[aljgz]

New cars are UX nightmares. I'm driving an electric Toyota bz4x. Lovely mechanics, but the general UX (some are because of Android Auto) is terrible. The remote's lock/unlock don't do anything when the car is on. Example: I'm by the trunk and it won't open unless I go back to the driver's door and unlock the doors. App's remote function has too many conditions to do anything. For instance, I'm resting in the back seat and want to turn on the car for some air conditioning, but it says: the doors should be locked, the key fab should be out of the car to start the car.

I'm listening to an audio through a webpage, as soon as I change the volume it starts my last music. This is really annoying. I should guess the right volume, unlock my phone, resume my audio. Old physical volume knobs only changed the volume, not start one of the few apps they know about.

Oh and if I've been listening to loud music and now someone's in the car, I can't lower the volume without starting the music. I want to start with a low volume and then increase it.

These are some of the many stupid UX decisions. I would still not drive an old car. Especially ICE. But would pray that the equivalent of Frame.work appears, I can get an open source car with an open source infotainment.

With Chevrolet starting to sell DIY EV packages and the general simplification of the mechanics of EV cars, I believe such a thing would eventually happen.

[zackify]

After seeing kia evs and having a Tesla. Its the only good EV brand because the software from everywhere else is a complete joke.

Kia will tell me my doors are unlocked when I'm at home.

Tesla has a set home feature. Plus the 50 other annoyances.

Regen doesn't even persist with kia. You have to press the paddle to add it every time you start the car.

All this to say, the only good ux car anymore is tesla. Too bad they leak all recordings and have privacy problems too.

[a123b456c]

Disagree. I have been driving Kia for 2.5 years. I think the UX is quite good.

I would assume that most people who live in a city would want to know when the Kia is unlocked at home. I think your dislike of that feature may reflect your residence type or garage type.

My experience of Tesla UX was poor, given how few manual controls were available, and the extensive touchscreen reliance required while driving.

[zackify]

A Tesla can choose to auto lock. Or not lock.

Or not lock in a certain area.

Plus the app is an actual usable thing. Not a crap one that sends notifications about doors being unlocked in a garage that never updates.

Last year I had to take my kia to the dealer just to have connectivity work. Verizon had a change and you couldn't even fix it without going in. Antiquated dealer software updates as well.

[jdminhbg]

I also have the same combo of makes, and it's totally wild that people think the two are comparable technologically. The Kia is like owning a locked-down carrier dumbphone from 2007 and the Tesla is like owning an iPhone. Still a walled garden, not exactly an unlocked Android, but at least one that works and is built by developers who care.

[dzhiurgis]

It is ridiculous. I'm back at parents driving Kona EV. I swear at that piece of shit every day. Other than reliability issues - I painted myself into a corner last week.

Started a DC charger using card reader, which means you can't stop the charge session on the charger itself (only via app which I wasn't bothered to set up). Turns out car doesn't have a feature to stop DC charging. Had to wait for it to top up to 80%.

[jdminhbg]

Ha, mine's not an EV so I haven't hit that, but it absolutely tracks. Every part of the app feels like something that was built by a consultancy to fulfill a set of Jira tickets by people who have never and will never actually drive one of the cars.

[roeles]

> Regen doesn't even persist with kia. You have to press the paddle to add it every time you start the car.

Not on my ev3. The only time it changes Regen is when I hook up a trailer.

[dzhiurgis]

> touchscreen reliance required while driving.

Give us an example lol

[senordevnyc]

Sigh, I’m so afraid you’re right, since I don’t want to buy a Tesla for values reasons. I wonder if Rivian will be competitive on the software front?

[stringfood]

if it makes you feel better you are supporting American automakers and American workers when you buy tesla - has helped a lot of people swallow the musk pill when buying one

[js4ever]

Wow so you prefer to purchase a worse product to appease your leftist views? (or is it just typical virtue signaling?)

[senordevnyc]

You can characterize it however you’d like, but yes, there are limits to what I am willing to support financially, regardless of the quality of what they’re selling.

[dlcarrier]

You mean the bZ4X. It wasn't enough that the name is incomprehensible, they also capitalized it incomprehensibly. I think the primary goal of that car was to see how few they could sell, so they could go back to hybrid and hydrogen.

[donalhunt]

The VW eUp! has a similar naming consistency issue. Is it an electric VW Up? VW eUP!? VW e•Up!? VW e-Up!? Who knows...

[anentropic]

best pronounced with a Yorkshire accent I believe

[usui]

Why are car companies other than Tesla and BYD so dumb with their EV naming strategy, but perfectly fine at naming gasoline cars? Really curious because it seems like you have to put in effort to be this silly at naming. Reminds me of how Microsoft names anything.

[dlcarrier]

I forgot to mention, it's stylized as: ᵇZ4X

[CrimsonRain]

That's because you bought a car from a company which places UX at the bottom of their list. On top of that, even if they place it high on their list, they are simply incompetent at it.

All of the things you described work perfectly as you'd expect from good UX pov on a Tesla. And Rivian should not be far behind either.

[toephu2]

New Teslas are not a UX nightmare... go test drive a Kia, Hyundai, Toyota, GM, etc, then lastly a Tesla. Come back and tell me which car has the best software.

[stringfood]

2026 hyundai is fine but is nothing special. Hyundai kona actually has an insane amount of physical buttons, around 50

[dvlsg]

My Hyundai likes to auto slam on the brakes when cars in front of me turn off the road, even when I definitely won't hit them. It's almost caused collisions with cars behind me.

[m463]

> New cars are UX nightmares.

It's amazing that china might be the one stepping up and regulating sanity by returning good turn signals and gear selectors:

https://www.notateslaapp.com//news/3593/tesla-likely-to-make...

(on some models tesla has turn signals as buttons on the wheel/yoke and gear selection on the ...touchscreen... yikes)

[FeloniousHam]

My Y has the stalk, but the touchscreen gear selection is no issue. (Ignoring the fact that I rarely manually drive the car) I only touch the screen to put it in gear once, maybe twice on a drive, and I'm stopped in any case.

Add in the fact that car will automatically put the car in the right "gear" 80% of the time based on environment (curbs, walls, etc.), it's even less important how the gear selected. Getting into other cars, I'm struck by how much space in the center console is wasted by this vestige of an actual manual gear shifter. Also the silly paddles on the steering wheel.

[m463]

I have to disagree. There are a few situations where it is dangerous.

- anything involving a quick 3-point turn. Or making a u-turn and not making it and having to back up a bit. (don't know if the car can guess right)

- creeping out to make a turn when poor visibility and having to quickly back up out of the way of something. (the car cannot guess here)

This stuff requires quick maneuvers and situational awareness. With a stalk this is all intuitively done keeping your eyes on the road and setting the direction. looking at a touchscreen or relying on the UI guess in the middle of all this is bad news.

[pyridines]

What I hate about my new Toyota's volume knob is that there is no indication of volume level in the UI, and the knob itself doesn't ratchet. So I have absolutely no feedback about how much louder or quieter it's going to get when I turn the knob. If I have no music going, but I'm waiting to hear the next GPS instructions, how can I make sure I'm going to hear them? If I'm not sure where the volume is at right now, I can't, unless I turn it and then try and trigger some sound effect or something. It's needlessly complicated.

[al_borland]

> But would pray that the equivalent of Frame.work appears, I can get an open source car with an open source infotainment.

You may want to check out Slate. They just started taking orders I think. Every one off the line is the same, then you can customize it how you want with aftermarket stuff. There is no infotainment system, bring your own.

https://www.slate.auto

[wkjagt]

I hate that my 2020 Ioniq EV takes decisions for me, and just overall pretends to know better. I've turned off all the gadgets I could find (lane assist etc, I hate the feeling of the steering wheel wanting to move by itself) but some remain. Some examples: (1) I want to move my car a couple of feet in the driveway, but it won't let me without my seat belt on. (2) Sometimes, even after just a few minutes, it'll replace the whole main display (speedometer etc) with an image of a cup of coffee and tells me to take a break (3) It won't do cruise control under 30 km/h (which is ok I guess), but instead of refusing to enable cruise control under 30 km/h, it will set the speed to 30 and accelerate. (4) And the most annoying (but maybe not in the same category) : when I'm braking, and drive over a bump, it'll temporarily disable regen (ABS related?), causing a sudden loss in applied braking power. This was very scary at first, but now that I know, I scan the road for bumps when slowing down.

All that said though, my wife's 2 year old Ioniq 5 is way worse with the gadgets and seems to be always beeping for everything.

In other news, I test drove a Volvo 240 yesterday and am picking it up later this week.