Saturday, May 30, 2026

Spot on checklist for car makers from John Siracusa, who always has a knack for this sort of thing.

In 2026, we’re well past the time when EVs need to compromise safety and functionality in order to appear futuristic. As for the cost savings, well, that’ll be harder to shake. Once automakers got a taste for cheap touchscreens, they spread to all cars, not just EVs.

To help the industry get back on the right track, I’ve created a checklist for car designers. Make sure your new car—EV or otherwise—checks all these boxes to avoid making the same stupid mistakes that have plagued modern cars for years.

It’s no accident that we are in the midst of selling our Rivian R1S, which fails to check quite a few boxes:

• Physical charge-port door mechanism: this one actually bit us in the ass recently. Our R1S has been sitting in the driveway while we wait for parts from Rivian (it was in an accident and it’s been over a month waiting for parts). The battery died and we couldn’t open the charge port to plug it in. They had to send people to our house to fix it. So dumb.
• Physical controls for temperature and fan speed
• Physical controls for air flow and direction
• Physical glove box opening mechanism: This one is a double fail — the R1S doesn’t even have a glove box. So dumb.

Not on the checklist, but relevant, is that Rivian doesn’t support Apple CarPlay.

Meanwhile, my BMW i4 suffers from none of these problems, which is why we decided to get a used iX for my wife. Physical charge port doors, real door handles, “stalks” to adjust the direction of airflow, and native support for CarPlay. They aren’t perfect, but they give the same great BMW experience that exists in the rest of their ICE cars without compromise.