I am quite keen on the idea of an electric car.
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I am quite keen on the idea of an electric car.
I am less keen on the idea of a car which spies on me.
@neil Btw, if you are really thinking about getting an electric car, check out Jonny Smith's channel on Youtube (The Late Brake Show). He has done a lot of sensible reviews of electric cars over the years and is UK based.
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I have an electric bicycle, which I love, and use as often as I can. But I am looking here for a car.
I kind of like the old Nissan Leaf, and it might *just* fit the bill, range wise. But I've also read various concerns. So I umm and aaah about them.
Newer electric cars leave me with a sense of "nice car you got there. Shame if we changed something about it or spied on you".
I am not a car person.
I drive, but I don't enjoy driving particularly. It is a means to an end for me.
I much prefer to take a train but, sometimes, is either not possible, or else does not make sense (generally, time or money-wise).
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I am quite keen on the idea of an electric car.
I am less keen on the idea of a car which spies on me.
@neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk Then I can recommend Stellantis. Seems safe to assume that their spyware will be poorly-designed, buggy and unreliable.
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@neil I just want a simple analogue electric car… with knobs not screens. If I had the money I’d look at getting a classic car converted but it’s far from affordable

@not_a_label @neil just curious what you consider affordable? I've looked into converting my 1988 Suzuki Samurai to electric, looks like it'll be about $12,000. The car cost me $5000 six years ago, so $17,000 for an electric car seems like a good price.
For comparison to something similar here, the BYD S1 Pro starts at $30,000.
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@neil Btw, if you are really thinking about getting an electric car, check out Jonny Smith's channel on Youtube (The Late Brake Show). He has done a lot of sensible reviews of electric cars over the years and is UK based.
@RootMoose I am, but I much prefer reading to watching!
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I have an electric bicycle, which I love, and use as often as I can. But I am looking here for a car.
I kind of like the old Nissan Leaf, and it might *just* fit the bill, range wise. But I've also read various concerns. So I umm and aaah about them.
Newer electric cars leave me with a sense of "nice car you got there. Shame if we changed something about it or spied on you".
There's apparently a bunch of companies that do EV conversions of older cars in Britain.
https://insideevs.com/features/735220/uk-ev-conversion-industry/
I've seen videos of EV conversions where the car instrumentation is all analog.
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@sborrill Thanks. I would need to find out which features require an Internet connection!
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There's apparently a bunch of companies that do EV conversions of older cars in Britain.
https://insideevs.com/features/735220/uk-ev-conversion-industry/
I've seen videos of EV conversions where the car instrumentation is all analog.
@alienghic I doubt that my budget stretches to that!
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@artfulrobot @sborrill Mostly eSIMs these days, I think.
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@sborrill Thanks. I would need to find out which features require an Internet connection!
@neil To get the best from Octopus Intelligent Go, you need to grant access to Octopus to query the car's battery level. I send sat nav destinations to it. It's handy to send pre-heating schedules to it. But you can work around all these from the car itself or doing percentage calculations yourself
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@artfulrobot @sborrill Mostly eSIMs these days, I think.
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I am quite keen on the idea of an electric car.
I am less keen on the idea of a car which spies on me.
@neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk I'm very happy with my MG4, we also have a 2016 Renault Zoe which can do around 90 miles and has no connectivity
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@neil To get the best from Octopus Intelligent Go, you need to grant access to Octopus to query the car's battery level. I send sat nav destinations to it. It's handy to send pre-heating schedules to it. But you can work around all these from the car itself or doing percentage calculations yourself
@sborrill Thanks! I was wondering about daft things like the windows not opening!
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I am quite keen on the idea of an electric car.
I am less keen on the idea of a car which spies on me.
@neil
I think beyond a certain date they all spy on you. 2012? Don't know. But that would mean any modern all electric vehicle is another computer on wheels sending telemetry back to its producer and associated advertisers. You'll probably need to ID Verify, sorry 'age verify' to use it at some point.
Some people try to disable stuff but then cars either won't start or it invalidates insurance.
I miss driving and I'd hate to run an old gas gusler, but I'd also hate to have to buy a modern car. -
@neil I hear bicycles don't do that.
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I am not a car person.
I drive, but I don't enjoy driving particularly. It is a means to an end for me.
I much prefer to take a train but, sometimes, is either not possible, or else does not make sense (generally, time or money-wise).
@neil I very much wish I was in a tax bracket where I could afford to have someone do an electric conversion of an older vehicle. Though now I wonder if there are services out there that mod your car to cut it off from the mothership and put it more under your control?
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I am not a car person.
I drive, but I don't enjoy driving particularly. It is a means to an end for me.
I much prefer to take a train but, sometimes, is either not possible, or else does not make sense (generally, time or money-wise).
@neil and the price of an electric car that would replace my current diesel is a huge reason I won't be able to change right now.
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I have an electric bicycle, which I love, and use as often as I can. But I am looking here for a car.
I kind of like the old Nissan Leaf, and it might *just* fit the bill, range wise. But I've also read various concerns. So I umm and aaah about them.
Newer electric cars leave me with a sense of "nice car you got there. Shame if we changed something about it or spied on you".
@neil My wife got a used 2022 mustang mach e. It was cheaper than my toyota rav4, and a much better value, not including the cost of gas.
As for spying from the govmn't. You can disable a lot of that garbage on this car, set things to not auto update, opt-out, etc.
If you are very concerned you can pull the antenna to prevent any spying/changing of stuff.
Maybe also consider the honda that was out of my budget.
I kept my old accord and am starting an ev conversion.
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I am not a car person.
I drive, but I don't enjoy driving particularly. It is a means to an end for me.
I much prefer to take a train but, sometimes, is either not possible, or else does not make sense (generally, time or money-wise).
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I am quite keen on the idea of an electric car.
I am less keen on the idea of a car which spies on me.
@neil There was an option for a model one up from the EV we bought (MG4), which does have an internet connection. We couldn't justify the extra 10% for the bells and whistles, but now I'm quite happy about that.
But all cars are part of surveillance capitalism these days, one suspects.