The closest thing I could find to a "normal car but electric" was the Hyundai Kona EV (I know, it's more small-SUV than 'car). So, I bought one.
It's good. There are physical controls for the temperature and volume, and the door handles aren't stupid.
I walked away from a Ford Mach-E because I didn't want to have to explain how to open the doors to ever person I drove for the next five years.
Note that this is a concept, I've never seen an actual production model look anything like the concept.
My father has a hybrid model, 2023 MY I think. It has physical controls for the radio, for AC and related things, for the heated seats, for the various "driver assist" features (like auto high beams, a parking thing (no idea what that is), radar, lane assist). It has a touchscreen, but that only seems to handle the maps, fancy radio controls (think equalizer and such), and other "car settings", whatever those are. You can absolutely drive it without ever having to interact with the touchscreen while doing normal things. I hate touchscreen controls as much as the next HN poster, but I have strictly 0 beef with the Corolla on this front. Door handles and windows work exactly the same as on my 2005 "dumb" car. Hell, I think it even has a physical toggle for the "automatic night mode" on the rear-view mirror, while mine couldn't be "non automatic".
To GP's point, I don't think it ever was an "entry level" car, just a "normal compact" car. I don't see why adding an electric drivetrain would have someone expect it would somehow become a basic, "entry-level" car.
I don't say we don't need those, but the Corolla never seems to have targeted that market, at least here in Europe. There always were plenty similar-sized cheaper and more basic cars from domestic manufacturers. Is it different in the US?
Yeah the new Nissan Leaf looked horrible as a concept car, very "2003 idea of the future". The actual production version is just a boring SUV
As an exception to this rule, the original Audi TT was surprisingly similar to the concept car and even the initial concept sketches. They had a crazy design idea and just went with it.
It's too bad Europe and Asia get all of the nice EV sedans like Dacia Spring and BYD Dolphin. This article even says Toyota hasn't committed to this Corolla EV in the US market, which is shameful.
Not quite normal but not "future" - the Renault 5 E-tech electric is nice but I don't think it's available in the US.
It was too expensive!
Looking forward to the Volkswagen ID Polo hitting the used market in a couple of years. Physical buttons, decent range and charge times, and it’s rated to pull reasonable loads.
I had a good camping experience with the Niro. Since Kia doesn't believe in spare tires being default, I was able to stuff sleeping bags, beds and a bunch of other stuff all underneath the hatchback floor, in all that secret space, leaving a ton of room above for everything else.
I like the acceleration and quiet/clean operation of electrics, but in the end I got a 6 speed manual.
Electrics are super dangerous; they accelerate like souped-up competitive track cars. They really need to tone that down: use much smaller motors with less torque, and hack the software to cap the acceleration.
I'm a much calmer driver in a manual. I'm driving for fuel economy, so I'm always in a gear where I have no power. (And in a 6 speed that has about the range of a 5 speed, there is always a good gear to be in at city speeds, where you are at between 1500-1800 RPM). So, I cannot just step on the accelerator on a whim because that will usually do nothing. There is an activation energy for speeding up, due to the chore of shifting down, which discourages doing it casually. In an electric it's like, oh, I suddenly see this opportunity, and blam: you're on the accelerator and the distance between here and there is erased faster than you can hit backspace.
Sure there are caveats to each of my statements (maybe you want luxury vehicle or maybe you actually do indeed tow a lot with your pickup truck). But for 95% of drives - Tesla's are vastly superior. Zeekr is getting there with their software tho, but without FSD every car is a joke.
I have to drive quite a bit because kids. If I like the driving, it's less of a chore.
With a manual car, I never grumble when I have to drive, even if it takes me away from something fun.
BTW: The price premium for electric is offset by the lower cost of electricity, and the fact that electricity's cost is much less volatile than gas.
It makes the future feel fun, and feels like a return to adventurous aesthetics for the pure sake of it. At the very least, it's noticably different and interesting. I hope architecture follows suit.
there is a chance that slapping one screen is now lower cost than few dozens mechanical knobs, connectors and sensors
I must be the minority surely, but given the choice between knobs and screen, knobs are the deciding factor. Even if it's more expensive, it's UX that you use permanently while operating heavy machinery!
What am I missing? Or is it just that folks want buttons? Is it the design?
I really like having dedicated buttons to disable driving assistance. It's handy when you're going through a drive through and you want to disable parking beeps that remind you not to run into the building. It's also handy if lane following gets annoying when road conditions demand ignoring the lane lines. I think NHTSA pushed to remove easy access to disable assistance though?
I don't mind using a screen for things I don't need to do while in motion. Like if I want to set if the car should beep when I lock the doors, or how many times the blinker should blink if I tap it and didn't mean it but it wants to be helpful... screens are wonderful for that. But if I need to focus on a screen to do things while I'm driving, I've lost focus on the surroundings.
Also if you had electric door locks and windows (we didn't) the driver's door had 4 window levers and a child lock button while everyone else had their own window lever.
- turning the air conditioning up or down (or off) while I'm driving and feel too hot/cold
- adjusting the volume of music or the radio while driving
- turning on the radio
- turning seat heaters on or off
I don't want to fiddle with a touchscreen to do any of these things while the car is in motion.
On the other hand, boy when I get a rental car there are so many buttons to mess around with it's like going backwards in time (for me) in terms of ease of use. Even something like having to turn on/off the car itself is now a chore. Why do I need to even turn the car on? It should just always work. Obviously part of that is "it's a new car" but a lot of that stuff seems very needlessly complex. I'm not talking about turning the heat on or off even though a lot of those implementations seem way more complicated than they need be (engineers gonna engineer and over-complicate things unless someone stops them) but other random things.
But I'm talking beyond just the buttons. Pure analog. No telemetry. No cellular connection. Real rack and pinion again. Real gauges. No drive by wire wherever possible. Maybe the actual ev motor output can be controlled with a simple switch in the circuit vs an entire ecu with throttle profiles and all the bullshit. Basically, your car in 2003, with the gas engine replaced with an electric motor. Pure car. Dead simple systems. Easy access engine bays.
It isn't happening again. These things are ipads on wheels that try and surveil you and come up with datapoints they can somehow make some money off of.
Not just that: my hands get dry enough sometimes that my phone's touch interface doesn't work reliably, in which case, I'd expect a touchscreen interface in a newer car would face similar problems. Physical buttons don't have that problem.
Your gas car in 2003 probably directly connects the accelerator pedal to the throttle ... but it also has an entire ecu with a whole bunch of stuff to figure out how much fuel to add given the throttle position / airflow and also almost certainly has the ecu controlling ignition too. Even my 1981 van has an ECU to sets fuel volume, although it doesn't have electronic ignition or water cooling.
You can open the throttle all the way, and if the fuel volume doesn't change, you won't get much in the way of extra vrooming.
That said, as simple as possible, but no simpler is a good goal.
But I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with all these gauges and stuff. I have 0 interest in trying to repair my car or understand how any of it works. I just want to get in, have it be super comfortable, everything works and it gets me from A to B pretty fast. The only gauge I care about is the speed at which the car is traveling. Well the battery too I guess but if I'm taking a trip where that's of concern the car handles the stops for me.
I get that people do enjoy that stuff which is super cool - I'm not hating on it, but figured I'd just provide a different perspective maybe. For me the biggest concern is just this dog shit Android software and abandonware that all the manufacturers create (except Tesla funny enough - I'm not a shill or anything, Elon sucks and I'll never buy another one because of him) which I think is probably the biggest negative to the iPad-ification. Thankfully there's Android Auto and Apple Car Play but still the computers in the cars can be underpowered to use those.
LOL are you ready to perform a burnout every time you touch the accelerator?
Now I'm imagining drivers swapping tubes as they stop for a quick charge.
It's a car. That's electric.
Physical buttons. Normal doors. Normal design. Normal handles. Normal controls. Drives great and accelerates better than an economy gas car.
As a bonus, that means almost the entire car is standard. Other than the electric drive train, a regular mechanic can work on everything else: tires, wheels, brakes, suspension, etc.
It's given us basically zero problems. Maintenance so far is a few minor recall items (free fixes) and a tire rotation. We bought it new during COVID.
Only downside to the 2021 model was the CHaDemO (or however you caps it) plug, which is obsolescent. I think recent models have CCS. There is a converter dongle and if I fast charged often I'd pick one up. Apparently they work but they're a little pricey since unfortunately it's not just a simple plug converter. It's a different signaling and locking system, so it has to be a smart dongle.
The Leaf is massively underrated IMO.
It has the usual modern car cost cutting where steering wheel inputs are plastic panels with mysterious capacitive regions and no feedback so you can't feel if you've successfully pressed anything, whether you pressed the right thing, or if your fingertips are too dry and don't register. Most of the center console inputs are replaced with a screen with another row of cheap capacitive touch icons below it.
Charging is behind the times again with an awkward 2-port arrangement, but it's different from the previous gen's J1772 L1/L2 and CHAdeMO for L3 up to 50 kW.
For 2026 they replaced the CHAdeMO port with NACS, supporting a maximum of 150 kW L3 charging, but it still uses a separate J1772 port for L1/L2 unlike every other car where the NACS port does both.
All things considered it's a solid entry level EV.
Don't get me wrong, my brother has one and it is an okay car. It's just not great. There are a number of limitations which is why he gave it to my mom and drives a bolt. (the use value of a leaf is poor enough that it isn't worth trying to sell.)
Any other electric car is suffering from the leaf's bad reputation, and yet they don't have the problems I named.
... probably.