supersquirrelHonda is killing its EVs — and any chance of competing in the future | TechCrunch
Honda: “We have tried nothing and we’re already out of ideas!”
Oh no they tried one thing. Rebadging the EV Blazer as the Honda Prologue. I have one… It’s a Chevy through and through. Absolutely no Honda DNA whatsoever.
It’s a pitiful EV compared to the Tesla Model 3 I had before. But the Kia and Hyundai models I tried weren’t much better than the Honda. None of the legacy automakers seem to be able to make a truly good EV. They all keep legacy auto shit around that doesn’t need to be there, and it impacts the opportunities they have to differentiate and evolve.
What’s wrong with the Kia and Hyundais? There’s an Ioniq 5 in the family, and it seems great.
There’s a lot to like, but also a lot of frustrating stuff. The paddles to change regen breaking is nice, but it doesn’t save the setting in between sessions for some fucking reason. It also doesn’t seem to save a lot of personal preference to the driver profiles, it saves mirror and seat positions, but not audio or temp/fan settings. The drive settings (snow mode, etc) doesn’t persist for some reason either. It fishtails constantly if its remotely slippery out in the winter. It feels like it’s trying to throw me off the road. And there seemingly no options to use regular cruise control and only has adaptive cruise, which I fucking hate.
Why is ACC worse than regular cruise control?
I get this actually. I don’t always trust ACC; sometimes I just want to set a speed and know the car isn’t going to mess with it, and get me rear-ended.
Makes sense. Never thought about it that way
Its personal preference. It make the drive a lot less smooth for me. It always slows down way too early and has me brake for things that I don’t need to brake for. It slammed the brakes for someone in a turn lane and people braking and moving over where I can move over a little and be fine. I don’t passively drive and notice the unnecessary slow downs constantly.
Makes sense. I guess it also depends on which manufacturer
All very annoying sounding issues.
…But to be fair, these have little to do with the actual EV drivetrain. They’re ergonomic or handling issues an ICE card would have too. Or, in the case of fishtailing, just the choice of stock tires the car comes with.
Sure that’s fair, and I can’t even say that’s because they’re a legacy car maker, but my polestar has that shit locked in. I think some of that is because they’re legacy, and some are just stupid decisions or lack of respect for the driver. I just wanted to highlight some things I personally fine “wrong” with Kias in my experience. I won’t get one again
Again, playing devil’s advocate:
it saves mirror and seat positions, but not audio or temp/fan settings
This is kind of standard for cars, isn’t it?
The drive settings (snow mode, etc) doesn’t persist for some reason either.
And this makes sense because Kia wouldn’t want the car to be unintentionally stuck in snow mode by default. Folks who don’t pay attention to settings wouldn’t know what was wrong, and it follows a golden rule of software: 99% of users will use the defaults.
It sucks that it isn’t configurable, but most everything you listed is just infotainment software issues, and part of the “car software shouldn’t be so complex and proprietary, and rely more on physical knobs” general issue. We should be able to configure stuff it like we want, but for some reason car software dev is particularly awful, and here we are.
It fishtails constantly if its remotely slippery out in the winter.
And again, I’d guess this is from stock, low-friction EV tires. Which are awful in winter. This is just a guess though.
You’re right, it is standard for cars in general, but that’s my point. I can’t say it’s the case for all modern makers, but the one reference I can go off from is polestar and it has all that shit figured out and it’s a new EV company (mostly/kind of at least). I don’t know if its the same for companies like Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, etc. There’s no reason not to change the dash settings when that’s all stored in a computer now unlike back in the day where the head unit and heat controls with separate entities entirely from the seat settings. It just seems like a hold over from how things used to be done.
I know the shit I laid out are all updatable with a software update to add toggles and I’ve heard guesses that that fishtailing is an issue with torque vectoring or something (bad tire choices could be part too, but it drives fine in snow). Its still a problem for a legacy vehicle maker that should have it more figured out than they do right now.
they had a big problem with failing ICCUs and overheating charge ports.
The biggest issue is the needless complexity they feel like they need to add to try and add value to a car that costs less than ICE to build.
The other issue is devaluation. Ioniq5’s are worth hallf after 3 years.
The other issue is devaluation. Ioniq5’s are worth hallf after 3 years.
Heh, yeah. They bought it used, and got a shockingly good deal on it.
TBH buying a new car feels pretty pointless to me, unless one is so critically short on “shopping” time that its worth the massive financial hit.