> what was the word of the year 2024 again? enshitification?

EnSHIFTication, perhaps?

> A front outside speaker making some noise could be useful for pedestrians safety although.

In most jurisdictions, EVs are required to emit some artificial sound, so that pedestrians, etc., can hear them coming. [US Federal reg [1]here [federalregister.gov]] Without such systems, an EV cruising through a parking lot at a walking/jogging pace would be nearly silent, and a hazard to others. In many cases, these systems are only active up to 20-30 mph [32-48 kph]. Above that, ordinary road noise from air movement and tires on pavement is sufficient.

This has led to a flourishing of " [2]sonic branding [google.com]" in the EV market: making your artificial noise sound distinct but not grating. Most are some variant of UFOs - overlapping pure tones, kinda like someone fell asleep on a pipe organ. Personally, I'd love for something like the Jetsons, although that may get old quickly.

[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/07/13/2022-14733/federal-motor-vehicle-safety-standards-minimum-sound-requirements-for-hybrid-and-electric-vehicles

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=ev+sonic+branding

I'd like to have it customized for the noise coming from the front speaker. Other people can have the Jetson's noise. I'd like to have the Beavis & Butthead "uh huh huh huh" giggling, or something different.

As for random features, instead of fake shifting, how about Mercedes style "bounce mode"? Something harmless to do when bored at the interminable rows of lights, and something that -might- help you get unstuck. Maybe even a factory wench for the front bumper to help get the vehicle out of muck, o

You know what would be good for pedestrian safety? Not being a complete asshole and _not_ buying an SUV! SUVs are killers.

If it's going to have fake engine sounds, I want rumble of a diesel-electric locomotive starting to move out.

I used to have the Peter Gunn theme on a USB key that played whenever I started the car but eventually got tired of that. I suspect the same will happen for the Ioniq's "features".

> The only way I can imagine this being fun is if a person has never driven a stick shift in their life, and they watched a lot of F&F movies. So they have nothing to compare it to but they feel like they are in a movie. Myself, I would find it grating.

Agreed. I only learned to drive a manual in my late fifties - never had an opportunity before that beyond a few short stints behind the wheel. But it's FUN, and not because of the sounds it makes.

I question both the sense and the IQ of anyone whose amusement at "fake shifting" lasts much beyond five minutes. I like driving, and I like some arcade games - but I'd never want to suffer through experiencing both simultaneously.

If they want to go for verisimilitude though, they'd better include the "if ya can't

Even if you can do it well, in heavy traffic, it just sucks to be sawing on the gears. For a race car, or something that one takes to the highway and out of urban areas, a true manual might be fun, but for most areas, having it be handled by a vehicle computer is probably better, and less stress in general.

Of course, on ICE cars, having paddle shifting is nice, just to decelerate on the highway without having to hit the brakes. It used to be taught that slamming the brakes on the highway if there is no ne

> Shifting is fun because it's hard to do well . You get a sense of accomplishment from it as a result. There is none of that with fake shifting. And if you made it hard that would be extra stupid.

Shifting isn't hard to do well, but it is quite rewarding.

The problem is, if you drive a manual, you need to be thinking ahead of what you're doing, not just reacting to what's happening around you and that is inimical to the modern driver who is lazy and reactive. They don't want to be engaged in the act of driving, they want to be as insulated from it as possible. Being engaged with the act of driving aving a feel for what the car is doing makes them uncomfortable.

I do agree that fake shifting is silly though, it's not providing any of the engagement you get, nor giving you any direct control.

> Shifting is fun because it's hard to do well.

Shifting hasn't been hard to do well in a really long time. This isn't the 1940s. Gearboxes have synchromesh in them meaning literally any idiot can smoothly shift gears these days.

The most "fun" cars do away with all of that and have pedal shifters, with dual clutch semi-automatic gearboxes. There's nothing fun about getting a super electric car and artificially trying to turn it into a cheap European hatchback including artificially limiting its performance for that pointless exercise.

If you want the "fun

> It is silly, but some people like it, so Hyundai delivered. If you don't like it, you can simply not use that feature.

> Some people like their car to feel "alive", like a beast to be tamed more than an effective but soulless machine. And therefore, they enjoy what reasonable people consider an annoyance, and why not? The point is to have fun, not to go from A to B, not even to win a race. And among the "fun" features you can add to a car, fake shifting is, I think, among the safest.

I agree about the need for fun. Manual shifting already exists with CVT vehicles. It is sometimes implemented as a paddle shifter, or just put it in drive.

My Jeep is hella fun. 9 "gears" to go through, 5 levels of FWD, freaky good traction control. It'll keep you entertained, and there are adrenaline rushes as desired. Fun offroad or even in winter roads, yet civilized enough that it works for date night.

Do you offroad? You sound like a candidate if you aren't already offroading.

I've watched a TON of reviews of the Ionic N 5 and literally *every* reviewer disagrees with you. It's not like most, or some ... every single review of this car puts a shit eating grin on the face of the person driving it. It's rare for something to be that unanimous among all journos in the arena of car reviews. If you think shifting is fun, then it's fun to be able to do it in this vehicle. If making a vehicle more fun to drive isn't "improving it", uh .. I guess that's an opinion one can have.

People play video games where you shift for fun. That's basically what this is.

Anyone remember this one? "Real men drive automatics - let the gears shift for themselves"

It's the fact that you can have both a comfortable and easy to drive EV, and a fun sporty car with manual shifting (via paddles) in the same car.

It's not just the shifting of course, they set the car up to be fun. Stiff suspension and all that sort of thing.

> I grew up on manual transmissions and I disagree. In a commodity car, shifting isn't fun, sure. But in a muscle car or other high performance car? Shifting *IS* fun.

Muscle cars are best with automatics for a lot of reasons. It's low performance cars which benefit most from manual transmissions. You can't drive high performance cars anywhere near their limits 99.99% of the time. But econoboxes (or just slow "sports" cars like the 240SX) reward shifting success and punish shifting failure harshly.

> True, fake ICE engine noise in an EV is just stupid. It's like those vegan 'meat replacement' products that supposedly taste like meat and feel like meat but are made of plant matter. If people want to go vegan they should go full vegan and not piss about with fake meat.

They're not really for people who want to go vegetarian, they're just for people who want to cut back on the amount of meat in their diet. As for vegans, well, I think some of the companies stepped on a field mouse or something during the trip from farm to packaged fake meat, and that was the end of that. At any rate, it's not really analogous to EVs with fake shifting, because some of these modern meat substitutes are actually kind of tasty in their own way, depending on what sort of dish they're being i

In what way is censorship involved?

> For the partially sighted,

... but not for the fully blind?

Your username sure checks out.

No since it does not actually change gear, all it does is alters the power delivery to mimic the feeling of shifting.

So as fake as the recent Jaguar Strap-On EV.

Maybe it's a US thing, because Hyundai and Kia are usually highly rated in Europe. They also have long warranties too - 7 years for most stuff, 8 on the battery.

>> The reality of the experience though? It felt more like the CVT was just malfunctioning.

> If you had a Versa with a CVT, odds are, it was malfunctioning.

>> I ended up doing some online research on this, and yes, Nissan really did program their CVTs to behave in this manner because they felt drivers wouldn't become accustomed to a CVT that actually acted like a CVT.

> Drivers generally don't become accustomed to a Versa's CVT that works, because they don't. They fail, a whole lot, even if people have kept up with their fluid changes. Whatever Nissan did, they did it wrong.

> /owner of a Versa with a six speed manual transmission because I knew that CVTs in Versas are trash

Not necessarily, some CVTs are programmed to hold a higher RPM depending on a few factors (throttle position, transmission mode, inclines) and will subsequently drop to lower RPMs for efficiency. Had this on a Toyota Corolla I hired a few years ago. to the untrained butt dyno, this can appear somewhat like the gear shift from an old school automatic (planetary gearbox). With this Corolla, if you gave it a bit of boot it would hold the higher RPMs until you eased off the throttle.

Not all CVTs are trash m

> If you had a Versa with a CVT, odds are, it was malfunctioning.

Ironically, the only thing that went wrong with the Versa was an issue with the evap cannister going bad in some way, which was repaired under warranty. I have seen the YouTube videos of those transmissions disintegrating into "kibbles and bits" (as one YouTuber succinctly put it), so it was something that was in the back of my mind. I bought it because it was cheap and I planned to trade it in at some point anyway. My car at the time was a 2010 Hyundai Elantra that actually did have a failing transmissi

> '19 Nissan Versa with a CVT

> Probably should have done some research *before* buying that. Yikes.

I bought it new and figured I'd be rid of it before the warranty ran out. Seeing as how that went according to plan and I ultimately ended up with a Bolt with a brand new battery for the price of a bottom-of-the-line Versa, I think I did alright.

A person who drives a hatchback is the same person who wants to "shift" their EV.

I'd sooner drive a mini-van than a hatchback. Avoid the gas guzzler tax too.

> The purpose is 'fun'

For me fun is better acceleration and better performance. You literally have to degrade those to make the fake shifting take place. My old car was a Renault Clio. There's nothing fun about struggling to get to 60mph before merging onto a freeway just because it has gears you need to work through to get there. My mother has a Mazda 3 automatic. There's nothing fun about exiting a roundabout and having fuck all acceleration while you wait for the car to change gears.

Fun is my car, massive loads of torque with