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EV Stupidity Checklist

http://hypercritical.co/2026/05/29/ev-stupidity-checklist
60•pchristensen•1h ago

Comments

Animats•40m ago
China has already mandated an end to retractable outside door handles and electrical inside door handles. That takes effect January 1, 2027. There were two major incidents where people could not get out and could not be rescued.

The powered charger port door would make sense if there were robot chargers that used it. Tesla demoed that, but people disliked the snake robot approach. Technically, a snake robot is ideal for that, but too many people fear snakes and tentacles.

Rear view cameras are better than rear view mirrors. The field of view is better.

panxyh•30m ago
Rear view cameras might be better than mirrors in terms of field of view. This doesn't make them objectively better. Disadvantages are well argumented in the article. They are an useful accessory but shouldn't replace real vision.
aaomidi•29m ago
Real vision is fucked when you can’t actually see what’s behind your car.

Cameras will prevent a lot of unnecessary property damage, and more importantly, fully mitigate risk of killing humans/animals that are behind the car and outside the field of view.

panxyh•13m ago
Yes, their purpose and usefulness is obvious. As a supplement. Mirrors should be left as they are.
bityard•7m ago
Lots of cars don't combine the rear-view mirror and backup camera into the same thing. (And shouldn't.)
skywhopper•3m ago
No one is arguing cameras shouldn’t exist. In fact, back up cameras are mandatory in the US. But replacing mirrors and windows with cameras is bad, actually.
afh1•24m ago
Why not both? My Honda has mirrors and a rear view camera. I always check both before backing up. The camera is viewed on a small (for today's standards) LCD screen (with physical buttons, no touchscreen) that also serves as the radio.
panxyh•20m ago
The discussion isn't as much about a common backing camera (which also falls under 'useful accessory' I mentioned), but about cameras replacing mirrors.
cmrdporcupine•11m ago
Rear view cameras are a) 2d not 3d like a physical mirror, so judging depth is inferior on them b) a nightmare for most of us in the second half of our lives who lose the ability to quickly adjust focal length between near and far (not a problem with a read mirror) c) yet another potential failure point and d) a dumbass idea in the parts of the world that salt their roads

The various cameras on my polestar2 are routinely getting caked in salt and dirt in the winter 30 seconds after I start driving down the road. I fail to understand why I'd want this for a critical system like rear or side view mirrors.

I drove in a Polestar4 with its rear view camera only view the other day. Did not like. Would not want as my only option.

I did drive in a Bolt that had dual mode and that was fine.

BeetleB•8m ago
> Rear view cameras are better than rear view mirrors. The field of view is better.

Rear view cameras are useless when mud/rain get on them. Mirrors continue to work just fine.

Try living in Seattle.

robmccoll•31m ago
My Nissan Ariya checks nearly every box. The controls for the AC have dedicated buttons, but they are capacitive, not tactile. Anyway, love the car. It's a real shame that they aren't selling them in the US anymore.
throwaway4PP•29m ago
I love the note regarding the rearview mirror being an actual, you know, mirror.

A friend was teasing me the other day for using my mirrors while I backed up, ignoring the various screens and camera feeds dotting the dash. I reminded him that photons impinging my eyes reflected off the material world at the diffraction limit of the visible spectrum remain much higher fidelity than some shitty parts-bin screens.

Plus those rearview screens are always horribly bright. You know what has infinite levels of dynamic brightness? Light bouncing off a planar reflector.

So much of modern cars is cost savings and poor design decisions dressed up in the name of modern - but ultimately resulting in UX worse than an early 2000s Honda.

usehand•26m ago
Cameras are infinitely more useful for backing up and parking. Not being able to use them is actually a skill issue.
m463•28m ago
I like retractable door handles. But I think a cutout underneath (maybe spring loaded) might be a good compromise.

also, I WANT A PRNDL (drive select stalk). Even though they overloaded it with autopilot, I think the older model 3/y version was great. Removing it was dumb.

An super-easy-to-locate hazard light button (required by law) would be nice. Not out-of-the-way.

Why can't they just ask the us faa or us military - they have a century of experience with critical control design and placement that don't kill people.

panxyh•24m ago
> they have a century of experience with critical control design and placement that don't kill people

Car manufacturers do too.

m463•13m ago
∃x car-with-good-control-design(x)

but not ∀ cars or ∀ manufacturers and not ∀ cars of any manufacturer

simonw•27m ago
This made me realize it's been 12 years since the last John Siracusa review of an OS X release on Ars Technica.

I miss those so much! Here's John talking about ending them in 2015 https://hypercritical.co/2015/04/15/os-x-reviewed where he said "Someone else can pick up the baton for the next 15 years" - but sadly nobody even came close.

ortusdux•26m ago
One of my favorite car reviewers is Doug Demuro. His videos on youtube mostly focus on the 'quirks and features' of the car, AKA all the minutiae you notice a few months into ownership.
panxyh•25m ago
Nothing to discuss here, the article is spot on. I doubt though that those top of the class manufacturers are this stupid. They are rather playing the stupidity of the common consumer.
slg•24m ago
Almost none of this is specific to EVs, manufacturers just see EV consumers as technology forward (which seems to largely stem from Tesla's design approach) so they have been more aggressive with technology than with their traditional ICE models.
martythemaniak•23m ago
Ok, I'll take the bait. I have a thermostat at home, I set a temperature, it keeps my house at that temperature. I have a thermostat in my car, I set the temperature, it keeps the temperature. Fiddling with with climate controls and vents is not something I've done for 8 years now. Why is everybody always touching these things?
usehand•19m ago
Sometimes you want to be cooler sometimes the other way? Sometimes you want cool wind blowing in your face, sometimes you don't? Is it really that hard to grasp? lol

Also different people use the same car at different times, etc.

anticorporate•13m ago
> Why is everybody always touching these things?

Because sometimes it is hot.

I want more cold air blown on me at a higher velocity until I cool off, and then to be a steady state. Even if I had remotely started my car with air conditioning, which although my vehicle has the capability I never do, the seats and steer while and other things I touch will be hotter than the ambient air temperature and make me feel hotter until the car has been moving a while.

doubled112•9m ago
My wife needs drastically different settings than I do for virtually everything, at home or in the car. It's easier if I'm just uncomfortable. I've stopped noticing. She can't.
what-the-grump•5m ago
My EV has profiles per person...
afh1•22m ago
Such items need to be standardized, and cars driving on public roads must conform to a standard. It's that simple, but legislative bodies seem to have lost the ability to regulate basic items such as rear-view mirrors and non-blinding headlights.
einpoklum•16m ago
Are these problems specific to Tesla, or are most Chinese EV manufacturers also caught up in the "make it so futuristic it's annoying and dangerous" attitude?
thebruce87m•14m ago
> Physical charge-port door mechanism.

So is the only one in the list that is actually EV specific? It also has a direct counterpart on an ICE vehicle so even it doesn’t count.

vitally3643•11m ago
I have an ICE vehicle with keyless entry. Of course, it has a physical key as backup in case the keyless doesn't work or the battery dies.

The physical key triggers an electronic switch. There's no mechanical link. There's no way at all to enter the vehicle if the battery dies. Which is problematic because you can't charge the battery without accessing the hood release inside the electronically locked cabin.

The Nissan engineers must have been smoking something great that day

nubinetwork•3m ago
Not even a slim jim?
lavela•13m ago
> Turn signal stalk

While we're at it one thing to add: Keep your turn signal at an on-off pattern.

I don't wan't to have to parse your cute turn signal animation. It's a warning light and should be somewhat irritating/eye-catching.

XorNot•2m ago
This annoys me whenever I'm on the road. The issue is unnecessary latency: the signal wastes time going from off to on by being substantially less bright then it should be.

If you want to add cutesy features then have the turn signal automatically synchronize blinking with the car in front/behind it. People would love it.

jbm•12m ago
Please eliminate the glass roof. Why do EV companies keep making this customer hostile decision?

On my 2019 Model 3, a stress fracture showed up overnight and everytime I look up I see a 3000$ fix for a car that is worth 10k max.

I have no idea who wants it. It is hot in the summer, cold in the winter and you can have a sudden bill related to a rock on the street.

Somehow everyone, from Tesla to Ferrari has this insane design decision and for something that only makes sense in a very small part of the world.

Please stop.

BeetleB•10m ago
Isn't Tesla the only one that made it mandatory?

Hyundai, Ford, etc have it as an option.

jbm•5m ago
I see this on all sorts of non tesla cars and it makes no sense. I saw it even on brands like Fisker (although that was a solar panel that apparently didn't work).

Just a nice metal roof that won't make me expend more electricity for nothing would be nice.

agd•5m ago
I love panoramic sunroofs.

Natural light makes the driving (and passenger) experience much more pleasant for me.

kiddico•3m ago
I don't like it, but that was often the first thing people mentioned liking when the got in.
doublepg23•11m ago
I have a ‘25 Subaru Solterra (rebadged Toyota bZ4X) and it checks all these boxes (except it lacks a glovebox, though I believe this is remedied in the ‘26).

It’s a good car in the sense it’s good at car things, even some EV things - but dear Lord is Toyota bad at making software.

The software is consistently unreliable, unstable, and feature incomplete- which they still have the gall to charge for.

johnea•10m ago
Interesting, and I agree with every one of those checklist items, but none of those things have anything to do with the car being electrically powered.
fastball•9m ago
[delayed]
neilalexander•8m ago
I would add that there is no particularly good reason for an EV to have a push-to-start button. With Volvo, Polestar etc, you get in and shift straight into Drive or Reverse, and when you’re done, you put it into Park and climb out again. This is how it should be.
uberstuber•5m ago
My 2023 Chevy Bolt has all of these, shockingly great car.

Had to do a bit of digging to disable the OnStar tracking though.

BeetleB•5m ago
I've been meaning to write a post entitled: Things you could do with cars that you can no longer do.

The top of the list is "Maintain a constant (vent) fan speed".

With all the EVs I've tested, if I want to get warm air on my face at a consistent speed ... it's just not possible. "Auto" is disabled, I've set the fan at a certain speed, and set it to blow only in the top vents. Dial up the temperature, and the fan speed can drop markedly.

Such a simple thing that's worked for decades. And they've made my driving very uncomfortable. I've had an EV for only a few months, and I keep thinking of trading it in for an older Honda. I've installed a USB fan, but ... why? Why am I paying so much more to get an experience I hate?

imzadi•3m ago
My 2020 Kia Niro EV passes all of these. Though the EV charging door would not open when the 12v battery died, even though it has a mechanical mechanism.
Havoc•2m ago
This is mixing a hell of a lot of very different UX and safety things into on big "EV like like Tesla = bad".

Take the mirror thing. Yes a good mirror is great. It's the gold standard for 2026. I can totally envision a 2030 world where an artificially stitched together view of what's behind you dramatically outperforms a simple what can mirrors and angles do. A stitched together hybrid view possibly enhanced with other AI overlays is going to outperform normal users.

This is happening..OPs views on stupidity are not gonna stop it

lucb1e•6m ago
Half the passengers sit in the sun half the time

My partner enjoys ambient temperatures about 3°C warmer than I do

Depending on which of us is currently in the sun, or which of us is alone, you need to vary it quite a lot in summer

In winter, you want the AC for defogging but not on otherwise, which is even more fiddly if you don't just leave it on permanently and use like 10% more fuel

And that's assuming climate control works. It doesn't in any car that I've ever been in. The car doesn't want to sound like an airplane at lift-off once the temperature goes 2° above the set point, while I may just have come from a long walk and am super warm and want this blast of AC air. And then after 5 minutes it gets chilly and maybe I want it to cool the car instead of blowing at me directly, or maybe I just turn the loudness down. There are so many permutations... I suspect we may be built differently if you are happy with a single set point!

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