Things made as a result of cynical box-ticking are never good. It's better to fill your life with things designed by people trying to make something great. Even if they didn't fully succeed, you can appreciate the effort. Whereas something made grudgingly will depress you with every detail.

> What counts as a trick? Roughly, it's something done with contempt for the audience. For example, the guys designing Ferraris in the 1950s were probably designing cars that they themselves admired. Whereas I suspect over at General Motors the marketing people are telling the designers, "Most people who buy SUVs do it to seem manly, not to drive off-road. So don't worry about the suspension; just make that sucker as big and tough-looking as you can." -- http://www.paulgraham.com/goodart.html

> Things made as a result of cynical box-ticking are never good.

The original versions of the Fiat 500 itself, the Morris Mini, the Beetle, and the 2CV would disagree. Ok, you might have a point on the 2CV, but it's owners loved it.

How was the original 500 “box-ticking”? It changed the company.

Or the Beetle?

Because, in dev speak, the parts of the code base that get the most love are the ones the devs enjoy working with. The car that was produced begrudgingly as a means to get back to the cars the engineers wanted to make doesn't exactly inspire confidence that parts will be available and cheap, mechanics will be able to service it in a decade, people will make 3rd party parts, etc..

In cars there is a lot of hidden value in buying popular models.

These are some good points about longevity, but the people I know who own 500es love them and say they drive well. For now :)

Because I want them to do better.

As an environmentalist this vehicle goes against my ethics. It exists to allow them to sell more pollutant vehicles in California. It's all sizzle and no steak. There are better EVs out there. Most car manufacturers will take customer feedback to incorporate into newer models. FCA is having none of that with the 500e. They aren't interested in customer feedback just government CAFE regs.

You should probably be angry at the CAFE regs too. It's what (supposedly) had prevented all the manufacturers from selling a small pickup, which is why Ford stopped selling the Ranger. They basically switched to making the F150, then making it larger (actually, I have suspected without proof that what they did was move models downline - sometime post 1990s, the F150 became really larger - the size of that era's F250, and the F250 became the size of the F350 - Ford's re-introduction of the Ranger? About the size of the 1990s F150...again, I have no proof of this).

Lots of people want a small pickup like the Ranger (Toyota also followed along - compare sizes of the Tacoma of the 90s vs today - I suspect they all changed in size), but they can't buy one. It has something to do with CAFE rules, plus some weird calculation of area - so the larger the vehicles footprint, the more it'll pass or offset or something; I'm not sure how it works.

But something changed in the 1990s - and now we have this.

Yeah I remember something vague about CAFE and EPA rules from that era. It created a lot of perverse incentives do to poor planning. Like Hummer H2s were classified as work utility trucks and didn't have to adhere to the tight emissions rules of smaller vehicles. So you had soccer moms and realtors slap a magnetic sign on the back and, TADA!, commercial vehicle. And your "work truck" with heated leather seats was now eligible for all kinds of tax deductions.

The 500e is an underwhelming compliance vehicle but they seem to have already changed their mind considering that next year the Fiat 500 won't even be available as a gas model, it'll be electric only.