Wow, Dodge is worse than Telsa and almost down to Polestar.
Maybe if they’d focus more on making them functional vehicles instead of smartphones on wheels, it would simplify that problem.
…but then how will they rent you services like heated seats?
They need to be able to turn cars into a glorified gacha machine so that they can make money from Whales, too! /s
Unless there’s major pushback from car buyers in the next 10 years, I’m going to be holding on to my 2017 hybrid for as long as possible. May even look into doing an EV conversion on it or possibly some aftermarket way to make it a plug-in hybrid (there is a plug-in hybrid version of my car, and I’ve been looking to trade-in for that, but I cannot find any within 250 miles of me).
The bed is starting to rot off my 1999 truck, I’m not sure how or if I should repair it
Replacing the bed isn’t too bad if you have someone to help you lift it on/off and you can find a donor in good shape. I had to pull the bed off my old beater truck to replace the fuel pump, and did the work myself (plus an extra set of hands to lift the bed on/off, naturally) On that one, it was only like 6 bolts holding it down. Hardest part was that two were seized up and had to drill them out (and replace the bolts afterward).
Finding the replacement is what worries me.
Well that and if the bed is going how is the frame
Yeah, my 2004 not-quite beater truck came to its end that way. The frame rusted out where the leaf spring shackle attached, and there’s no real way to fix that. Surprised I was able to drive it as long as I did with it like that (it was my daily driver at the time lol).
For my OG beater truck, I got a lot of its body parts from a local salvage yard. Some of the parts I got were rusted in the same spots as mine, just less so (e.g. the quarter panels on S10s were notorious for rusting out).
The frame rusted out where the leaf spring shackle attached, and there’s no real way to fix that.
There is always a solution that involves welding, but unless someone is able to do it themselves odds are it would be far more expensive than finding another used vehicle in better shape.
Exactly! Like, take a basic car, and make it an EV. It doesn’t need to be a spaceship. I just need speed, charge level, maybe a tach or electrical load indicator, and a range estimator, all of which already exist on a basic car’s dash. The head unit can remain a separate device that connects to my phone for navigation and phone. That’s it.
Yep!
I’ve seen enough EV conversions to know it’s not rocket science. The instrument cluster just displays the values relayed to it over CAN bus, most of the sensors are the same as they are on a conventional ICE vehicle, and the only real difference is the powertrain. There’s some consideration for the battery placement and management, but that’s pretty much it. Leave the touchscreens in the backseat for the kids, and give me physical buttons to operate the vehicle.
I’ve been calling them McMansions on wheels, but considering how much tracking they do, I may start using your analogy.
Wish I could take credit for the term, lol, but I heard it elsewhere.
The headline is very misleading.
This is NOT just about build quality of EVs or engine problems or problems inherent with EVs, it includes minor annoyances that aren’t quality problems. Also, this is from reported problems on a SURVEY, not actual problems taken to a dealer to fix. Dodge has the worst rating here while Ram has the best, because Ram owners don’t report problems on surveys and not because Ram has better quality (though it likely does as well).
And most of the issues are with tech that is included in higher end cars (rear collision avoidance, rear seat safety belt alarms, lane keeping assist, automatic braking assist, etc), and almost all EVs in the US are higher end cars that are chock full of these up-sells. People are also complaining about entertainment system software and phone pairing, which isn’t different from EV to ICE.
Finally, Tesla is one of the worst on the list while also making up the majority of EVs. So the company that has notoriously bad quality and bad design choices strongly skews the metric, since they ONLY make EVs. If Tesla made an ICE it would be just as bad.
Volkswagen just paid Rivian a truckload of money because VW couldn’t figure out how to write EV controller software. It’s ridiculous.
I just want an EV company to make the equivalent of a shitty Toyota Prius.
Chevy Bolt EV/EUV
Which has been discontinued. They have said they’ll bring back a EUV for the 2026 model year, but we’ll see if that comes to fruition.
I bought one just before the end. No ragrets. There are definitely some software quirks (the rear cross traffic alert always points the wrong direction) but overall I like it.
General Motors accidentally made a good car so that’s why they had to kill it.
I was pleasantly surprised how good the Bolt was and still liked it after 3 years of leasing it. I was ready to get another one after the lease was over, but the pandemic changed my decision (working from home meant I didn’t really need a nice car and definitely wasn’t driving enough for the price plus-up for EV to make sense, so I got a used beater).
A Nissan Leaf?
They’re discontinuing it in 2026.
There’s tons on the used market.
They all use Chademo connectors and air cooled batteries. Might be ok for puttering around town or as a commuter car, but that’s about it.
That covers like 99% of all private car use.
And since when have you known any computer to be problem-free?
Software that’s not made from overworked engineers working 80 hours a week pressured to work even faster to complete this week’s sprint.
I’m so tired of “computers are buggy and everyone accepts that”. No! Computers don’t have to be buggy, you just have to not shove trash software on it made by morons doing the bare minimum.
I have software that’s been running on servers for literal years, not a single bug. The hardware’s been sized appropriately and I wrote good, sustainable and maintainable code. My computers all can easily do weeks and months of uptime. I pick up my laptop and open the lid and 100% of the time it wakes up from sleep and it’s ready to go.
The overwhelming majority of “production” and “enterprise quality” code I work with is total garbage that should never have been written and its author never hired in the tech space. We repeatedly get reports on how X car manufacturer was pwned for not following best practices that are a decade or two old.
Corporate greed makes EVs suck because it’s developed for as cheap as possible and the target is “good enough customers tolerate it”. Shit barely works properly when going through the happy path and the error path just… usually crashes your car.
I’ve had to reboot my car at red lights way too fucking often and it’s not even an EV. 2020 model and the infotainment reliably crashes if I have a Slack or Zoom call going because it tries to read the phone number off my phone over Bluetooth and doesn’t know how to handle a null phone number = the radio crashes.
It’s not fucking rocket science.
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.
A friend bought a new BMW, with all the bells and whistles. The app for the car is like a game, where you have to subscribe to get the juicy content.
You can subscribe to different feature-packs. They sure made the effort, that the $$$ system works flawlessly.
Like, the app surely is buggy and things may not work as expected, but you only get to try it out, when your money is on their account anyway.
