I think in (most of) europe, most of the safety-related features are mandatory on all new cars these days, so all these features must come on all trim levels.
This does make the base model a lot more expensive then a few years back, but you get all the nice features, so that also makes them cheaper in general.
Are you sure about that? The sustainable operation of modern cars is in doubt, from very specialized parts and fully integrated modules, to critical software that will not be updated, to dealer keying required for most every substitute part, the era of anyone being able to run cars for 200,000 miles long after the warranty is over will soon be in the history books.
I haven't seen any evidence that the "reliable" car brands are trying to change that dynamic moving forward. I think we are seeing a change in consumer behavior that leads to increased demand for new cars, but that is not connected to the reliability of the platform of the long term maintenance requirements.
If electric cars are actually simpler like all of these experts keep telling us, then in the next 3-5 years, we'll know which models are living up to expectations and which ones are not aging as gracefully.
The other thing to consider is the "old" batteries. If I can buy a used Nissan Leaf and harvest the batteries for a home-storage project after the frame kicks the can due to rust or some other problem, then I'm essentially able to keep those batteries as a form of equity on the vehicle. We also will see new companies popping up to address these home-battery conversion projects with plug and play harnesses to drop in your car batteries after the vehicle is no longer worthy of use on the road.
Sure, batteries will also continue to come down in price across the board, so that calculation also needs to be considered, but we're in this interesting middle zone where a lot of used EV value is being left on the table because the business market hasn't quite kept up with the demand for the next step in the lifecycle of modern EVs.
You say this like the average age and reliability of cars hasn't been skyrocketing for years.
Toyota offers a 10-year warranty on new cars, which would have been unthinkable 20 years ago.
You can't update the infotainment, but the engine controls have remained modular because it's simply too hard to convince people to buy truly unrepairable cars. Tesla did it, and once people realized that gently tapping a Model 3 was likely to total it resale values plummeted.
Honestly, I don't like this trend. Some of these features - like lane keeping - encourage/enable distracted driving. Meanwhile the necessary sensors make cars so expensive to repair that they're becoming a disposable good. As my driving instructor says: If you need a lane keeping system to keep your car in a lane, you shouldn't be behind the wheel.
Lane keeping is also tremendously dangerous, if the system gets confused on e.g. construction sites. I hated how much I had to fight the car not to swerve into the huge barriers running along the middle of the original road layout.
The problem is knowing which lane keeping assist systems are good and which are not. Every dealer just treats it as a 'checkbox' item and implementations vary by model and year.
Had a Kia loaner a few years back that to my surprise tried to actively kill me by repeatedly steering into oncoming traffic on a provincial road. I really prefer steering myself to last-second correcting a temperamental computer.
> The problem is knowing which lane keeping assist systems are good and which are not. Every dealer just treats it as a 'checkbox' item and implementations vary by model and year.
Yep, I agree.
I used to travel to my parent's home 300km away once a month, and changing from a 2010 no-assist car to a Tesla Model 3 with AP (not FSD) back in 2019 was a game changer. I used to drive there on a Friday evening after work, and I basically collapsed into bed when I got there. With AP I was still tired of course, but also still functioning and way more alert. In my experience Tesla's AP UX is very good: chime when engaging, chime when disengaging, you don't need to look at the screen to know the state you're in, and if you touch controls it lets you know (via chime) and deactivates.
One of the most horrible UXes for me has been on a new Hyundai i10 with the basic lane assist (and I know it's very similar on a new VW Golf that my cousin is leasing):
- there's no chimes, you're forced to look at the screen at the center of the dashboard
- said display is 100x400 (or sth similar) 16-color pixel screen in the center of the dashboard
- out of said display, you need to look in the very corner for an icon of 10x10 pixels that can be yellow, green or white (which under low backlight/high contrast conditions can be tough to decipher)
- lane-keep is on by default at every car start, and tends to butt in on twisty roads (very common where I live), so half-way through a turn you'll feel the steering wheel literally lose force-feedback, while you're still applying force, and swearing ensues
- someone thought that constantly reminding people of the speed limits was a good idea, so the car will scream incessantly at you for being 50.1 over 50
- but will happily let you change lanes and re-engage auto-steer automatically (you need to manually enable this) while doing 120km/h on the highway without any hint that it's re-engaging automatically
- the speed warning is yet another setting that you can turn off at runtime, but you can't persist properly
- auto-steer, after is manually engaged, will stay happily engaged even after you leave they highway and are at very low speeds, and will try to correct you when doing roundabouts
I think the Tesla UX is way better there, and I think regulatory bodies should start preventing things like the i10 assist to be sold to customers, because they're actively dangerous. I've literally had minor heart attacks due to the lane-keep butting in on twisty roads - I thought the front tires were slipping for some reason.
I was driving until not long ago a VW with all those systems and, while less pleasant than the current Audi, I never met any of those inconveniences you met. Yes I know sample size, but... So, lane assist had zero visuals involved - activated or not activated, and giving your wheel a soft bump in that direction (it never tried hard turns, for better or for worse). The downside is that construction sites with colorful lines would indeed confuse it, so you'd either press the disable button, or keep your hands on the wheel (wife complained about it, but for me it was acceptable). The Audi handles construction sites perfectly, so far (soon a year). Speed limits meant on both cars only a visual some place, so you could ignore it (Audi highlights on the HUD the speed limit). So all in all, I believe Hyundai f'up it big time, or something got really wrong in that car - a perfectly good reason to give it up either way.
A lot fewer people should be behind the wheel than is currently the case in most countries. Unfortunately in the world we live in we need to make do with less than perfect solutions for this.
I agree, and I think we're in a dangerous middle ground between fully engaged driving (manual transmissions) fully automated driving. It's hard to evaluate the net impact of these features, but I would not be surprised to learn that lane keeping actually results in more injuries and deaths due to distracted driving than it prevents
