putting a cap on my car research by writing a blog post about all the things that piss me off about new cars in 2026 - probably going to put up with my EX30 for a while longer, maybe some better cars will go on sale next year
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@decryption My Kia EV6 ticks all of your boxes except one. Every time I set off I have to hold a button for two seconds to disable lane departure alert which is a tad overzealous. No way to permanently disable it. Otherwise, it’s a brilliant car.
@mikecarden yeah the GT-Line is one of the cars I’d like to test drive (along with the Nissan Ariya). I love that they didn’t pollute it with a glass roof
@jon no indication that VW Australia will sell it here. They don’t sell the old ID3 and their sales of the ID4 & ID5 have been weak. Hopefully they persist, but I think VW Australia thinks its customers aren’t “ready” for EVs, while they get their lunch stolen by Geely, BYD etc
@decryption I share most of your requirements - except I'm not tall; here in Europe we ended up with the Renault 5. Physical buttons even for most climate control tasks and normal door handles!
Unfortunately the reason it's not sold in Australia is wild... missing a top tether for the middle seat...
https://www.carsales.com.au/editorial/details/why-renault-5-is-not-sold-in-australia-151624/
@michel_slm same with the Nissan Micra which is based on the Renault. And the Volkswagen ID3 Neo/ID Polo :(
Lots of neat little EVs sold in Europe but not here because we have big car brain disease
@decryption even ID3! Ouch
The EX30 was on my shortlist but it feels wide here in Ireland (I used to drive the much larger Kia EV6 in the US - another country where cars are needlessly big, it felt small there)
I so wish they have a driver dash like larger Volvos, or an HUD like the new BMW i3 / ix30 thoigh
@michel_slm the EX30 feels like a lot of corners cut. When I got it 2 years ago it was the only EV that was even close to my needs (not too big, decent range) - lots more competition now, but not sold here! I hope with the Chinese brands bringing in small EVs (BYD Atto 1, Geely EX2) that are selling well, other brands will too. Hyundai’s Ioniq 3 looks interesting and the Skoda Epiq is high on my shortlist.
@decryption pauses research so as to afford a Duo to use for a few months 😂
@jellway my car budget and phone budget are getting closer together and i dont like it
@decryption I absolutely love all the physical buttons and knobs in my Mazda 3 hatchback, I just really wish it was offered at least as a plug-in hybrid. As good as it is on gas, it still bums me out every time I fill it up...
@nbailey mazda used to give a shit about this, but they appear to have given in to the trend
https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a71614324/mazda-touchscreens-vs-physical-controls/
@decryption just want to sell well done on the spreadsheet from a fellow spreadsheet nerd. ❤️
@butterscotch a spreadsheet helps organise the chaos
@decryption my now 2 yo MG4 meets most of the criteria (except buttons for AC). It does make it hard when you look at newer cars, knowing that it is possible to have nice things. It came with a mandatory black roof, so the first thing was to wrap it to match the silver body. Dropped the car temperature about 2-3°.
@Blacksmithoz the MG4 is good, but one of my personal requirements is driver's seat memory so my wife and I can share the car without having to constantly readjust the seat & mirror. If it was just me driving it, there would be a lot more not-shit car choices
Elexio has no glass roof.
$59k drive away
Door handles are flush, but aren't too weird. Can still be pulled in an emergency(will automatically unlock in a crash anyway). Manual from inside.
Memory drivers seat
No display behind steering wheel, have a heads up display at the bottom of windscreen, with a black background. Works well, better than the byd transparent in middle of the windscreen.
Voice commands are a gimmick.
Screen covers passenger side, then driver gets a bit dedicated to them to left of steering wheel. Looks impressive and pretty but less picture of car and interior and instead have bigger buttons on the touch screen.
Not keen on adaptive cruise control, rather have dumb one like my other cars. Set a speed and I will smoothly adjust. But maybe that is lack of use and fine tuning by me.
Good 360 camera, but turns off too easily, some tight carparks would be nice to see you aren't close to scraping your wheels, but go over a couple of km/h and it turns off.
All the normal indicators, headlights stalks as well as gear stalk.
Sister to kia EV5 long-range, but drove better, bit better vision and better lux for price. Would have to go for the EV5 GT line to match inclusions.
No whistle ext mirror over 80kmh like the sealion 7.
No frunk.
@SuperMoosie @Blacksmithoz yes it’s in my spresdsheet - loads of range too, around $50k drive away for the elite, reasonable value
@decryption the Geely I drive obviously doesn't meet your criteria, but reading through this I am happy it doesn't seem to be quote as crappy as some of the cars out there. Some people have to use a phone app to get into their car, what the hell?
@jimbob the EX5 at least has a dial thingy near the driver which helps
@decryption our $14K Octavia is choofing along nicely. See attached for everything it has cost us so far. It's due for it's 120K service which will probably cost about $3000 in the next few weeks. So far we've had it four months and have driven 2348KM, so we aren't doing massive kilometres. Petrol isn't cheap but then again we're not using that much as we generally only use it two or three times a week and mostly for short trips, and it's economical. On freeway driving it's been as low as 4.8l/km, on average we get well under 6 even driving around town. It has all the cool bells and whistles (mostly), and when I put my foot down in sport mode it GOES (even though it's only a 1.4litre engine). We are rapt, it's the perfect car for us. Hopefully it lasts us a good ten year at least. Even if we have major issues (eg it requires a gearbox replacement or something like that) there is no way this car will cost us anywhere near as much as any EV we might have purchased.
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@mittyoz if only it was electric :(
@decryption We just sold our ex30 back to the dealer after 15 months. It was beyond frustrating.
No replacement yet. not sure I have a candidate.
Biggest issues:
- brakes seem to require can bus comms & were occasionally unresponsive
- the only unlock location is the driver door. But with the car plugged in, it’s impossible to reach. Unlocking required the phone every day.
- one pedal drive on max regen was weak
- the steering wheel buttons were very bad. They require exact finger placement
@jpsays wow unresponsive brakes is a shitshow - for that reason alone I would have sold it too. Agree on the steering wheel controls, I have so many unrecognised touches that end up requiring me to look at the wheel instead of the road.
@decryption Have we talked about this theory I heard: that in the olden days, say Toyota mid 90s, big OEMs had Ergonomics specialists, that did things like design interfaces, put buttons and levers in the right places.
Now we have combined Entertainment and Control packages, and instead of ergonomics experts we get coders deciding what the inside of a car should be like.
@evcricket every day we stray further from god's light
@decryption Great read, my feelings exactly. I was holding onto a Hyundai Elantra for a long time just because it still had keyed ignition. I finally swapped over to an Ioniq 6 which is still annoyingly modern in many ways but at least it has a roof and mostly physical buttons.
I still relish occasionally driving my 2010 Ford Ranger which was the last small pickup truck released in the US before they only started making huge ones. It's got a CD player, a radio, and no other infotainment system.
@grumpy I had an Ioniq 6 for a few months before getting my EX30. Very nice car, only fault I had with it was that the iPedal/regen settings reset every time I got in the car! Also the speed limit alerts were very annoying and also had to be disabled every trip. Not why I sold it (ended up being too big for my wife to drive) but Hyundai was so close, just a few lines of XML or JSON or whatever they use would have fixed it!
@decryption Ha! Same complaints. I settled on the auto drive mode because my one pedal driving made my wife carsick
@decryption I've been a VW-group addict for a while now, but the last few iterations of their EV's have had issues for me:
- Icky capacitive touch "buttons" (which you point out should be gone now)
- Replacing the 4 driver's window controls down to a more complicated UX with 3 buttons.
- Half a glove compartment for right-hand drive cars (due to fixed location of fuse box across all models, I'm told)
Things that seem inescapable:
- The rear seats on their "low" cars (Golf, Octavia are remarkably uncomfortable on long trips) - don't know about the tall/SUV types.
- Spectacularly bland colour choices.
@M0les imho VW got it right on the new ID Polo - which probably isn't going to be sold in Australia :(
@decryption I looked at your criteria in your post, because they were similar to mine when shopping for an electric car earlier in the year, and noticed that the car I eventually got wasn’t in your spreadsheet despite meeting those criteria - the 2026 MG4 Essence 64. Has regular handles, key fobs, no sunroof, 465km WTLP, physical controls for cruise control and climate control, and I’ve found that the ADAS is tuned fairly well for me (as someone who really would prefer to not have those features. I’m wondering why it was excluded from your rubric despite other MGs making the list?