at the dealership for over a month. It’s a complete brick because the ICCU died and it’s hard to get a replacement. I’m guessing because so many others have died as well. I also don’t think I’ve bent a single rim on any other car I’ve driven in the last 25 years but on this one I’ve somehow bent 2.
ICCU issue affects a small % of ioniq 5's. Unlucky for you of course.
Really like the car and recently I met taxi driver who uses one and said he has over 400k km on it and still doing well.
There is one annoyance with the back seat belts which tend to flip after use, so the metal part of the seat belt hits the car frame making noise. Other than that its a really good car.
> The safest bet in EVs is to buy one from the Korean manufacturers - they have the tech figured out (and have had it for a few years)
Not an EV, but I have a 2022 Kia Sorento with a fair number of weird software bugs-e.g. the sound from the navigation system randomly stops working and I have to restart the car to make it work again; the car tries to read speed limit signs using machine vision but its capabilities are too basic so it reads them incorrectly (in particular, conditional speed limits which only apply under a certain condition, such as at certain times of day, for heavy vehicles only, it will treat as absolutes)
Is their EV software better? Outside of cars, my experience with South Korean software hasn’t impressed me
My daily driver is a 2020 Kona Electric (a buddy of mine drive a Kia Xceed; my understanding is that they use the same software). No software issue to report or that I remember. The only issue I have is more taste than problem (the way the highlighted road is displayed on satnav is better on Google Maps IMO).
I find the OS perfectly boring, and I like it that way. Most of the car functions has physical, clicky buttons. The one that doesn't are justified IMO (navigation, pairing bluetooth, etc.).
I've lived in Japan for the past 10 years, where I didn't own a car the entire time. A year ago I moved to a place where a car is more or less needed. I bought a used 2015 kei car for around $2800 cash. It's awesome.
There are zero screens, touch or not (not counting the instrument displays). Everything is operated with the old buttons and dials, though the windows are electrically operated. It has a 3.5mm stereo input and a USB port (which supports USB audio). I haven't measured exactly but its fuel efficiency is fantastic, probably 70 mpg or more.
It has very common parts and can be serviced basically anywhere in the country. I see tons of the same car on the road everywhere.
Downsides of course are the engine is fairly weak, and it's not as safe in an accident compared to bigger cars. But if you're driving in a country where everyone else is driving small cars, that's less of a concern.
I don't know what the point of writing all that was, but I'm just glad to not be in the same car situation as the OP. It doesn't have to be that way!
My last car in the states was a 1999 chevy prizm, manual transmission. Such a cheap and fun car, though I can't say it was particularly reliable. Still got $500 for it at CarMax, even though the A/C wasn't working and it had a ton of miles on it.
For you and anyone else who might find this relevant. It may seem obvious in retrospect, but with pointing out that "taking delivery" is a significant moment in the purchasing experience. If there is a problem with the car, don't drive it off the lot. Once you have, it's your problem and not the dealer's.
It's effective. I consulted once for a food delivery chain that has wronged a customer - a food order that was delivered wrong and they foolishly refused to either right it or refund it.
The customer went to the length of buying the domain of the type _company_ is terrible, started to collect reviews from other allegedly wronged customers, and SEO it to the first position in Google search results when you searched for any of the food items or the company name, above the company itself.
As a result the company had to advertise a lot on Google to make sure it's own order links are sponsored above the complaint website. That costed A LOT of money, but if they stopped advertising, the online order business would die.
We offered to buy the website or pay the owner to take it down, at basically name your price, and the owner refused any deal, out of principle.
It's amazing what an unreasonably determined individual can do
$12 is a small price to pay compared to the opportunity cost of having a bricked car in one's garage for months on end, multiplied by however many individuals they may have saved from the same pain.
start writing paper letters instead of e-mails. Usually companies take those more seriously. Paper letters means "ok he is really talking business now".
This “summary” is so wrong. You left out half of the article describing problems with the camera and on-board computer leaving every modern feature of the car useless, which is a known problem affecting a huge number of customers, and which they promise to maybe fix in three months. The only problem you mentioned in your summary, the mysterious battery loss, isn’t even officially acknowledged let alone promised a fix.
And what’s the point of a “summary” when TFA opened with a very good two paragraph summary of the situation? Can’t even tell if it’s gaslighting to make light of the problems, or some stupid AI summary service running amok.
Readit News
It's like all those Single Page Applications on the web that are just downgrades over the classic Server-Side Rendered apps. Sure, you have more features, but at what cost? Reliability.
I think the last generations of cars before the touch buttons and screens were the last "okay" generation. Somewhere in 2010s, all cars were converted to be "smart cars", and they are all terrible. Who walks into a BMW dealer and sits down, surrounded by how many displays, and think: Wow! That's neat! And then you go to drive and it just notifications, beeps and boops.
I just want a luxury car that is grand, silent, feels nice, is nice to drive, and doesn't blast my eyes with screens.
I once connected my Volvo to pull a trailer. First, it reminds me to update the software. I click it away. It then gave me 2 notifications about some assist features not working and rear warning not working or something, idk. It also occasionally reminded the child locks are enabled, which I do not need reminders about. Then it is cold, so you get a cold weather warning. And then the windows are a bit wet because I didn't clear the camera properly from ice, so you get a warning about the cruise control not working. So 10 minutes in, I had received 6 notifications from my CAR! I didn't even use cruise control, I just wanted to pull my trailer a short distance. And some of these notifications block the navigation and require interaction to close. While driving!
In the EU, it's illegal to sell cars that don't have back camera, not beeping if seatbelt not fastened, and not beeping if speed limit is exceeded.
Your low tech car will feel like a emotional prison. Of all the annoying modernities you want the worst one? If you want to make a deal with the devil I would choose rear camera.
Think about it. All the headache and time to pair Bluetooth devices over a dead simple connector.
I would aim for a pre 2016 car. I think that has some margin to the Internet of Shit product lines?
Thus i propose a new job, the ux-castrator. His only job, is to traverse the software and excise out tumorous attention hogging growths and limitations based upon thee.
Back to the chasm from which you came daemon, for the user needs not see you, know you, be aware of you and your works. You are a cog and until needed by your use-case, a invisible cog add infinitum. Not a bringer of gifts, not a master-of-metrics, no, bound to the circle of usefulness for all eternity and all the dark patterns shall not have you escape the runes.
Management by metrics makes this worse, by forcing staff to game the metrics.
'92 BMW 325IS. Coupe. Strait-six. RWD. 5-speed Manual. Cornered like on rails. Never once suprised me with a random shift at a dangerous moment. Had a great little trip computer. No screens. No bluetooth. About 7L/100km. I took it skiing. I took it rock climbing. It drove me to my exams. It drove me to my first real job. I slept in it more than want to admit. It had 320,000km on the clock when i had to sell it.
It was full of little optimizations, like how in fifth the speedo and tac would match each other. Or how the center console was angled about 25 degrees towards the driver so all the buttons were equidistant. Or how the armrest perfectly matched the shifter and the stiching on the steering wheel was positioned to give grip in the thumb hooks. Biult in germany, the dash was so simplified that it didnt have mph on the speedo, nor did it even have the letters "kph" or "rpm"... just numbers on a black background. If you need to be told which is which, you dont deserve to be driving such a car.
If you are listening BMW: I would pay a premium for a new biuld of that car. Everything i see at your dealerships, all your plastic cars, are total junk.
Sounds almost as if the car was designed to cater for the user of it that holds the responsibility of hurtling a metric ton of metal at unnatural speeds instead of being a living room on wheels. Who'd have thought of such revolutionary ideas.
Agree. OP should have just bought a 10yo Corolla.
After driving it for a few months it didn’t die so I took it to a mechanic. I got told off for my dry sump technique and told not to do it again. It got a new pan and some oil, that was it. It’s done 5 or so years of light service since. It’s been stolen, carried masses of firewood, too many dogs and too much concrete.
Great car.
Well, the volume knob for the car audio, while physical, is actually digital so it's uncomfortably laggy.
I only use the touch screen to interact with the navigation (it integrates with Android via USB).
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Oh, and in the winter, if the front sensors are iced over, it has the worst ear-stabbing incessant EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE... sound at low speeds until I go out and fix it. I have not found any other way to shut it up. It might be at high speeds too, because it is so awful that I cannot not go out and fix it, so I'm not sure. Luckily it hasn't happened yet where I couldn't stop somewhere.
Cars are / were basically Frankenstein monsters under the hood, with dozens of onboard computers / chips all needing to work independently yet collaboratively and talk to each other. VW set up a new subsidiary and hired 3000 people to build the car software system of the future, reducing the 70-odd computers to 3 or so.
But we all know software, it uh, didn't go as planned.
Anyway, iirc Toyota or Mazda, one of them, was at the forefront of bringing regular buttons back to cars. And I hope there's going to be new car companies that iterate on the thing again and build simpler cars again. It should be a lot cheaper too, because it feels like they bolt on more and more electronic features to try and upsell the car. Building a car with the features and numbers of 30, 40 years ago should be doable at a fraction of the cost. And that development is coming actually, but it's coming from the likes of China and India. It's not profitable to bring them to the west though.
Like, you have 10s of critical applications that you want to keep simple and not crashing or bugging out. So, just give them each a computer.
No way for the shitty wiper department's buggy ECU to ruin your day in the brake ECU by blocking all the hydraulic lines. You can even put them on different CAN buses!
Now, screens aren't required by law or safety ratings, but there's no getting around having a lot of software in there, and thus a screen to configure all that stuff.
What are they even counting as a 'computer' to get to 70?
I know that in the door there's going to be a microcontroller, to connect the buttons, the lock and the window motor to the CAN bus (or whatever it is they use these days). Is that a computer? Are they proposing to get rid of it?
The best of both worlds...
[1]: https://cdn.bmwblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/bmw-3-ser...
EDIT: top is after, bottom is before.
Getting the software right is hard (and thus expensive), which is what traditional physical product companies have a hard time figuring out.
It told you the blind spot indicator isn't working anymore which is relevant safety information.
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The 'lane assist' was just absurdly awful, it only figured out where the car was sometimes, when it could 'see' the line on the edge of the road clearly enough for long enough, and then pushed away from it under the assumption that I don't have a precision of a few centimeters in relation to it. So once it suddenly pushed the car closer to a heavy truck during an overtaking. And it's not needed, since the edge lines are rumble strips or you feel the tire slip off the asphalt into gravel.
It was also obvious that the screen in the middle section ('infotainment'? idk.) was designed by a junior on a huge monitor sitting right in front of them, because the clock was really small and in the upper right corner. Took me a minute to figure out how to make it stop incessantly send out visual noise about what was on some radio channel even though I had stopped the playback from it. It's for good reason many cars has dark orange LCD and not bright off-white on light blue gradients, for one it's a nuisance when the light outdoors is dusky or misty.
This was an Opel, don't remember which one. Next time I hand in my friendly relatively low-tech car from 2006 for repairs I'll bring a friend to drive me instead of borrowing another one of these disgusting Scrum cars.
These "features" are now mandatory in the EU so you can look forward to a lot more cars implementing them as they try to sell global cars.
/rant For some reason, some idiots, piece of crap human beings, think that it is ok to bombard you with notifications, with no way to make them go away. It is everywhere: on phones, on TVs, on cars.
Dear SW coders, please, read human interface guidelines from Apple from 20 years ago and X user interface guidlines.
Do not draw transient windows without an OK or Cancel button. /end rant
For me it's just another stupid notification to close after getting in car, just after "no seat belts fastened in rear" - yeah, 'coz nobody here!
Giving me notification about unnecessary things, but when one module failed and got car in limp mode - nothing showed, I was just shocked when car couldn't accelerate as expected… during overtake. Yeah, safety.
- By far the worst part of the current Lexus design is the steering wheel controls. Instead of physical buttons dedicated to one function, you get two four-way touchpads on the steering wheel. They don't have a fixed function since they can be customized and have two "pages" each - you have to look at the HUD to see what function they're mapped to. Even if you know what they're mapped to ahead of time, you still have to touch the controls to "wake" them up on the HUD and can't simply just click the button. It's a complete hassle if you want to skip a song or adjust cruise control speed.
- The climate controls are almost entirely touchscreen based. The temperature controls have a knob but they're quite mushy and don't have well defined steps.
- The doors are no longer physically controlled inside or outside, but instead are electronically controlled with buttons since this is linked to safety sensors to prevent someone from opening a door in front of a car. I honestly think the door controls are fine, but this is something that pretty much every review complains about.
On the other hand, regular new Toyota models don't have the above issues. Camry, Crown, etc. all have physical steering wheel buttons and climate controls.
At least it doesn't steal your personal data like Smart TVs do.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-10-09/car-brands-ar...
Except the cases where there is a need to support some ancient / exotic browser this is total BS. There is no special sauce in SPA that makes it less reliable contrary vs backend rendered.
But yeah, bad software is bad no matter the tech used.
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Such model doesn't exist. Do you mean XC60? And if so then it's not an EV, it's a PHEV.
Anyway, Volvo made a collosal mistake of going with the Android Automotive operating system. It looks good but it's genuienly a pile of steaming crap. When Volvo had Sensus(their own OS) yeah it wasn't pretty but it was stable and it worked day in day out. I have a 2020 XC60 T8 with sensus and I literally have had zero issues with this car. But the new AOSS models? Oh boy, the main advice on facebook Volvo groups is to just start your drive by hard resetting the system to avoid freezes during operation(!!!!!). If you don't have GSM signal you don't get maps since the car doesn't store them locally anymore. The cars randomly lose cameras, sound stops working until full reboot, and whenever there is an OS upgrade(which is often) you have to roll the dice on what else it's going to break today.
>>I just want a luxury car that is grand, silent, feels nice, is nice to drive, and doesn't blast my eyes with screens.
Honestly find the same car but with Sensus instead, you will find the experience a lot more like what you're looking for.
EDIT: I looked up the invoice; they called it a "XC40 Recharge Level III P8 BEV AWD AT". I think it had a P8 TE badge ("Twin Engine"). So it wasn't T8. I got it Sep 2021. It was also the first model with the Android system.
As far as I can tell the issues they have had is with their poor software engineering team and picking extremely mediocre hardware that is too slow to run it.
I’d take the android auto version any day, but I’ve just replaced the car with a different brand. Unfortunately you can’t escape the relentless notifications and beeps no matter what the brand is these days, but at least the software is stable in the new car.
I just want CarPlay and for the car to get out of the way. Where’s the CarPlay 2 vehicles? They can’t come fast enough.
I've driven a V40 with Sensus for 10 years and noticed a 'watchdog reboot' while driving _twice_. Which means the map goes out and comes back in a few seconds; the digital gauges run another OS (QNX I believe) and remain rock solid...
After my Nissan car started to have transmission problems that would cost thousands of dollars to fix (among various other small issues), I sold it as quickly as possibly and swore I'll touch the make again.
Why did you buy a second one??
First: has the author tried a tesla before buying one? I'd never buy a car without trying it. Because comparing it to a Clio just because the Clio worked, well, seems a bit off. a Clio is a car, a fully functional Tesla is a gian iPad with wheels. There's a huge difference.
Second: when you buy a car, do you ask yourself, how will I fix it in case anything goes wrong? Buying a car in a country where there's no service is a huge no-no.
Third: No doubt that a car with all these defects _must_ be changed, or fixed immediately at no cost of transportation, or offered a compensation to get it back. I think the owner should _also_ contact a lawyer and try to get a refund. I'd not accept this kind of treatment.
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s...
At the first general inspection after purchase 2-3 years out, 14.2% of all checked Tesla Model 3s had issues. Comparing that to other models that are on record in sufficient numbers, its a high rate of failure. VW ID.3, for example, had 5%.
https://www.adac.de/news/tuev-report-2025/
https://driveteslacanada.ca/news/tesla-leads-with-unmatched-...
Have yet not had a single problem for two years.
Surely the problem lies in a high variance in the production of later models.
Like when you visit a stellar restaurant and come back years later to realize the magic sauce was a chef who left.
Also, yes, it sounds risky to buy a car without being able to drive it back when it immediately breaks. I can also see myself as a victim of that because of experiences like yours and mine: Teslas are the most purchased EVs, they're everywhere, surely you'd know if their reputation is tarnished for other reasons than the mascot being unpopular.
If you buy the special red colour Y, it'll be German made. The other colours can come from China or US.
but- a car company that doesn't see the need to have emergency rear door releases has systemic issues. someone, anyone involved in approving that design could have said "no. i will not sign off on this", but they didn't.
it makes me wonder what other corners they cut, and whether those cut corners could kill a driver or passenger- because they're not going to cut corners on anything that would be immediately apparent in daily use: it would be detrimental to sales.
OP doesn't make any implication about Musk at all, his name is only mentioned in passing.
>I own a Tesla and I have the opposite experience.
This is not a useful contribution.
Obviously there are many satisfied Tesla customers. No one doubts this.
The point of an article like this is to bring to light just how bad a Tesla experience can be. Not a tiny bit bad, but really miserable and expensive.
You think it's useful to have a blog post to reveal the shocking truth that mass manufactured products aren't 100% reliable? A lemon could be produced by any auto manufacturer and the customer could have the same experience
To paraphrase Chris Rock: should we give Tesla a cookie? "Everything worked out of the box" is what's supposed to happen.
From middle of Slovakia to Budapest, Hungary is as far as Houston to Austin drive. No border or customs controls. Vehicle insurance issued in one, is valid in both. You only have to spend few euros to buy a vignette (road toll). I don't see your point.
I still wouldn't want to own a car where the nearest service center is a Houston-Austin distance.
> I have the opposite experience. Everything worked out of the box.
You did not have the opposite experience. You had no experience because nothing on your vehicle went seriously wrong.
I suspect the customer service might vary significantly across countries, but I can't speak to that myself.
So in one view, he is indeed the guru of legend, and is responsible for the successes of Tesla and SpaceX, so a good candidate to refactor the federal government.
However, if he's responsible for their success, he's responsible for their failure. And this is a massive failure in manufacturing, in quality control, in after-sales service, and in just plain ol customer service.
But, if he's just a canny investor and his best companies succeed by insulating the company from him, then why the fuck is he touching the federal govt systems?
As for "buying a car in a country with no service" - the parts shortage looks to be global, so local market wouldn't help that.
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I live within 15 miles of two Tesla centres, and so far I've only had to use them once for a minor sensor issue, which was serviced at my property at no cost to me. If I didn't have any Tesla centres within a couple hours' drive I probably wouldn't have bought the car.
And as someone who drove multiple cars, from multiple East Asian and European marks, I suggest you try drive newer cars, because your opinions don’t match 2024-2025 MY cars from those brands (except for maybe MG, and Toyota, but both aren’t designed or sold for the driving experience. Toyota leaves it for their Lexus brand, and Chinese marks don’t even try to compete on that yet).
The Kia's we tried were mostly great (The EV6 felt like a cockpit though) - the EV9 was awesome but we couldn't convince ourselves to get such a large vehicle.
Not an EV, but I have a 2022 Kia Sorento with a fair number of weird software bugs-e.g. the sound from the navigation system randomly stops working and I have to restart the car to make it work again; the car tries to read speed limit signs using machine vision but its capabilities are too basic so it reads them incorrectly (in particular, conditional speed limits which only apply under a certain condition, such as at certain times of day, for heavy vehicles only, it will treat as absolutes)
Is their EV software better? Outside of cars, my experience with South Korean software hasn’t impressed me
I find the OS perfectly boring, and I like it that way. Most of the car functions has physical, clicky buttons. The one that doesn't are justified IMO (navigation, pairing bluetooth, etc.).
Contact ECC-NET and ask for advice on next steps: https://commission.europa.eu/live-work-travel-eu/consumer-ri...
There are zero screens, touch or not (not counting the instrument displays). Everything is operated with the old buttons and dials, though the windows are electrically operated. It has a 3.5mm stereo input and a USB port (which supports USB audio). I haven't measured exactly but its fuel efficiency is fantastic, probably 70 mpg or more.
It has very common parts and can be serviced basically anywhere in the country. I see tons of the same car on the road everywhere.
Downsides of course are the engine is fairly weak, and it's not as safe in an accident compared to bigger cars. But if you're driving in a country where everyone else is driving small cars, that's less of a concern.
I don't know what the point of writing all that was, but I'm just glad to not be in the same car situation as the OP. It doesn't have to be that way!
- All my communications with the Budapest Service Center: https://www.myteslaexperience.com/2025-02-04/all-my-communic...
- How to spit in a customer's face: https://www.myteslaexperience.com/2025-02-07/how-to-spit-in-...
The customer went to the length of buying the domain of the type _company_ is terrible, started to collect reviews from other allegedly wronged customers, and SEO it to the first position in Google search results when you searched for any of the food items or the company name, above the company itself.
As a result the company had to advertise a lot on Google to make sure it's own order links are sponsored above the complaint website. That costed A LOT of money, but if they stopped advertising, the online order business would die.
We offered to buy the website or pay the owner to take it down, at basically name your price, and the owner refused any deal, out of principle.
It's amazing what an unreasonably determined individual can do
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* they sold him a broken car in December, that keeps losing battery 8% per day even when standing out doing nothing
* they told him they could repair it, at the end of February, because of high demand for the part
* he cannot now go to holiday peacefully and has to charge it nonstop
* he doesn't consider the car safe to drive it all the way to the service center, because it basically doesn't work
* the customer support is ignoring him
Sounds like a nightmare alright. If I was him I would start getting lawyers/customer rights groups involved.
start writing paper letters instead of e-mails. Usually companies take those more seriously. Paper letters means "ok he is really talking business now".
You can write up a letter for them and they send it.
In many companies anything going through legal is immediately prioritised.
And what’s the point of a “summary” when TFA opened with a very good two paragraph summary of the situation? Can’t even tell if it’s gaslighting to make light of the problems, or some stupid AI summary service running amok.