Have you checked to see if your car is part of the recall at nhtsa.gov yet? I wouldn't let your car leave the dealership before you have confirmed this isn't a recall issue.
The Electric Car Thread
- Thread starter Skoop
- Start date
The problem isn’t just electric cars. Dropped my Golf at the dealership June 27.
Today: “Hello Scott , we are still in the process of diagnosing the leak , in order for that to happen , We ordered the Sunroof module so we can open the sunroof and check to see , at the moment we are waiting on the module which is coming from Germany currently I have no ETA . I will see if i can get you a loaner .”
I give it to end of the month and then I’m asking them to buy it back.
Yay VW’s leaky sunroofs that they deny are an issue.
Today: “Hello Scott , we are still in the process of diagnosing the leak , in order for that to happen , We ordered the Sunroof module so we can open the sunroof and check to see , at the moment we are waiting on the module which is coming from Germany currently I have no ETA . I will see if i can get you a loaner .”
I give it to end of the month and then I’m asking them to buy it back.
Yay VW’s leaky sunroofs that they deny are an issue.
Nice that Hilton has a method of communicating things like this, even if it sucks they're currently broken.
it’s likely a manual update to the hotel alerts page, unfortunately but good on the hotel for listing it.
I have a ~430 mile drive with two booster seat-age kids coming up in about a couple weeks. I'm going to sign up for the ABRP free trial when the date gets closer so the trips there and back are covered under the trial period. That aside, I'm curious what other things people think about when planning a drive like this with their EVs. I know a few people here have road tripped with kids, so any dos and don'ts or random things to consider would be appreciated.
Right now I have the ABRP route set one tick from "Shorter, more frequent stops" and it has me stopping roughly every hour and a half. I'd prefer to hit only EA chargers, since I can charge there for free, but a couple are EVgo. I could probably do EA only, but it might make the trip too uncomfortable for the kids.
Right now I have the ABRP route set one tick from "Shorter, more frequent stops" and it has me stopping roughly every hour and a half. I'd prefer to hit only EA chargers, since I can charge there for free, but a couple are EVgo. I could probably do EA only, but it might make the trip too uncomfortable for the kids.
Really depends on your kids. My kids only get their iPads on road trips (like 2-3 times a year) they're (9, 7, 4) and can go basically forever.
I think the last big trip my dad did they did one notch from center to longer but less frequent stops.
Every stop adds overhead, but again no universal answer there.
I think the last big trip my dad did they did one notch from center to longer but less frequent stops.
Every stop adds overhead, but again no universal answer there.
Zero Chill
Ars Scholae Palatinae
The Prime Minister has announced that as of July 2026, no internal combustion scooters or motorcycles will be allowed in the city center, with the perimeter of the restricted area increased every 1-2 years after that until it encompasses the majority of Hanoi. Also no internal combustion cars/trucks/SUVs after 2028 or so.
I live just barely inside the first zone, the red circle.
The government here has a track record of making big, bold, international-headline-grabbing proclamations that never end up happening. I'm assuming this won't be happening either, at least definitely not on this timeline.
Within even the first Zone, there are at least a few million people. Hanoi has 9 million people total, but the footprint is enormous. I can drive for 50 km and still be inside Hanoi. For reference, greater London is 1570km² while Hanoi (just the city itself) is 3360km².
Anyway, the public transportation system here is a joke, with a single line that doesn't go from anywhere to anywhere relevant to most people opened just a few years ago and no major construction on expansion. The buses are terrible. As a result, over 95% of the people of Hanoi ride motorbikes everywhere, and over 95% of those are internal combustion scooters.
There simply is no practical alternative at this time. Even if we assumed that all logistics and supply issues in getting millions of electric vehicles into showrooms in Hanoi could be solved with the wave of a magic wand, your average Hanoi residents simply cannot afford to throw away their now-worthless gasoline scooter and buy a $600-1000 (at the cheapest end, decent ones are $1500-2000) new electric one.
And that's not even touching on the fact that everyone would have to charge at home at night, and the electricity grid has not been upgraded in preparation of this.
Anyway, it'll be interesting to watch, but I'm really not too worried about it. I still have a Kawasaki Ninja super sport that I ride on the weekends and for road trips, and I would really hate to have to get rid of it.
But I just don't see this happening anytime soon, so whatever.
I live just barely inside the first zone, the red circle.
The government here has a track record of making big, bold, international-headline-grabbing proclamations that never end up happening. I'm assuming this won't be happening either, at least definitely not on this timeline.
Within even the first Zone, there are at least a few million people. Hanoi has 9 million people total, but the footprint is enormous. I can drive for 50 km and still be inside Hanoi. For reference, greater London is 1570km² while Hanoi (just the city itself) is 3360km².
Anyway, the public transportation system here is a joke, with a single line that doesn't go from anywhere to anywhere relevant to most people opened just a few years ago and no major construction on expansion. The buses are terrible. As a result, over 95% of the people of Hanoi ride motorbikes everywhere, and over 95% of those are internal combustion scooters.
There simply is no practical alternative at this time. Even if we assumed that all logistics and supply issues in getting millions of electric vehicles into showrooms in Hanoi could be solved with the wave of a magic wand, your average Hanoi residents simply cannot afford to throw away their now-worthless gasoline scooter and buy a $600-1000 (at the cheapest end, decent ones are $1500-2000) new electric one.
And that's not even touching on the fact that everyone would have to charge at home at night, and the electricity grid has not been upgraded in preparation of this.
Anyway, it'll be interesting to watch, but I'm really not too worried about it. I still have a Kawasaki Ninja super sport that I ride on the weekends and for road trips, and I would really hate to have to get rid of it.
But I just don't see this happening anytime soon, so whatever.
Zero Chill
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I guess the line about their transit system was a bit unfair actually. They are currently building a second segment and are trying to eventually build out the below system map, which would be amazing even if it completely cuts out the current expat enclave. But still this is at least 30-50 years from being a reality, assuming it never gets derailed (see what I did there).
One of the things I've consistently advocated for in both our ICE and xEV vehicles is moving to platform architectures where the code is tied to a platform vs tied to a model year. Rivian just gave the greatest demonstration on why that needs to occur with the switch to GMaps for nav. Every vehicle on their platform can now enjoy that vs "just 2025+ vehicles" despite the underlying platform being the same. The goodwill and marketing alone helps sell that you aren't buying a computer on wheels that could be abandoned shortly after you buy it.
Someone more tied to the traditional auto industry can probably explain why this is/isn't usually done...? (I'm curious myself!)
Subaru's first touch-screen-for-everything interface was absolute trash. It took 15 seconds to change the heated seat level. In 2024, they completely overhauled it and made it available for all models with the large touchscreen, going back to 2020 or 2021.
So it's not unheard of.
So it's not unheard of.
I would assume (and hope) that for anything that interfaces with the car itself that it would require retesting / certifying the model year car and since they will no longer be selling said model year car there is no return on the investment for it.
ChaoticUnreal hit on part of it. It's not so much certification but the retesting. There is a lot of legacy mindset that once the model year is over, you now work on the next one to get that tested and signed off on. The fact that the next model year is 99% the same as the previous one doesn't matter. Fork the firmware and make your changes (?!?) vs incorporating the changes into the base and doing ifdefs and/or abstraction for a single code base. This is what happens when you let EEs run stuff vs computer people. This is also what happens. To the credit of the company, the cybersecurity for vehicles went from almost nothing to state of the art in a very short amount of time...
Side note: The day I had to explain DNS to the person attempting to implement a DNS stack on a module was the day I decided I no longer wanted to work with on-vehicle stuff.
Infotainment is one of those things that was decoupled a long time ago for most OEMs. The second you went from a RTOS/Embedded system to a full fledged OS like WinCE. Automotive Grade Linux, AAOS, or even complex QNX systems, it made sense to treat the radio as a platform vs a individual model year. There is still a handful of things that are treated model year by model year but it is so much less than before. Now if we can treat all the modules that way for a given platform (or architecture...).
Ford as an example has some many configurations that are model year specific (AsBuilt) its crazy. Infotainment has been mostly decoupled but not entirely.
Traditionally OEMs don't want to fix old cars because they want you to buy new ones. Sync3 hardware from ~2016 to 2020 was the same but any vehicle older than 2020 didn't get Sync 3.4. Someone found an engineering tool that let you reformat the disk and load 3.4 onto them. It ran substantially better than 3.0, but Ford never made it available to older vehicles.
Speaking of software, the wagoneer S EV is not doing well in public. It sounds like an an absolute dumpster beta product (sorry spryde). From them bricking themselves to constant fault/errors that go away maybe after restarting the vehicle. I know you get more complaints than happy people but go peruse reddit and it's bleak.
Traditionally OEMs don't want to fix old cars because they want you to buy new ones. Sync3 hardware from ~2016 to 2020 was the same but any vehicle older than 2020 didn't get Sync 3.4. Someone found an engineering tool that let you reformat the disk and load 3.4 onto them. It ran substantially better than 3.0, but Ford never made it available to older vehicles.
Speaking of software, the wagoneer S EV is not doing well in public. It sounds like an an absolute dumpster beta product (sorry spryde). From them bricking themselves to constant fault/errors that go away maybe after restarting the vehicle. I know you get more complaints than happy people but go peruse reddit and it's bleak.
Last edited:
Most cars on the road today are still a network of different ECUs that vary from model/year all over the place. Software development on those older platforms is very complicated and most of the OEMs still have software teams that are far too small. Re-test/qual can be very complicated and expensive on those platforms.
Rivian (like Tesla) has a much simpler platform for IVI which is much easier to upgrade. The rest of the OEMs are moving in that direction, but those platforms aren't on the road yet, for the most part.
Rivian (like Tesla) has a much simpler platform for IVI which is much easier to upgrade. The rest of the OEMs are moving in that direction, but those platforms aren't on the road yet, for the most part.
We did aftermarket telematics a few jobs ago and the fact that this was on the internet and not on a private APN was pretty insane. Every mistake that could have been made was.
1.5-2 hours drive and a 15-25 minute charge break is the cadence we fell into on our cross country trip. Mandatory trips to the potties at every stop took up at least 10 minutes of that time and often more. Then the remaining few minutes was buying snacks at the attached store or cleaning trash from the kids footwell or refilling water bottles or recovering toys that had been yeeted in to the back. We were almost never twiddling our thumbs waiting for the car to finish charging.
Thanks! I read this thread to become familiar with EVs, and it helps to have the make/model/year. I probably have 90k more miles (3 years) on my ICE before I will buy an EV.
I don't love the rims on any of the Kia EVs but the stormtrooper white on black looks good.
Zero Chill
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Yeah the grills and the wheels are the biggest aesthetic change from ICE to EV, and it's taking me some getting used to. Can't say I'm a huge fan of either, yet, but some are better than others.
Honorable mention: I do love a good looking exhaust set up.
Honorable mention: I do love a good looking exhaust set up.
Zero Chill
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Believe me, this is a massive upgrade from 5+ years ago where somehow every car brand insisted on blue accents on their electrified options. It was really annoying because blue accents just don't work aesthetically with almost anything. You ended up having baby blue cars with radiant blue accents and that kind of pure clash.
Together with the general perception that the only non-blue accent cars (Tesla) were Audis (almost identical styling), that didn't put EVs in a good light from the perspective of people who judge their next car buy purely by aesthetics.
I have a 2024 GT-Line.
With the phase-out of the federal and state tax credits for EVs and the phasing out of sales tax exemptions for EVs in NJ, I'll have a conundrum next year when it comes to returning mine or buying it out. Or maybe returning it and buying a loaded Land trim since the trick seats and Sport mode acceleration boost are barely used.
Would you mind letting me know what your buyout price is, or is this a purchase?
As a side note, I LOVE the car. The stormtrooper color scheme is nice, and if I decide to buy it at the end of the lease, hopefully, there will be some better-looking aftermarket rim covers.
With the phase-out of the federal and state tax credits for EVs and the phasing out of sales tax exemptions for EVs in NJ, I'll have a conundrum next year when it comes to returning mine or buying it out. Or maybe returning it and buying a loaded Land trim since the trick seats and Sport mode acceleration boost are barely used.
Would you mind letting me know what your buyout price is, or is this a purchase?
As a side note, I LOVE the car. The stormtrooper color scheme is nice, and if I decide to buy it at the end of the lease, hopefully, there will be some better-looking aftermarket rim covers.
Looks like maybe this one? Rims seem similar
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/...type-flaunts-weird-taillight-camo-251726.html
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/...type-flaunts-weird-taillight-camo-251726.html
I think you got it! My wife did say the logo on the back was round, but of course it was also covered with wrap.
There is an EPA lab here in SE Michigan, a lot of test/mule/prototypes will have Michigan M (manufacturer) plates, that part doesn't tell you much.
Zero Chill
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Battery longevity and replacement is no longer a concern for modern EVs.
After more than 250,000 miles, Ford Mustang Mach-E still has 92% battery life
https://electrek.co/2025/07/22/afte...ord-mustang-mach-e-still-has-92-battery-life/
After more than 250,000 miles, Ford Mustang Mach-E still has 92% battery life
https://electrek.co/2025/07/22/afte...ord-mustang-mach-e-still-has-92-battery-life/
Well, distance driven is just one facet of battery longevity. Age is another.
There is a lot that goes into it, plenty of batteries have packs/modules in them fail. Time/temperature are also killers.
Yeah... you cannot possibly draw that conclusion from one person's experience. From a quick Google, those miles were mostly recorded in Santa Cruz, which is about as hospitable an environment as one can conceive for Li+ battery operation.
Now do Phoenix or Fairbanks.
Now do Phoenix or Fairbanks.