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 42 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 3 minutes 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. But VW ID is not a luxury car, it's a working class car, and it's too expensive for that.

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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.