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144 points herbertl | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.003s | source
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mixedCase ◴[] No.43275007[source]
That's way too expensive for an "affordable EV".

The BYD Seagull retails here in Uruguay for less than that and we tax cars at about 100%. On China it seems to go for 10-12k.

It's a proper, basic city car. 4 to 6 air bags, ~300km range (more than what this article's car indicates), all basic security features and standard gadgets out of a modern car.

Our EV infrastructure is not viable if you don't have a charger at work/home and yet these have sold like hot cakes.

Legacy carmakers are making increasingly worse ICE cars for the most part (btw does GM sell a C-segment hatchback on any market, anymore?) and their EVs are simply uncompetitive. What's it going to take for them to wake up to the fact they're going to have to stop fleecing their customers with crappy products? Bankruptcy?

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mk89 ◴[] No.43275493[source]
Sorry but reading Volkswagen and "crappy products" in the same sentence means either you never drove one or you've got very high standards, but then you're happy with BYD...

These new Chinese cars are literally flooding the market with the usual way we are used nowadays to think: buy cheap, change again in 2 years. (Which we didn't do before this cheap manufacturing existed.)

In this context it makes totally sense.

Cars, though, at least how we're used to think, are made to last. A car is not just a bunch of features, it's also a lot about the quality of the components, and there are videos showing how poor BYD quality is. If you're happy with that, that's OK.

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magicalhippo ◴[] No.43275630[source]
> Sorry but reading Volkswagen and "crappy products" in the same sentence means either you never drove one or you've got very high standards

The rest of the car is fine I suppose but the infotainment unit in my brother's ID.4 is most certainly crappy.

The touch is horrible, the unit is slow AF both in latency and update rate, and the menus kinda suck.

Sure it's a small part of the car, but it's pretty integral to the operation of the car given they removed most knobs and buttons.

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1. ahartmetz ◴[] No.43277211[source]
I've worked on car infotainment, I know VW's is crap, but serious question: why give a shit? It's not what cars are for and all of them are good enough to play some music or listen to the radio while driving. You can use a phone holder for navigation.
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2. magicalhippo ◴[] No.43277305[source]
Because, thanks to removing buttons and such, it's an integral part of operating the car.

In my Renault Megane e-Tech, if my windshield suddenly fogs up I can hit a physical button[1] to max the heater and blower. In the ID.4 it goes via the touch screen.

So, you press the "button" on the screen, nothing happens, so you press it again, except it turns out the system registered the first time it was just slow and so now you've turned it back off again. Or, you press it and nothing happens and you press another 5x times and still nothing because your finger is too dry...

I see the 2024 variant[2] kept the all-touch approach, but I haven't tried it so perhaps it works better in practice.

[1]: https://www.megautos.com/nuevo-renault-megane-e-tech-electri... (row below the center console screen)

[1]: https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/volkswagen-id-buzz-cargo-te...

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3. ahartmetz ◴[] No.43282889[source]
I see. "Car things user interface sucks" is quite bad indeed.