I drive a Kia EV6, and love it. Kia pushes like 2 OTAs per year for updates and small bug fixes, but hasn’t rolled out any new features. They have a premium connectivity package, but nothing but remote bells and whistles are behind it.

I use my phone for the infotainment via CarPlay.

My phone acts like a phone, and my car acts like a car.

Now, the reason I have an EV6? I was a happy Chevy Bolt owner looking for a newer vehicle and was eyeing the Equinox EV. I noped out as soon as they announced the Google partnership and decided to remove CarPlay and BYOD as a feature.

The two things that will turn me off from a future purchase is lack of CarPlay, or paywalled “hardware” upgrades, like performance tweaks or locking out something installed like heated seats. Nope.