I can't agree more and very strange your comment is downvoted.

Right now the EV market I think is open to electric cars for people like us: physical gauges, just the bare minimum for driving (I'd include ABS for safety and cruise control for some minimal comfort), slick interior with a subtle vintage touch maybe. No autopilot, no Netflix for you. Oh and physical keys.

I'm constatnly thinking about this, but unfortunately starting a car company seems to be almost as difficult as going to Mars. But who knows, maybe some day.

I agree with what you're saying, but on a purely personal note, I just couldn't see myself enjoying an electric car - even knowing that a Tesla absolutely destroys anything I've ever driven performance wise (until the motors overheat or the batteries die).

Few things in life compare to manually inserting a key, commanding the starter, hearing and feeling the (preferably V>=8) roar to life, and listening to the purrs and growls and roars of the steel steed that becomes an extension of yourself as you glide across pavement or dirt at inhuman speeds.

Not everyone appreciates it - and that's totally OK! But a part of me will die the day they inevitably ban manually driven cars and/or internal combustion engines. ICE vehicles really do have characteristics that subjectively make them feel like living, fire breathing pets. Robots are cool and technically marvelous, but there will always be something irreplaceably special about a 2000-4000 pound device that has a soul.

Look, ICEs will eventually die unless a new type of fuel is found for them (none on the horizon so far). Which means the vibration of the car that's not even moving will go away for good, and we'll all probably forget about it.

However, the manual part. Nobody said you should control the light bulbs in your house with your mobile phone, there are still physical switches which are alive and thriving. They are simple, they don't need a WiFi connection and don't require your email address and other personal data to control the lights. They just work. I don't believe much in the "software-ization" and IoT-zation of things around us, apart from some obviously useful cases like your home stereo that plays music from your phone.

So on cars. I believe the industry or some part of it will take a step back from "software-ization" and simplify the vehicles a bit. There will be cars with (optional) physical keys, gauges and controls. There will be software that will help to make driving safer, which is undeniably important, but at the same time it will let you control the car the same way as the light switch on the wall. I see the demand for it and I just can't stop obsessively thinking about it. I wonder if there's anyone here reading this thinking along the same lines?

> starting a car company seems to be almost as difficult as going to Mars

And yet think of all the economic benefit that would come with starting that new company. I don't know what you're thinking of as the difficulties , but my mind immediately went to the intense regulation involved. Too bad it isn't easier.

It's the initial investment, too big to even start thinking about it. Also I presume to improve your chances you need some serious names in your team. Probably not the "former Ferrari/Porsche product designer" caliber but something close.

Idk. You could probably get pretty far just starting with hand made custom cars. 5 guys, 4 welding machines and an electrical engineering degree could probably make a few in their first year to just get started.

I’d also like to see a minimal, raw, stripped down EV, which still has a good range.

Meh, you have romanticised it beyond what many of us feel. And are almost certainly making up how "in touch" you are. (Not to mention that you can't lay claim to a lot of Luddite philosophy, but then dodge it at the end with a denial.)

I don't want to preclude someone doing this. But it is a luxury. And not worth it for most of us.

And I say this as someone that likes my chain geared bike. Subjectively, I love the thing. Objectively, an ebike is almost certainly better in every way.

> And are almost certainly making up how "in touch" you are

I think it's a bit over the top to tell people how they feel about something. I for one agree with OP. I actually enjoy driving. Maybe as much or more than some people enjoy listening to good music, write good code, or reading a good book. No point in belittling the experience just because you'd rather watch the movie.

This being said I understand why there is this disconnect between driver and car. Not only are many people not that much into the activity of driving beyond its practical purpose (and they'd surely choose to delegate as much of it as possible if given the choice, for convenience), safety plays a very important role. The driver starts being the weak link and this delegation perhaps shouldn't be optional. Convenience, efficiency, or "feel" may be entirely your business but safety also concerns all those around you.

My point in the "in touch" was supposed to be restricted to how in touch with the machine you are. It probably feels great, but there is a lot there that you are almost certainly incapable of feeling.

And this is a giant false dichotomy. Some people enjoy these new cars. In ways people that enjoy the old may or may not understand.

Again, I don't want to preclude anyone with these experiences. I just reject the romantic attitude that something is getting lost. It is just changing. In most objective terms, for the better.

Well...you are objectively better "in touch" with the machine when you have explicit control over, and are therefore force to pay attention to, the gear, coupling between engine and wheels (clutch), and traction.

I don't think you can argue that modern cars aren't increasingly unloading a lot of driver responsibility onto the computer. I suppose it really is a question of how many different functions a driver has to pay attention to. In the limit you have a level 5 self driving car at which point you're totally removed from the experience and sure, by objective performance and safety metrics it's superior, but at that point there is no real pleasure derived from controlling the vehicle.

> I just reject the romantic attitude that something is getting lost

You really are losing aspects of control which some people enjoy managing manually. That enjoyment is the source of romanticization and those aspects are unquestionably disappearing. Granted, every person has their own happy medium on this spectrum of driving control, and personally I'd absolutely love an airplane style console where I have dozens of switches/dials to vary engine and suspension parameters, but I recognize that this is less than ideal according to safety constraints and market forces.

As an analogy, the fact that I can almost blindly pick any combination of computer components and expect them to work when assembled means there is subset of techies who lament the good old days where you had to carefully choose compatible components, hunt for appropriate drivers, and occasionally come up with your own kludges. Yeah, it's objectively easier now, but it's perfectly valid to romanticize the thrill of doing it the old hard way. Risk gives spice to life.

But you aren't objectively in better touch. You just think you are. This is literally why we have gauges and other instrumentation panels, so that you can see what is happening. Otherwise, you would stick to the very bare necessities that you have in most go-carts.

Which is not to say that stuff isn't fun. It is. A great feeling and when you are able to say something is off from just the feel, it feels good. Diagnosed some bad spark plugs this way. I just know I wasn't any closer to "feeling" the stresses on the rest of the machine. Especially when you consider the stresses hitting shocks and other parts.

Again, I liken this to my road bike. I love the experience. It is nice to recognize that one of my gears needs replacing because I can feel it off.

Nothing is lost here, for the folks that have internally geared bikes, though. Because I can still experience my derailer one. Which is the point. The experience is still there for those that want it. Just no longer on the same path as the rest of the folks.

Your computer analogy falls flat. You can't just blindly put together a computer any easier than you used to. Which is to say a standard computer has always been easy. But design one in constraints. Get an arduino and make a small rc car. Use a Raspberry Pi and add a camera. :) Plenty of challenges that you can have along the way. You could almost certainly relive some of the old challenges.

Nicholas Carr, 2015:

In suggesting that driving is no more than a boring, productivity-sapping waste of time, the Valley guys are mistaking a personal bias for a universal truth. And they’re blinding themselves to the social and cultural challenges they’re going to face as they try to convince people to be passengers rather than drivers. Even if all the technical hurdles to achieving perfect vehicular automation are overcome — and despite rosy predictions, that remains a sizable if — the developers and promoters of autonomous cars are going to discover that the psychology of driving is far more complicated than they assume and far different from the psychology of being a passenger. Back in the 1970s, the public rebelled, en masse, when the federal government, for seemingly solid safety and fuel-economy reasons, imposed a national 55-mile-per-hour speed limit. The limit was repealed. If you think that everyone’s going to happily hand the steering wheel over to a robot, you’re probably delusional.

There’s something bigger going on here, and I confess that I’m still a little fuzzy about it. Silicon Valley seems to have a good deal of trouble appreciating, or even understanding, what I’ll term informal experience. It’s only when driving is formalized — removed from everyday life, transferred to a specialized facility, performed under a strict set of rules, and understood as a self-contained recreational event — that it can be conceived of as being pleasurable. When it’s not a recreational routine, when it’s performed out in the world, as part of everyday life, then driving, in the Valley view, can only be understood within the context of another formalized realm of experience: that of productive busyness. Every experience has to be cleanly defined, has to be categorized. There’s a place and a time for recreation, and there’s a place and a time for productivity.

This discomfort with the informal, with experience that is psychologically unbounded, that flits between and beyond categories, can be felt in a lot of the Valley’s consumer goods and services. Many personal apps and gadgets have the effect, or at least the intended effect, of formalizing informal activities. Once you strap on a Fitbit, you transform what might have been a pleasant walk in the park into a program of physical therapy. A passing observation that once might have earned a few fleeting smiles or shrugs before disappearing into the ether is now, thanks to the distribution systems of Facebook and Twitter, encapsulated as a product and subjected to formal measurement; every remark gets its own Nielsen rating.

What’s the source of this crabbed view of experience? I’m not sure. It may be an expression of a certain personality type. It may be a sign of the market’s continuing colonization of the quotidian. I’d guess it also has something to do with the rigorously formal qualities of programming itself. The universality of the digital computer ends — comes to a crashing halt, in fact — where informality begins.

http://www.roughtype.com/?p=5813

Sounds like an experience better had on a closed course than a public street.