No touch screens, no telemetry, no cellular modems, no wifi, no apps, no subscriptions, no infotainment.
Slate EV
Don’t forget honk honk punch, Gas gas gas.
You want gas in your electric vechile. Better drive it to taco bell then.
I bought the Kona (2024) and it’s the best car I could ask for. It has some smart things of course, but I have no subscriptions, no phone requirement, I mostly just listen to FM radio. It’s been the best car I’ve ever owned.
Features look nice. I guess I’m just gonna have to get over my “crossover” hate and buy a car that looks like a low-top roller skate lol.
I like my Kia EV6. We were in the market for an EV and test drove all of the ones we could try. I liked the KIA because it had a lot of physical buttons for my regular things. There’s no real subscriptions except for things we don’t use. There’s a touchscreen for a lot but I can get by without using it mostly
Kia allows you to disable data acquiring in options.
We tried to find a small EV everywhere. Bolt was sluggish and had weird controls, leat just hasn’t been updated in 10 years, and so we landed on the kona. Definitely larger than we wanted, but batteries are big. At least worth a test drive I’d suggest
I had the opposite experience between the bolt and the Kona! The smaller bolt is a bit faster and I found drove more on the car side of the car/SUV split than the kona, and while the button placement took getting used to it has one for almost everything. We also bought while the tax credits were in effect so it was $10k cheaper for 4 miles less range.
The leaf JUST got updated finally after they made the Ariya (much bigger, already discontinued because it wasn’t profitable enough.)
But yeah I think if anyone wants ANY new car without any of those features, good luck. You’re required to have a screen for a backup camera for anything since I think 2012? So there’s gonna at minimum be something.
leat just hasn’t been updated in 10 years
I thought I read the Leaf got a fairly big update recently. I’ll have to check on that when I have some time.
I was searching a few years ago, so makes sense they’d update it right after I got mine
makes sense they’d update it right after I got mine
That’s how my life works too haha.
And also why I’m so hesitant to settle for a body style I dislike (seriously, crossovers: be a sedan, be an SUV, or be a station wagon; trying to be all 3 is just failing at everything…but I digress lol). As soon as I settle and buy one, I just know they’ll bring back sedans.
I would have loved a sedan, but none exist here. I figured that hopefully by buying a Kona it would show that at least one american is buying the smallest car he apparently can. It was a good tradeoff.
As for sedans making a comeback, I doubt it. Sadly, I think the industry has firmly moved away from them.
I think that was this year, so in 2024 it was super outdated but it’s better now. I think it’s also a crossover now unfortunately
Reansult 5, soon Twingo and VW ID.Polo. Hyundai Inster … at least in Europe. I guess in the US they’d rather sell you some oversized childcrusher instead of giving customers reasonably oriced compact options.
Yup, pretty much. Those were the only three “small” versions, everything else was giant SUV sized.
That’s dire. In Europe a lot of new compact EVs have been coming on the market in 2025 and 2026. Manufacturer’s finally got the message. They even started to bring prices down with no nonsense offers. I just had a look, not even VW wants to sell its new ID.Polo in the US. You know, finally VW is building good cars with good interior again, after having gotten rid of the remaining traces of the “copy all the Tesla nonsense” disease and then they don’t even attempt to sell them in the US.
Also no Hyundai Ioniq 3, no Opel Corsa Electric (or other Stellantis variants), Cupra Raval, Mini Cooper SE, or some of the Chinese offers (BYD Dolphin, Firefly Firefly, Dongfeng Box etc)? But there is the Fiat 500e on the market, isn’t it?
Gas?
Accelerator!
From my point of view the steering wheel and brake pedal are accelerators as well.
You are technically correct. The best kind of correct.
I would also like “turn” please
That requires a premium subscription.
No camera filming me please.
And make it small on the outside and as big as possible on the inside, with the back seats level with the trunk when folded down
no telemetry
In 2026?
I’d settle for Android/Apple Auto and no cellular
Fully open hardware and software would be nice. I don’t plan to tinker with it. But it would give peace of mind to know that it can’t be enshittified and that discontinuation of the model will not leave me out of luck for spare parts.
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Bonus points if you can make it so that all the aftermarket suspension parts that already exist for those classic designs still fit. Ultra-bonus points if the body is externally identical so aero and body mods still fit.
Braindead take. ICE cars all do the exact same shit. This stuff has NOTHING to do with the powertrain of a vehicle.
Nobody said that ev’s have that shit because they’re evs. It’s a new car thing, and unfortunately there aren’t many electric cars that are old enough to not have this stuff (ignoring Tesla, since they kinda started the trend and and also because they’re nazis).
Tesla started this because they oversold EVs for years on the highest profit margins in the industry. They filled the cars with gadgets and screens to add the perception of value because car buyers are morons.
Older ones aren’t so bad. Too bad we don’t have EVs without the “smart” stuff.
Manual Gears (5 speed)!
There are no gears on an EV. They just go.
And man, do they go!
I’d honestly love this. I don’t even care if the stick doesn’t actually switch gears and it can just give me fake engine rev sounds. I just miss driving manual and paddle shifters just aren’t the same.
The Hyundai Ioniq 5 N wowed the cartubers crowd back in 2024/25 because it simulated a lot of the driving feel of gas cars.
Maybe keep an eye on Hyundai.
Edit: although I don’t think they have simulated stick shifting
And a cool loud exhaust to attract women.
Do EVs even have transmissions? I ask this legitimately, I know shit for dick about cars beyond how to change oil
They gave one drive reduction gear, just one speed, no shifting.
I’m gonna have to ask what that means. Cars are just something my autism just does not comprehend
Internal combustion engines are very picky about how fast they spin, since they get their power from burning fuel the rate at which fuel enters the cylinders to burn correlates strongly to the power they have available. And since each cycle of a cylinder burns about the same amount of fuel the faster the engine spins the more power it generates.
This is why internal combustion engine vehicles have gearboxes (transmission in the US?) to ensure that you can spin the engine fast even while the wheels are slow) or stopped) so you have enough power to start the car.
Electric motors by contrast generate power through the strength of their electromagnetic fields, which is just how much current gets pushed through the electromagnets. How fast the motor spins just changes how fast the electronics have to “move” the generated field without changing the strength, so you get similar power even at slow speeds.
So electric motors have enough torque at low speed that you can start your car without needing a gearbox.
Note: this post is a gross simplification and probably mis-uses some terminology but it should give a general understanding of why the transmissions are different.
Okay pretend they are trains without tracks
Gas, you say? Are you sure?
How do they generate electricity where you come from?
Mostly coal in the US
Is that where they come from? Because anyone with a wrinkly organ in their skull knows that EV is just gas with extra st3ps
The amount of electricity generated by renewables an ICE car can use is always 0%. That is not true for EVs.
But like a lot more efficient to burn it in a power plant than millions/billions car engines that don’t capture the energy well anyways. And then at least renewables can be used in the power grid as well.
Ok. How well does that work with aging electrical infrastructure in places like Boston or Milan?
I mean, like, I totally get you vibing.
You improve the infrastructure? And while we’re at it, build more infrastructure for walking, cycling and public transport instead of inducing further demand for cars
So tear it all down?
Unfortunately infrastructure was built when the world was new. What we all got is what we get, now and forever.
Steering. You also want steering.
Heated seats are a must if you drive anywhere that gets cold. Saves you a lot of miles. Backup cams are mandated on cars in the US now, and if you’re gonna have a screen, you should probably include some navigation so the car can pre-condition the battery before you get to a charger.
Well, if you’re gonna do those (pretty necessary IMHO) QoL concessions, you might as well give the user the option to integrate it with their phone, so they don’t have to wonder if the car got enough charge, or if some asshole yanked out the plug. If you’re reporting that info to the phone, you can include some controls to start/stop charging or set certian charging targets for certain charging stations. If you’re including controls, you might as well piggyback some basic lock, unlock, pop trunk features to the phone, and if you’re already letting the phone unlock the car, you can pretty easily include proximity unlocking. Since you’ve got a data connection to the phone, you can stream music and data from the car to the phone and vis-versa. You could put in another screen and physical controls for managing the music, but you already have one in the car for the rear cameras anyway, so why not just integrate the whole damn thing and now we’re at most modern features of EVs, minus the goofy handles and driver automation.
Yes. And steering.
No one uses steering anymore. Too busy watching tiktok on my phone while trying to do my makeup during my morning drive.
So, things you can do on a train or similar transport
I could forgo heated seats before I could a heated steeringwheel
You derived modern EVs by adding a bunch of features I wouldn’t want.
