I was thinking about this last night - the European car industry's ripe for disruption by a nimble car company that can make really basic EVs with none of the pointless, excessive cruft that seems endemic in every new car release.

It's only Dacia who seems to understand that there's big market for basic but half-decent cars that don't bill themselves as infotainment fourth spaces, or whatever the hell it is that they're trying to go for [1].

Give me wind up windows, give me an analogue dashboard, give me a basic interface for my phone, etc.

[1] ok, we know what they're going for - the Euros in our wallets... .

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pjc50 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm a bit of a stuck record on this, but quite a lot of the tech is either legally mandated or a EURO NCAP requirement. You can try marketing a barebones car which doesn't have a 5 rating on NCAP and see how that goes.

I do think Renault/Dacia have ""got it"" all of a sudden and started actually trying with EVs. Stellantis less so, although Citroen are a Stellantis company. Even Toyota, whose CEO is an overt petrolhead who feels sorry for the loss of engines, are suddenly doing well despite naming their car bz4x in an effort to make it unmemorable.

The war(s) are only going to accelerate this progress.

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dingaling an hour ago | parent | next [-]

"You can try marketing a barebones car which doesn't have a 5 rating on NCAP and see how that goes."

Dacia did, and their CEO said they would let customers decide - which they did in droves, to his benefit, despite scoring three stars or fewer.

The newest Dacia Spring has one star.

NCAP lost its way years ago when it diluted its ratings from just crash testing into including "safety assistance" software.

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MisterMunchkin an hour ago | parent [-]

A car which tells you when you're about to reverse into the path of another car is safer. I don't really know what to tell you. It's obviously safer.

	▲	hephaes7us 40 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, but that's a different kind of safety than _crash_ safety. Plenty of people (rightly or wrongly) are confident in their ability to prevent accidents. Or, at least, confident enough to be skeptical of the tradeoffs involved with these assistive systems. If I had to choose between a car that has high survivability in a crash versus a car that how worse survivability in a crash but has a few assistive systems that can prevent some crashes (which, mostly, I already prevent by paying attention), I'd choose the former every time.

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jubilee33 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I rented a basic Fiat sedan recently in east Europe with a tiny (6-7cms maybe ?) screen for a backup camera that can barely be seen in daylight and a 1990s era type OS that had maybe three functions and never needed to be used. All the lane warning and wheel shaking nonsense (who the hell thought that shaking the steering wheel at speed is a good idea) are controlled by clear buttons on or around the wheel/dash. The car to be honest was not great, because it was very cheaply put together, but the controls were heaven compared to most of the new offerings. İt can be done.

	▲	loudmax 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'd be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. "Infotainment" functions in that require interacting with a touch screen were bad ideas at the time and seem incomprehensibly bad in retrospect. It's a certainty that people have died in accidents that occurred because of this. On the other hand, backup cameras are a genuinely helpful tool. And so are electric power windows: it's far easier to roll windows up and down pushing a button than manipulating the roller. It takes less concentration, so you can focus more on driving. In 2026, the cost of adding motors instead of a hand crank to control the windows has got to be negligible. There are other improvements that were luxuries in traditional ICE vehicles, but become necessities in hybrid or electric vehicles. Hybrids like Priuses have CVE transmissions, so there's no manual transmission or stick shift. Electric vehicles have electric seat warmers and even steering wheel warmers because there's no gas-burning engine to heat the cabin.

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hn_submit 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The problem was that European manufacturers sought to market EVs as a "premium product" because they make no noise, accelerate quickly, produce no fumes and the lack of vibrations.

That idea almost sank the entire industry because the Chinese were undercutting them left and right. And unlike the U.S. Europe still hasn't closed off its markets to Chinese EVs.

What people want most of all is a cheap and reliable car.

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pjc50 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The problem was that European manufacturers sought to market EVs as a "premium product"

Tesla came up with that strategy, executed well on it, and is top of the European BEV market. Despite Musk's subsequent antics.

I don't think the European manufacturers really wanted to do BEVs in the first place, which is why so many were anemic until recently. This is finally changing even though VW are desperately lobbying against the competition. The VW EVs are adequate despite the mis-design reliance on screens (which they are correcting) and pricing (nobody ever bought German cars for their low prices, except the Beetle). Renault have a hit on their hands with the 5.

It's fine for EVs to exist on a market segment curve like regular cars. So long as they deliver value at each level. This is different in the US and Europe, yes, but the real problem has been a combination of lack of seriousness and the general malaise that forced all the legacy manufacturers into Stellantis in the first place. I wonder if there has been an equivalent of the Nokia "burning platform" memo which has made people in the industry realize that, yes, the transition away from petrol engines is now happening and they need to adapt properly.

(edit: I have just been reading up on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luca_de_Meo vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ghosn and think the Renault turnaround can be attributed to the old CEO being arrested and replaced by someone actually trying to do a decent job)

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hn_submit 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I personally think the VW ID designs are excellent, save for their price. They're just too darn expensive.

BEVs will eventually be (much) cheaper than ICE cars since they have almost no moving parts compared to the latter. We tend to forget that ICE cars are mechanically very complex machines which only work so well because manufacturers had more than 130 years to refine and perfect them.

	▲	PorciiVorbesc a minute ago \| parent [-]
		> They're just too darn expensive. Well yeah, that's the problem for most people, things being expensive. It would be nice if we could all afford Bentleys.

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dboreham 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

EVs are marketed as premium because the cost much, much more than ICE vehicles. Or at least did/do today. The logic is this: you make a car with a very expensive battery in it. It now costs 1.5/2X the cost of the same size ICE vehicle. Nobody will buy it. But if you add some bells and whistles that have high margin, you can now make a luxury EV that only costs 1.2X as much as the equivalent ICE vehicle. Government tax incentives close the gap further.

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detritus 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I didn't mean the technical safety requirements - presumaby those create a somewhat level playing field as all manufacturers would be required to include them for the EU market - I simply mean all the luxe crap that every car seems to insist upon.

Every car review vid I watch on YouTube has me shaking my head at the sheer excess they seem to have.

	▲	dboreham 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's actually customers who insist on the lux crap. If that were not there, they would be looking at a spartan but very expensive car, vs a spartan but cheap ICE car, and they would always buy the ICE version.

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PorciiVorbesc 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>the European car industry's ripe for disruption by a nimble car company that can make really basic EVs with none of the pointless, excessive cruft that seems endemic in every new car release

Thats where China comes in. The EU makers enjoyed decades of protections from disruption and laziness and compliance settled in because they didn't want to get disrupted.

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rob74 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Dacia is a brand of Renault, same as Skoda is a brand of the Volkswagen Group - both are attempts of offering more affordable cars built in Eastern Europe (which is especially ironic in the case of VW, which translates to "people's car").

And the only electric Dacia so far is a badge-engineered Chinese-built car: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacia_Spring - but, according to Wikipedia, the second generation will be built in Europe starting in 2027.

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jbaber 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is exactly what Slate Auto[1] say they'll do in the US. Unfortunately for me, their initial models are a truck and an SUV. I'm crossing my fingers they'll succeed, then make an econobox for me.

[1]: https://www.slate.auto/

	▲	detritus 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, I really like Slate's ethos, but I'm in exactly the same boat as you!

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Maken 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You are pretty much describing the Renault 4/5. They still carry a big screen but everything vital can be controlled by buttons and switches around the wheel.

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hn_submit 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd love an EV with no screen except for the instrument dash and buttons, dials and sliders to operate the A/C and radio.

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testing22321 3 hours ago | parent [-]

New Cars must have a backup camera by law. So the screen is mandatory.

	▲	hn_submit 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Could be integrated into the instrument dash screen.

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pantalaimon 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> with none of the pointless, excessive cruft that seems endemic in every new car release

A lot of that (driver assisting and monitoring systems) are mandated by EU

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tpm 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The BBC article fails to mention that this new 2CV is aiming for the new M1E vehicle category, created especially for small, affordable EVs.

If you want something bigger (than 4200 mm) then the battery will be so expensive anyway that most of the added tech does not change the price considerably. And also forget about the analogue dashboard because we have a billion mandatory digital assistants anyway (I'm not complaining, anything to save lives).

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kakacik 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Dacia is fine but dont crash in it, it wont be nice at higher speeds where more premium brands will protect you and your family better. Its not about some adac stara but real world collisions and what happened to occupants.

Same for chinese, recent MG scandal where driver's seat during crash can start continuing original trajectory even if rest of car does not.

I ignore infotainment and electronic crap as much as possible, its pathetic how bad it is still in 2026 across whole industry, beta test at bsst. But real safety I ignore not.