There were other options that just weren’t well advertised/known. KIA Niro/Hyundai Kona, Chevy Bolt, and Jaguar I-Pace all existed in 2019 in addition to the 2 you mentioned.
Comment on My Car Is Becoming a Brick: EVs are poised to age like smartphones.
PabloSexcrowbar@piefed.social 3 weeks agoThat’s when I bought mine, and it was either get a Model 3 with ~270 miles of range or a Nissan Leaf or a tiny BMW iQ, both with like 80.
For the record, if the software updates stopped where they’re at today, I’d be fine with how the car functions until the end of its life. In fact, I kinda wish they’d just leave things alone at this point because I don’t want any extra features out of the thing.
Vodulas@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
PabloSexcrowbar@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Oh yeah, I do remember looking at those too, but iirc they were all still at a significant range disadvantage compared to the model 3. Dunno about now, though.
Vodulas@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
The all had 200-250 mile ranges. Less than 320, but fine for most folks. Now there are so many good EV options, the only downside is cost nowadays. We need a good, compact, inexpensive EV with decent charging speeds. The Bolt almost does that, bit the charging speeds are real slow
PabloSexcrowbar@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
The Slate seems like it’s almost there, but the range still kinda sucks. Telo looks promising too, but it has the same vaporware scent about it as the Aptera so who knows if it’ll ever happen.
Pandantic@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
I had a Bolt. We made Chevy buy it back because some had been exploding/catching fire and they were advising us not to leave it unsupervised while charging and to park at least 50 feet away from buildings and cars. I loved my Bolt and wished we could have kept it, but that all seemed unreasonable, and I didn’t want to have the potential of my house catching on fire because I needed to charge it overnight.
After that, I bought a Tesla. Downvote me if you want, but it was the next best option.
Vodulas@beehaw.org 2 weeks ago
Yup, there have been a lot of battery issues with electric cars. The good news is those seem to be few and far between nowadays.
After that, I bought a Tesla. Downvote me if you want, but it was the next best option.
I can’t and I wouldn’t anyway. Before we knew Elon was a fascist, they were usually a good option (provided you got one from a good run). We bought a used Tesla in 2016. It was a great car, but when someone sideswiped it and totaled it in 2020, we could not in good conscious get another one.
Sxan@piefed.zip 3 weeks ago
My in-laws have one from about the same time, pre-X. As I understood, you could turn off software updates?
MalReynolds@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
And therein lies the rub, you don’t get to choose, the corpo does and you have to trust them (you do trust them, don’t you?). Pretty much like you’re renting, not owning. As the article points out this is similar to phone ’ownership’, hopefully in the fullness of time there will be a GrapheneOS equivalent for cars…