Are those even user serviceable? So, it won't stop everyone but it will stop most of them.

Modern ICE cars have auto start/stop systems, so on a traffic light it has as much exhaust as an EV.

Oil in the exhaust in quantities high enough to produce acrid white smoke is extremely common on a number of ICE engines, like blown head gaskets on E25s (found in most Subarus before their Toyota involvement in 2010) for example

Probably. I read it as “had an impact but kept the performance stayed nominal.”

Yep. My newest car is over 20 years old. May be a bit more polluting (though it doesn't smell or smoke) but I've in theory saved the environmental impact of the manufacture of one or two new cars by keeping the old one.

I'm not spending $30-40k or more on a car. That just isn't going to happen.

I think expense is basically the problem.

Cost to replace the catalytic converter, cost for new exhaust pipes, cost to diagnose ignition timing problems. Whatever.

If the car drives and you don’t have the money I can completely understand why someone wouldn’t get the problem fixed. Even if it means they’re burning a 1/3 of their fuel, that’s still less in the short term than the $1500 it may cost to fix it.

It’s insanely rare I get the sense that the person is running really dirty on purpose.

I don’t know what a realistic fairway to fix it is. They’re probably isn’t one. I don’t think fines would work, it would probably just make things worse. Seems like the kind of thing where a little government group to find the worst 0.1% of cars on the road and just get them back to reasonable levels would be a huge help.

But that’s not how we do things.

Incomplete combustion will ruin a cat. That's not its purpose, it's there to reduce NOx emissions.

> A lot of Americans take their cat off on purpose for louder noises.

Some people remove catalytic converters when they install a performance exhaust. Nobody is doing it for louder noises because the muffler portion is what dampens the sound.

Also I wouldn’t say it’s “a lot of Americans”. We have emissions inspections in most major cities and your car won’t pass if you remove the catalytic converter. They can now detect modified ECUs, too. Someone would have to be so determined to do this that they’d swap the exhaust in and out every time they had to do emissions inspections.

I’ve run into a few of those. They’re generally pretty obvious. Usually a big truck, lots of MAGA & adjacent bumper stickers.

I haven’t noticed people removing the catalytic converters just for noise. The rare time I see a car that wants to be loud it usually just seems to be the exhaust end they changed, or maybe removed the muffler.

The kind of stuff I’m complaining about mostly seems to be older cars, or those in poor mechanical shape. Cases where the people probably just don’t have the money to fix it.

And newer cars get driven more than old cars on average so 1/20 cars being EVs will do more than 1/20th of the miles.

Not remotely true; Look up "one chip" designs.

Yes, there are some security threats, but solving them is more valuable than trying to design a car around true firewalls.

So liberty then. I don't disagree with you, but this modern flashpoint in the classic debate between individual liberty and collective safety does bring up the question what is saving 50,000+ lives annually actually worth in terms of loss of personal freedoms? I am personally struggling with this debate having lost loved ones in this manner.

The assertion that 'I just hope "dumb" EV's become a thing soon' led me to a different assumption. The ultimate aspiration of a "smart" EV is self-driving, which incorporates Internet connectivity features (e.g. digital mapping, over the air updates, etc).

Depends. They get a virtually continual supply of standby power that can last for months if left untouched. So from a technology standpoint that enables them to do many things - from being connected to the network, aware of their location on the map, recording camera footage and other remote capabilities. ICE cars do have some of these but the huge battery packs on EVs make these very feasible.

I mean, dude asked for a non-smart car.. BYD isn't fitting that either.

Jeff Bezos was one of them. He’ll be ok.

Lots (most?) cars are going to LCDs for the instrument panel. The second screen is the infotainment.

Backup cameras are an enormous safety improvement. Plus touchscreens are much cheaper than buttons and knobs.

The 2026 redesign has put in a proper liquid cooling loop.

(Battery heating is inexplicably an extra $300 option, and not available on the base trim AFAICS?)

If the modem has no fuse, physically damaging the NIC chip in the module will also work.

I want the car to be able to contact emergency services, but not to otherwise be able to use the cellular network. Is there a good way to sabotage the eSIM, without otherwise breaking the modem? (This would still allow the car to be tracked via IMEI, but I'm not too worried about that: anyone capable of that is also capable of tracking my actual phone, and anyone buying that data will already know what car I own.)

That hasn’t worked for TVs. Or phones. Or plenty of other things.

Wow. This comment makes me wonder if really earth is flat.

I recently did a day trip of 800km while it was freezing and snowing. Yes the range is impacted, so i never did more than 200km in one go. Then a quick 15 minutes break to recharge and continue. It takes a bit longer, but not bad enough to go back to ICE cars. EV drives so much nicer.

If you're saying 100% only EVs with no use cases whatsoever for gasoline, then I suppose so. I don't think that's a smart goal, though.

More like, more people should understand how EVs can easily work for them, and then try to shoehorn gas-powered vehicles into the few niche they need to be in.

How often does someone need a 400 mile range again? Towing? When is the last time you towed something 400 miles? The most I ever towed was... using a rental truck and a rental trailer when I moved. (Anecdotes are not data!) But why in a rational purchasing decision would I need an 800 mile EV battery for a car just because sometimes it's cold out?

No need to double twice. 250 miles (~4 hours of driving) is about what you want. Pretty much everybody needs to bathroom at least that often. And nowhere on a road in the continental US is more than 150 miles from a charger.

So yes, you want 400-500 miles of range, but that's because you've doubled the 250 for weather, safety margin, etc.