If there were two identical 300-mile-range cars on the market, one had a 1000-cycle-life and the other a 600-cycle-life, I'd take whichever was cheaper as long as the price difference was more than say $2000.

And if one of them had physical temperature knobs and a small centre screen, id choose it regardless of the price difference.

My dream car is a dumb electric car. Minimal internal computers to function. Battery management. And then no computers, no updates, no screens.

IMO your best bet is to take an older car and retrofit it. With mandatory ADAS looming (I believe EU has already passed a requirement that takes effect in 2022, and the US is surely not far behind), you won't be able to find a new "dumb" vehicle of any sort.

My speculation is that this all stems from the enhances crash safety characteristics of new cars. The doors on new cars are pretty much a foot thick, windowsills and dash higher, A-pillars thicker on new vehicles. This steel marshmellow-man of a car does a great job of protecting the occupants from previously bone-rending impacts like the head-on offset collision, with the tradeoff that you can't see for shit out of them.

Enter ADAS. No manufacturer wants to see their incident rates go up due to crashworthiness-vs-drivability tradeoffs. Now that the tech is available, manufacturers are incentivised to put ADAS in everything they sell.

I'd be happy to retrofit my good-condition Yaris to be a BEV with ~80km range (similar to first gen leaf). Is there actually a practical way to do this?

Practical? Not really: EV conversions usually don't make economic sense, due to the amount of labor and custom engineering involved.

It could probably be done though if you really wanted to do it and have the time and money. The simplest thing on a front-wheel drive car is probably to tear out the engine and replace it with a motor, keeping the transmission. If you have a manual transmission, it would make that part easier.

Finding room for batteries can be tricky, but if you're only looking for 80km of range that simplifies things considerably. You might be able to put a battery box where the gas tank was, and maybe some more batteries in the engine compartment if there's room. Putting batteries in the trunk might be okay too.

Things you'll probably need: a motor, a motor controller, a motor-transmission adapter plate of some kind, a coupler to attach the motor to the flywheel or transmission shaft, motor mounts, battery boxes, batteries, charger, battery management system, j1772 charge port (if in the U.S.), battery boxes, cabling, some assortment of contactors, fuses, and manual shut-off switches, a vacuum pump for the brakes, and so on.

In modern cars you might also need to figure out how to work around the car's electronics so that all the major systems function as expected.

I understand and sympathize with this sentiment, but…

… vehicle-state-aware and charging-station-state-aware navigation with auto-routing to Fast Charging is a massively beneficial feature for electric cars. Before I got my used Model S (2013, BTW), I had no idea how important this would be in eliminating range anxiety and enabling road trips, and I’ve had both a plug in hybrid Volt and a battery-electric (fast charging) Leaf which I’ve attempted to bring on road trips (a massive headache and cognitive burden is managing charge state and location of fast chargers, hoping it’s not broken at your destination…).

Tesla solved this fantastically well with the Supercharger network integration into in-car navigation. Anyone planning new EV infrastructure in the US should study and experience the Supercharger network (& attempt to do a similar trip in a non-Tesla EV) before making policy recommendations and decisions on EV infrastructure.

A dumb car should at least have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Backup cameras are mandatory, so you might as well do something useful with the screen.

Why are backup cameras mandatory? I don't want that either.

Make it a standard DIN radio slot and you can put in whatever stereo you want - and upgrade it in 5 years when your car still works great but the Bluetooth standard has changed.

Because mirrors can’t tell if you have a child sitting by your bumper.

There are several safety justifications for electronics in new cars. ABS, airbags, seatbelt pretensioner, auto-braking, and arguably lane keeping. (Not to mention battery management system, traction control, etc.)

Also, vehicle-state-aware and charging-station-state-aware navigation with auto-routing to Fast Charging is a massively beneficial feature for electric cars. Before I got my used Model S (2013, BTW), I had no idea how important this would be in eliminating range anxiety and enabling road trips.

Backup cameras are a legal mandate. It is honestly irresponsible to drive a car without a wide-angle backup camera. Might as well toss the mirrors out while you're at it.

> Backup cameras are a legal mandate.

Wasn't aware of this. Regardless, it should be a standard that can connect to any din stereo.

> It is honestly irresponsible to drive a car without a wide-angle backup camera.

The only time my car goes into reverse is when I've just performed a full walkaround (backing out of driveway) or I've just ceased driving forwards and have my eyes tuned to the mirrors.

> Might as well toss the mirrors out while you're at it.

That's absurd.

Legally mandatory. Because too many people (often kids!) have been killed or injured by inattentive drivers who back up without looking behind their cars.

You're basically describing Bollinger Motors.

My ideal car is this but also self driving which complicates matters a bit.

Dumb self+driving cars already exist! (It's just the wrong kind of dumb.)

> And if one of them had physical temperature knobs and a small centre screen, id choose it regardless of the price difference.

Get a Mach-E. It has physical controls! Oh, wait, its just a volume knob.

I don't know why noone uses physical controls for basic climate in EVs. Its the strangest thing to virtualize, IMO.

Niro EV has physical controls for climate, radio, etc.

Another dimension is weight, if price per kwh was identical these batteries would be be more efficient by making the car lighter. As well as efficiency and handling this presumably also affects the degredation per mile driven since you're discharging less energy to move the smaller battery.

True, and tires - either smaller (cheaper) tires or longer lifespan of those tires.

I'm looking at like this:

Max speed limit (in UK) is 70mph.

300 miles battery is 4h

4h is the maximum reccomended to drive without a break. I'd say 300 miles is just about right in terms of distance to force those like me to take a 30 min break.

Edit: I'd go for cheaper at this stage. Also as low tech as possible.

Do you own a BEV though?

At 70mph, your 300 mile range car is getting maybe 250-270, if it's 21C out. if it is colder or hotter, range does drop a bit to a lot. Dead of winter can get more like 150-175 miles range.

Then on top of it, for road trips, you often use the battery from 10-60.

Combine those two things, and your dead of winter BEV is needing to stop like every 100 miles.

But, thats like 5% of trips. most of the time this is vast overkill.

I agree, the point of comparison is a 600 mile car at 600 cycles is strictly better than a 300 mile car with 1,000 cycles.

Right, but you would never get this choice.

Maybe350 miles with 600 cycles vs 300 miles w 1000 cycles...

And if one had a steering wheel and the other a j^Hyoke, then I'd choose the former.