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Comment by exar0815 | Hacker News Reader

I won't drive an electric car as long as possible. Not because they are electric or I have any love at all for cumbustion cars, but because I work in the industry.

I see what's inside those things, I see what the plans for the next generation are, and they are a cost-cutters wet dream.

They are getting even more over-engineered, fully stuffed of useless, cheap, consumer-standard-manufactured gadgets, with software so unbelievabley shit that wouldn't be allowed to run on anything else, design and engineering teams lead by testosteroned morons - and everything targeted on rent-seeking and commodifying for the quick buck.

Seeing the current generation of EVs of many large companies, they will never be environmentally sensible - just because they are all around designed in a way to be basically impossible to be used for more than a couple of years.

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> They are getting even more over-engineered, fully stuffed of useless, cheap, consumer-standard-manufactured gadgets, with software so unbelievabley shit that wouldn't be allowed to run on anything else, design and engineering teams lead by testosteroned morons - and everything targeted on rent-seeking and commodifying for the quick buck.

Same for new ICE cars, maybe even worse than electric cars.

If you want a reasonable "just-works" minimalist design, you have to buy a used car prior 2010. Anything newer will suffer from those issues.

> If you want a reasonable "just-works" minimalist design, you have to buy a used car prior 2010. Anything newer will suffer from those issues.

Afaik both China & India have some EV models that fit this description. (Relatively) simple, and cheap.

But those are either not street-legal in EU or US because 'reasons', or there's import tarifs high enough to undo any cost advantage.

Just replace ICE with electric drivetrain, do the minimum necessary to meet legal & safety requirements, but cut out (most) modern conveniences / luxuries, telemetry, self-driving etc. Then you'd have a winner.

I can understand his feelings somewhat since it seems electric cars spearheaded this malicious idiocy but rest assured it is already here for ICEs and getting worse. Rejecting electric vehicles might feel like the only way to signal distaste for this behavior if he needs a newer car.

I won't argue with the general feeling, but keeping it realistic, a consumer-standard article like a car is just expected to have consumer-standard gadgets in it. And car software is already garbage to begin with, almost makes you wonder how programmers/managers/qa working in the industry manage to sell their CV outside it - but garbage quality is pretty much our standard nowadays, so there's that..

Surely you have a concrete example of any of this at least?

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