EVs still have major quality problems, and it’s mostly about the software
EVs still have major quality problems, and it’s mostly about the software
The tech is new, and people are still unfamiliar.
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Software that is completely unnecessary. There is zero reason a battery powered vehicle needs to be much different software wise than an ICE. They do not need 20" touchscreens packed with a custom infotainment system written by hardware focused developers.
The Megane E-tech has functionality in its satnav that lets you plot a route with charging stations on the way, showing how much capacity you will have left when you get to them. Not essential, but very useful for somebody who is new to EVs.
Software that communicates with power companies to allow the car to charge overnight at advantageous rates, or even feed energy back into the grid. Again, not essential, but good for the customer and helps with the transition to green electricity.
I have that in my ICE car and I never use it (map of gas stations correlated with remaining fuel). That's not specific to an EV.
Any of those features can be in a smartphone attached to your dashboard. Sure you have some benefits in accessing the car data, but they are small.
Your ICE has a significantly longer range, and the road network has evolved so that you can be reasonably confident that you'll find a filling station when you need one.
Today I'm driving an EV that doesn't have it, and I'm missing it. Different EVs have different ranges and not every filling station on the autobahn has chargers. On the other hand, there are lots of places just off the autobahn which do have chargers. It's a different game. Your mileage may vary of course.
And it's especially unnecessary for a big use case for EVs: commuters and grocery getters. It's only needed for cars intended to do road trips.
And yeah, a phone app is more than sufficient. I do trips infrequently enough that it's totally unnecessary to be built-in.
Electric cars need software to smooth out motor output to create an enjoyable driving experience. They also need to manage battery health and regenerative braking.
Edit: cars like the Ioniq N seem to be the exception while most cars have problems like the Mercedes EQS that people report has unpredictable braking which means you can't learn how to control it.
The first thing is something ICE vehicles also do. A BMS, figuring out regenerative braking, and maybe one or two other things are the only things that need to be different. Car makers have shoved all the software they can into EVs without the experienced developers to do it on the hopes that they can fix shit in the future and charge subscription fees for it.
Yeah but when ice vehicles aren't perfect it's not a huge deal for the average driver. When an electric car isn't smoothed out well you have the same problem but it's amplified any times because of the instant torque.
battery controllers and motor controllers are available as cheap, simple, stable, off-the-shelf dedicated hardware and there's no reason budget evs would need to do any coding for them, maybe just some variable adjustment. those things are not controlled by the user facing software being talked about here.
Maybe it's like you say if you're making a shit box but you can't make a driver's car without careful consideration. This conversation would be better to have with car enthusiasts rather than technology enthusiasts.
shit box or luxury car, this article is not talking about motor controller or battery controller software.