There’s a lot of hype about Chinese EVs—is any of it true?

In addition to being full of screens, China now wants its cars to be packed with AI.

See full article...

 

[kltye]

It's kinda interesting that apparently everyone hates touchscreens in cars and want buttons and knobs, but also we hate buttons and physical keyboards on smartphones. I probably interact/type 100x more on my phone than my car (which is one of those oft-hated touchscreen designs), so I'd have thought having tactile feedback on a phone would be pretty valuable, but I guess if Apple says we need big slabs of glass for phones, then that must be a universal law.

 

[numerobis]

View attachment 134183

Plastic lids as almost North Korea's only export is ... something.

 

[numerobis]

It's kinda interesting that apparently everyone hates touchscreens in cars and want buttons and knobs, but also we hate buttons and physical keyboards on smartphones. I probably interact/type 100x more on my phone than my car (which is one of those oft-hated touchscreen designs), so I'd have thought having tactile feedback on a phone would be pretty valuable, but I guess if Apple says we need big slabs of glass for phones, then that must be a universal law.

You might want to think about not typing on your phone while driving.

 

[Jeff S]

I have a question - how is it possible for the Chinese government to endlessly subsidize everything and flood the market with apparently below-cost goods? Won't they go broke eventually doing that?

I've been hearing the complaint about the Chinese government subsidizing manufacturers pretty much my whole life and I'm almost 50 now. I could see how a government could subsidize their manufacturers for years, maybe even a decade or two, but eventually that must break down, financially?

Edit: From online searches, it appears that maybe China has been heavily borrowing money, driving up their national debt much like the US has for decades, and that's how they are paying for it. Hmmm. With China and the US in a race to get the most debt, I'm sure this will end well for everyone involved. . .

 

[Zeppos]

Was involved in designing car electronics a decade back. Getting things to work is the easy part.

Then comes all the circuit hardening. Extreme temperature ranges, incredibly high voltage spikes on the power line because of some malfunctioning component. Power reversal protection to prevent blowing everything up when the mechanic has a bad day. The list is very long.

Those hardening requirements got standardized for a reason.

Nope, not going for a cheap Chinese car, they may be fine, but let's see how well they do for the next 10 years.

 

[kltye]

You might want to think about not typing on your phone while driving.

I don't touch my phone while driving, but are we just saying that touch-only interfaces are 1000% better than tactile ones otherwise? Lots of comments here saying the touchscreens look like a "nightmare", even for passengers.

I can adjust temperature, fan, and heated seats without diving into a menu, which is what lots of hyperbole says here. Yes, I have to hit one extra UI element to adjust vents (feet, windshield, etc). I adjust those things once or twice during the drive and call it a day.

I think lots of Americans are inherently against modern-looking aesthetics for some reason. I don't know why (I grew up halfway across the world but live here now), and it's really quite weird and frustrating.

 

[kltye]

This article would have been far more useful if the focus was range & new battery technology allowing flash charging. For instance if the promotional claims made about the BYD Seal 08 is valid. In the US range matters & you also have to factor in that the effective usable battery is ~70% if you want to fast charge up to say 80-90% & arrive with at least 10-20% at the next charging station.

Honestly, knowing that your next charging stop is 100% (or 99.999%) reliable is enough for most. I drive a relatively slow-charging, not very efficient EV, and it's not a huge deal to charge in under 10 minutes. I'd take reliability over speed any day of the week and twice on Sundays. (Not saying we shouldn't have both, but let's get the basics down first in this 3rd world nation)

 

[yababom]

Have you ever owned a car from a company that went out of business, and you could no longer get replacement parts or repairs? The article didn't mention this very real risk.

I'd agree with this: long-term parts/repair availability is likely to be a real issue due to multiple risk factors:
1. China's tenuous (often adversarial) trade status with western nations (not just the US) could increase prices or prevent support at any time.
2. Reduced/minimal incentive for Chinese automakers to support models sold only to western markets with parts for 20 years (common functional lifetime for man cars).
3. No established 3rd party parts networks available as alternatives.
4. Many issues will likely be software bugs, and fixes for software issues will either require OTA updates (privacy issues), or not fixed at all (if other Chinese bargain electronics are anything to go by).

 

[AndyCraig]

From the UK. The number one selling car is now the Jaecoo 7, the so called temu range rover. It really does look like a range rover and for approximately £30-£35k its maybe one third to one half the cost of the real thing. It's widely known here that the driving experience is not as good as the European equivalent, but for the money people don't care. That's before I get onto all the MGs, omodas and byds I keep seeing everywhere. The Chinese are learning quickly, the first versions had annoying ADAS features, now they are much better. Also there have realised that at least for the UK the full electric car has limited use cases. They all offer hybrids, and they are the real big sellers here.

 

[Jeff S]

I don't touch my phone while driving, but are we just saying that touch-only interfaces are 1000% better than tactile ones otherwise? Lots of comments here saying the touchscreens look like a "nightmare", even for passengers.

I can adjust temperature, fan, and heated seats without diving into a menu, which is what lots of hyperbole says here. Yes, I have to hit one extra UI element to adjust vents (feet, windshield, etc). I adjust those things once or twice during the drive and call it a day.

I think lots of Americans are inherently against modern-looking aesthetics for some reason. I don't know why (I grew up halfway across the world but live here now), and it's really quite weird and frustrating.

You can not touch your phone while driving, but I think the point is that we must interface with our cars while driving.

Touchscreens suffer a couple problems - without tactile feedback, it can be hard to find the 'center' of the button, leading to easy mis-clicking on the wrong element. Two, touchscreen can suffer significant delays - now, maybe the touchscreens on modern cars are a lot better, but the 2015 ford fusion I drive, which isn't entirely ancient, the "Ford Sync" touchscreen is garbage. There are a small number of too-small controls on screen,

I frequently find myself accidentally tapping not on the button but outside the button, which triggers another screen to load, but that screen load takes like 5 seconds.

When I'm driving, sometimes I only have a couple seconds to make a change before I need to start driving again (e.g. because the red light it is about to turn green).

I need my interactions to be fast and accurate while I'm driving, not error prone and laggy.

Yes, most of the time you can choose when to interact with the car controls. But sometimes, e.g. you're driving and, I don't know, your phone battery dies, switching the car automatically from BlueTooth back to the last FM radio station you were listening to, and oh, you had the car stereo volume turned way up because the podcast you were just listening to was recorded at too-low levels because the podcaster doesn't really understand audio engineering so you had to turn it up to 75% just to hear, and then suddenly you're getting BLASTED by way too loud commercials on the FM radio station which is incredibly distracting so you need to turn the volume down or mute right now.

Now, luckily my car does still have a physical turn knob for volume. It's super easy to find and I can turn it in 1/2 a second. I also have volume controls on the steering wheel, but that is not as fast as the twist knob - I have to click click click, or click and hold, for about 3 seconds to get significant volume reduction.

 

[slymenstra hymen]

I have a question - how is it possible for the Chinese government to enlessly subsidize everything and flood the market with apparently below-cost goods? Won't they go broke eventually doing that?

I've been hearing the complaint about the Chinese government subsidizing manufacturers pretty much my whole life and I'm almost 50 now. I could see how a government could subsidize their manufacturers for years, maybe even a decade or two, but eventually that must break down, financially?

In the case of EVs, China had rules that led to manufacturers rushing to scale production which led to them making more than China needs/wants. A lot of the companies will go out of business and many are looking at over seas markets to sell.

Similar issues happened with solar panels and ride share bikes, China subsidizes/incentivizes early, companies go crazy with the scaling and the Chinese government is late putting the brakes on.

 

[Boskone]

Um, unless these cars can fit the fat American inside, all bets are off. Americans like big cars bec aause Americans, by and large, are pretty fucking fat. And out of shape. There is a reason they have those help you in bars on those big pickups and SUVs.

Small cars generally have oh-shit handles too.

Your screed notwithstanding, those are just handy for getting into things.

 

[THT]

I'd agree with this: long-term parts/repair availability is likely to be a real issue due to multiple risk factors:
1. China's tenuous (often adversarial) trade status with western nations (not just the US) could increase prices or prevent support at any time.
2. Reduced/minimal incentive for Chinese automakers to support models sold only to western markets with parts for 20 years (common functional lifetime for man cars).
3. No established 3rd party parts networks available as alternatives.
4. Many issues will likely be software bugs, and fixes for software issues will either require OTA updates (privacy issues), or not fixed at all (if other Chinese bargain electronics are anything to go by).

Isn't this the same set of fears that people levied on Tesla 10 years ago? Or Rivian about 5 years ago?

The market will sort it out. The automakers who provide good service will be successful. The ones who do not will go out of business really fast. Overall, the service I have gotten for my Tesla has been quite good. They come to my house to do this or that. That is really nice. Really nice and should be the norm for others. For major things, they have service centers and 3rd party repair shops.

Parts supplies, repair centers, software updates will sort themselves out if an automaker wants to be successful.

As of today, the economic circumstances in the USA do not allow for new entrants to even get their vehicles manufactured. They can't even get to market. The gov't doesn't want to help that. It's all anti-business, anti-consumer, pro-incumbent bullshit. With that, comes bad choices, bad experiences, higher costs.

 

[killerhurtalot]

I'd agree with this: long-term parts/repair availability is likely to be a real issue due to multiple risk factors:
1. China's tenuous (often adversarial) trade status with western nations (not just the US) could increase prices or prevent support at any time.
2. Reduced/minimal incentive for Chinese automakers to support models sold only to western markets with parts for 20 years (common functional lifetime for man cars).
3. No established 3rd party parts networks available as alternatives.
4. Many issues will likely be software bugs, and fixes for software issues will either require OTA updates (privacy issues), or not fixed at all (if other Chinese bargain electronics are anything to go by).

Man.... if parts availability and price of parts is your concern, you don't even need to look any further then what's happening in western countries already... months long wait for parts, parts that's doubled in price, and etc...

China is literally supporting a lot of the older car repair industry and pretty much everything you buy at orileys/ autozone/etc at this point with their off brand "oem" parts either copied or made using old oem machines...

 

[THT]

You can not touch your phone while driving, but I think the point is that we must interface with our cars while driving.

Touchscreens suffer a couple problems - without tactile feedback, it can be hard to find the 'center' of the button, leading to easy mis-clicking on the wrong element. Two, touchscreen can suffer significant delays - now, maybe the touchscreens on modern cars are a lot better, but the 2015 ford fusion I drive, which isn't entirely ancient, the "Ford Sync" touchscreen is garbage. There are a small number of too-small controls on screen,

I frequently find myself accidentally tapping not on the button but outside the button, which triggers another screen to load, but that screen load takes like 5 seconds.

When I'm driving, sometimes I only have a couple seconds to make a change before I need to start driving again (e.g. because the red light it is about to turn green).

I need my interactions to be fast and accurate while I'm driving, not error prone and laggy.

Yes, most of the time you can choose when to interact with the car controls. But sometimes, e.g. you're driving and, I don't know, your phone battery dies, switching the car automatically from BlueTooth back to the last FM radio station you were listening to, and oh, you had the car stereo volume turned way up because the podcast you were just listening to was recorded at too-low levels because the podcaster doesn't really understand audio engineering so you had to turn it up to 75% just to hear, and then suddenly you're getting BLASTED by way too loud commercials on the FM radio station which is incredibly distracting so you need to turn the volume down or mute right now.

Now, luckily my car does still have a physical turn knob for volume. It's super easy to find and I can turn it in 1/2 a second. I also have volume controls on the steering wheel, but that is not as fast as the twist knob - I have to click click click, or click and hold, for about 3 seconds to get significant volume reduction.

The touchscreen isn't a problem per se. The big problem is that the GUIs are terrible. There is a pretty big steep learning curve for figuring where everything is. The latency and hit targets are terrible as you say, which falls in the bucket of terrible GUIs.

If the touchscreen UIs were good, not many people would be complaining.

Heck, the warning light iconography on your dash remains a mystery to 99.99% of the buying public, and I'm talking about ICE cars here. It's been like 50 years of these warning lights, and the buying public mostly has no idea what they all mean.

 

[real mikeb_60]

You might want to think about not typing on your phone while driving.

You might also want to think about how difficult typing is on your phone or tablet, compared to using a real keyboard like on a laptop or even a separate keyboard with real keys. I'm certainly faster and less error-prone when using real keys rather than trying to use some on-screen keyboard.

 

[real mikeb_60]

AKA tariffs

Tariffs don't have to always be monetary.

 

[ERIFNOMI]

Plastic lids as almost North Korea's only export is ... something.

It's also funny to see a country's exports listed in a number so low I can relate to it.

I'll admit I'm surprised we import anything from them, but at the same time is $50k even worth writing down in a balance sheet between countries? It's gotta cost more than that just tracking that.

 

[goblinski]

The touchscreen isn't a problem per se...
... ... ...
If the touchscreen UIs were good, not many people would be complaining...

You must be young and strong

A touch screen is a problem per se, because...

- It requires you to look at it so you know what you are touching. A knob or button can be made differentiated from its neighboring knobs and buttons (by its position, touch, feedback, knurling) so you can reach and operate it without having to look at it. And any operation that requires you to not look at the road is a negatively distracting one and should be avoided. Knobs and buttons were the culmination of a whole science, with rules written in blood. It all desintegrated in the last ten years.

- Even if it is perfectly safe to watch a touch screen and operate it, and even if the interface was perfect - the dynamics of vehicle movement make it difficult to operate. The vehicle moves and bounces, and your extended arm also does. Your fingers are at the extremity of a fulcrum, and have no natural asperity/bump/ledge to hold on. They have to hit that screen button, and hit it correctly.

In the real world, the fingers at the edge of your extended arm, in a bouncing vehicle, have a natural oscilation variation from the "target" on the screen of at least a couple of inches vertically. They are trying to hit a mostly vertical surface, with precision, while waving around (well, mostly up and down, but a bit sideways too).

Might not be an issue for a youngster on a screen that is say 45 degrees inclined, but for an older person on a Tesla for example - it's mission impossible. Ask a person of any age past 50 to keep their arm even half-extended in a vehicle, with fingers staying over a button-sized target, and have fun.

Whereas buttons and knobs also allow you to rest your hand/fingers on them while opertaing them, potholes and oscillations be damned.

HyunKia, bless them, actually have their screens designed with protruding bezels, which can be used as a ledge (top bezel for the top two rows of commands, bottom bezel for the bottom two) on which you can rest one finger, stabilizing your hand, for the other finger to reach what you want precisely. Not sure if it's done on purpose, or just a design quirk, but it's there.

 

[Tech-Space-Cars]

Um, unless these cars can fit the fat American inside, all bets are off. Americans like big cars bec aause Americans, by and large, are pretty fucking fat. And out of shape. There is a reason they have those help you in bars on those big pickups and SUVs.

An unpopular reality.

 

[numerobis]

I don't touch my phone while driving, but are we just saying that touch-only interfaces are 1000% better than tactile ones otherwise? Lots of comments here saying the touchscreens look like a "nightmare", even for passengers.

I can adjust temperature, fan, and heated seats without diving into a menu, which is what lots of hyperbole says here. Yes, I have to hit one extra UI element to adjust vents (feet, windshield, etc). I adjust those things once or twice during the drive and call it a day.

I think lots of Americans are inherently against modern-looking aesthetics for some reason. I don't know why (I grew up halfway across the world but live here now), and it's really quite weird and frustrating.

The comments here are saying that touchscreens as the primary control in a car are bad because the driver has to use them while driving.

 

[numerobis]

It's also funny to see a country's exports listed in a number so low I can relate to it.

I'll admit I'm surprised we import anything from them, but at the same time is $50k even worth writing down in a balance sheet between countries? It's gotta cost more than that just tracking that.

Yeah. I could buy a new car, or I could buy THE ENTIRETY OF NORTH KOREAN EXPORTS TO THE US FOR A YEAR.

That said, I've got a parking spot for a car, while I don't think I've got space for $55k worth of plastic lids.

As for the cost of accounting it: once there's an accounting system, it becomes more expensive to leave items out as a special case than to use it.

 

[TheColinous]

HyunKia, bless them, actually have their screens designed with protruding bezels, which can be used as a ledge on which you can rest one finger, stabilizing your hand, for the other finger to reach what you want precisely. Not sure if it's done on purpose, or just a design quirk, but it's there.

Volkswagen's new offerings, their semi-retro imaginings of the Polo, Golf and Passat have blessedly added lots of buttons, and knobs, and dials. So have the French non-Stellantis brands, Renault and Dacia. In fact, my 2021 Renault hybrid has lots, and lots of lovely buttons and knobs so I wouldn't say they have changed their minds. I think they've always liked buttons and knobs. They also like stalks.... They have so many stalks around the wheel.

 

[Redwood1]

No business would possibly build or plan to manufacture vehicles in the US given the outrageous violations of trading norms and international trade agreements. Even after the happy day happens his cabal of grifters will continue to act without reason believing their own US supremacy BS. Basic Economics 101 are soon going to destroy the American economy and all the weapons won’t help. “These plants will be opening soon??!” lMFAO
Just now:
In a post on Truth Social, the president said:

I am pleased to announce that, based on the fact the European Union is not complying with our fully agreed to Trade Deal, next week I will be increasing Tariffs charged to the European Union for Cars and Trucks coming into the United States. The Tariff will be increased to 25%. It is fully understood and agreed that, if they produce Cars and Trucks in U.S.A. Plants, there will be NO TARIFF. Many Automobile and Truck Plants are currently under construction, with over 100 Billion Dollars being invested, A RECORD in the History of Car and Truck Manufacturing. These Plants, staffed with American Workers, will be opening soon — There has never been anything like what is happening in America today!

 

[goblinski]

Volkswagen's new offerings, their semi-retro imaginings of the Polo, Golf and Passat have blessedly added lots of buttons, and knobs, and dials. So have the French non-Stellantis brands, Renault and Dacia. In fact, my 2021 Renault hybrid has lots, and lots of lovely buttons and knobs so I wouldn't say they have changed their minds. I think they've always liked buttons and knobs. They also like stalks.... They have so many stalks around the wheel.

Yep, sanity might eventually start to seep back.
HyunKia were also the first to officially state that they won't get rid of physical buttons a few years ago.
The dark irony is that the very brands that defined ergonomcs (the Germans mostly) also ended up going all butonless (MB and BMW nowadays are, hmmm...), all within a decade.

In the grand scheme of things, humans have not evolved that much anatomically in the last few thousand years. So the best command interface is the one that makes you do the least movements.

In car, this would mean stalks and buttons on and around the steering wheel, if we look at it from a driver-only perspective.

I always giggle when I watch sci-fi movies where futuristic interfaces are meant to be operated with your arms whipping around windmill style. The handling of the little balls and whatnot in Minority Report comes to mind, but the winner of them all is Michael Douglas operating some futuristic computer OS in Disclosure. The way he was waving his arms around to operate files was hilarious. Who on Earth would think this would ever be a thing...

 

[THT]

You must be young and strong

A touch screen is a problem per se, because...

- It requires you to look at it so you know what you are touching. A knob or button can be made differentiated from its neighboring knobs and buttons (by its position, touch, feedback, knurling) so you can reach and operate it without having to look at it. And any operation that requires you to not look at the road is a negatively distracting one and should be avoided. Knobs and buttons were the culmination of a whole science, with rules written in blood. It all desintegrated in the last ten years.

- Even if it is perfectly safe to watch a touch screen and operate it, and even if the interface was perfect - the dynamics of vehicle movement make it difficult to operate. The vehicle moves and bounces, and your extended arm also does. Your fingers are at the extremity of a fulcrum, and have no natural asperity/bump/ledge to hold on. They have to hit that screen button, and hit it correctly.

In the real world, the fingers at the edge of your extended arm, in a bouncing vehicle, have a natural oscilation variation from the "target" on the screen of at least a couple of inches vertically. They are trying to hit a mostly vertical surface, with precision, while waving around (well, mostly up and down, but a bit sideways too).

Might not be an issue for a youngster on a screen that is say 45 degrees inclined, but for an older person on a Tesla for example - it's mission impossible. Ask a person of any age past 50 to keep their arm even half-extended in a vehicle, with fingers staying over a button-sized target, and have fun.

Whereas buttons and knobs also allow you to rest your hand/fingers on them while opertaing them, potholes and oscillations be damned.

HyunKia, bless them, actually have their screens designed with protruding bezels, which can be used as a ledge (top bezel for the top two rows of commands, bottom bezel for the bottom two) on which you can rest one finger, stabilizing your hand, for the other finger to reach what you want precisely. Not sure if it's done on purpose, or just a design quirk, but it's there.

No, I'm old, and I have been driving cars for 4 decades now.

User interfaces suck on vehicles. The big benefit of physical controls is that it limits the number of functions that the driver could diddle with while being able to place the controls in a larger area around the cockpit. There is also a decadal history of what the hardware controls on a car does, and people are somewhat more familiar with them.

But, there can be really bad hardware controls. I particularly dislike rocker switches/sticks to change transmission to P, D, N, R, etc. Ugh, the temporary turn signal isn't great either. It takes some time to learn how to operate the wind shield wiper functions from car to car.

The GUI from car makers is just atrocious. The bad latency alone should get them fined.

 

[ZombieNarwhals]

The title had me thinking that Ars had driven one (or many) and could comment firsthand on the experience of driving one and whether the build quality is as good as social media posts have said.

 

[Aurich]

I switched to an EV this year, and I have a lot of screen now in my car:

I'm gonna just be honest here and say that 95% of the time it's really not an issue for me at all. And more often than not it's pretty nice.

Yes, my climate controls are mostly touch (things like window defrosting are buttons). But I just don't fiddle with them much while driving. It's pretty much an adjust once and leave thing. Given a choice I'd probably opt for some more buttons? But I've never felt unsafe or find it an actual problem.

My turn signals (yes, I use them before someone snarks lol) and wiper stalks are normal. I have a volume knob on the dash, and buttons on the steering wheel. The touchscreen is responsive and I have had no issues with mis-clicks.

I don't have traditional needle gauges, but what I do have is better. I can see my regen, my speed is clearly displayed, there's a map directly in my line of sight (and a HUD projected in front of my hood) and it does useful things like switch to a live video feed with arrows showing me turns. Helpful when I'm somewhere unfamiliar.

In general I feel safer in this car than my old one that had a lot more traditional gear and a smaller non-touch screen.

Do I need all the features? No. I'm driving a luxury car with extra crap. It's a privilege-mobile. But I like it. It improves my quality of life, it's comfortable, it's safer, and I enjoy it.

My only real issue honestly is somewhat specific to this setup. Because it's so wide, to reach the little menu button for Carplay in the upper right is a bit of a stretch. I don't do it often, but when I do I find it less than ideal. That's basically the only driver-oriented UI that's over there though.

I dunno, just my two cents on being someone who doesn't feel like a real screens in cars hater.

 

[justin150]

So you don't even live in the US but you feel confident in your ability to say what 95% of US drivers transport needs are, 95% of the time?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

All you have proved is that you failed to do even the most basic of research. Try a google search and you will find that it is not my opinion but actual data starting with the EPA, before it became Trump controlled and therefore detached from evidence, that showed that 98% of all car journeys in the US are 75 miles or less

 

[THT]

Small cars generally have oh-shit handles too.

Your screed notwithstanding, those are just handy for getting into things.

As many people here may have heard, people who buy huge vehicles, in the USA, say they buy them because it makes them safer on the road. They want to sit higher so that they can see the road better.

In essence drivers in the USA think they are going to war and its arms race. That mentality or some such.

 

[Bad Monkey!]

I have a question - how is it possible for the Chinese government to endlessly subsidize everything and flood the market with apparently below-cost goods? Won't they go broke eventually doing that?

I've been hearing the complaint about the Chinese government subsidizing manufacturers pretty much my whole life and I'm almost 50 now. I could see how a government could subsidize their manufacturers for years, maybe even a decade or two, but eventually that must break down, financially?

Edit: From online searches, it appears that maybe China has been heavily borrowing money, driving up their national debt much like the US has for decades, and that's how they are paying for it. Hmmm. With China and the US in a race to get the most debt, I'm sure this will end well for everyone involved. . .

The Chinese government also enforces strict imported goods and capital flows, and manipulates both the international market value of their currency and the internal value, on top of direct suppression of labor rights and worker compensation. This basically acts as both a subsidy to domestic manufacturing (artificially reduces costs for domestic sourcing while increasing costs for imports), while also acting as a direct stimulus for exports (maintaining a low valuation against foreign currency baskets means foreign manufacturers can't competed with Chinese exports and China gets to rake in massive amounts of foreign currency at very favorable exchange rates). Those massive imports of foreign currency is one of the ways that China can afford to directly subsidize specific manufacturing segments.

 

[ZombieNarwhals]

“I’m using the Ars comments and social media platform Bluesky as my bellwethers”

A journalist wrote this. If Ars and Bluesky commenters represented the average person, EV sales would have been much higher.

The mood re: EVs and tech in cars is much different in an Ars comment section vs the people I know and interact with in real life. Most people around me are in the "EVs are cool I guess, but I don't want one, because fires and cobalt and range". We've got an EV, a small car, and a truck. The EV is amazing around town, but fast-charging is just as expensive per km as our gas car (maybe not true where you, dear reader, are, but it is true here), so the gas car remains the road trip vehicle. There is definitely an "I wish there were more physical controls" attitude IRL, but this quickly gets forgotten as new computery features come out.

 

[Kyuu]

China now wants its cars to be packed with AI

 

[enilc]

What I gather from these comments is that ya'll seem to spend a lot of time fiddling with your car controls while driving (analog or touchscreen.)

My controls are generally set before I'm in D (or 1). At most, on my 45min commute I might change a radio station once. What are you doing fiddling with controls instead of paying attention to your driving? This explains a lot about the drivers I see more and more of these days.

 

[justin150]

[IMG alt="Dr Gitlin"]https://cdn.arstechnica.net/civis/data/avatars/s/14/14317.jpg?1668383412[/IMG]
Dr Gitlin
The US bought 16 million new cars last year, Europe only managed 13 million, so unfortunately for you the US market is very far from an irrelevance.


No one denies that the US is an important market for companies wishing to sell cars. But that is not what my original comment was about, I specifically referred to US car manufacturers being an international irrelevance. However, I should have been more precise, the traditional US domestic car manufacturers which excludes Tesla and the foreign arms of the traditional US domestic car manufacturers are an international irrelevance. The one exception is that the US still makes some of the best pick ups available. Those will continue to do well.

That does not mean that the US exports no vehicles elsewhere (although a significant proportion of total exports go to Canada and Mexico), but once you exclude exports by Tesla (as a non traditional manufacturer) and US factories owned by foreign car companies the actual number of cars exported by US manufacturers is depressingly low. In UK and most of the EU, virtually no US cars and only a few pick up trucks are imported - a point the Trump administration has made thinking it is to do with non-tariff barriers when in fact it is due to taste and safety.

As the rest of the world transitions to EVs, the traditional US domestic car manufacturers will become about as relevant as horse drawn carriage makers in the era of motor cars

 

[Dr Gitlin]

That does not mean that the US exports no vehicles elsewhere (although a significant proportion of total exports go to Canada and Mexico), but once you exclude exports by Tesla (as a non traditional manufacturer) and US factories owned by foreign car companies the actual number of cars exported by US manufacturers is depressingly low. In UK and most of the EU, virtually no US cars and only a few pick up trucks are imported - a point the Trump administration has made thinking it is to do with non-tariff barriers when in fact it is due to taste and safety.

And? US domestic vehicles have always been an irrelevance in Europe. I lived in the UK from 1978-2002. American imports were always a tiny niche. Ford of Europe is basically a different company to Ford NA.

US OEMs make cars for US car buyers, who prioritize space and safety and being able to drive it home from the dealer that day.

 

[Bad Monkey!]

Surprisingly low quality article for Ars. It doesn't seem like you made any effort to engage with why people in the US might want these cars, just decided to go with a sneery "Don't these idiots know Chinese cars have screens and AI?"

Having been around for pretty much all of these articles and the ensuing comments, one of the major reasons is "I want to pay $10,000 for a BEV that can't reasonably be sold for that money in this country without either enormous state subsidies and/or the manufacturer taking an enormous loss, and I don't care about the external costs to the automotive manufacturing base in this country and its supply chain, nor the numerous factories and supply chains around the world exclusive of China that would also be decimated should Chinese BEVs be allowed to be sold in the USA unfettered."