I don’t hate electric vehicles because they’re electric. I hate them because they represent everything I’ve grown to distrust about modern machines: sterile, soulless, tightly controlled systems masquerading as progress. The world insists EVs are the future, that I should feel grateful to witness vehicles becoming “clean,” “smart,” and “efficient.” But every time I watch one glide silently past, I don’t see the future, I see the death of something I love.

Electric vehicles have stripped away what made cars feel fundamentally human. I don’t mean this purely in mechanical terms, though that’s certainly part of it. I mean something deeper and more primal, the growl of an engine under acceleration, the subtle imperfection of a manual gear change, the faint scent of oil after a spirited drive. These elements never felt like flaws to be engineered away. They were the sensory threads that wove you into the machine, making you a participant rather than a passenger.

With EVs, that communion is severed. You’re no longer driving a car, you’re operating a device. Everything becomes too smooth, too quiet, too algorithmic. It’s like piloting a smartphone with wheels, disconnected from the mechanical poetry that once defined the driving experience.

Consumer Electronic cosplaying transportation

Perhaps what disturbs me most is how the automobile has been transformed into just another piece of consumer electronics, glossy, disposable, and deliberately unrepairable. My old internal combustion car was an open book. Pop the hood, diagnose a problem, learn something, fix it yourself. You didn’t need diagnostic equipment that costs more than a laptop. You didn’t need manufacturer permission to replace a headlight. You didn’t have to navigate touchscreen menus to adjust the air conditioning while hurtling down a highway.

EVs have systematically dismantled the freedom inherent in car ownership, packaging it instead in sleek plastic and mandatory software updates. What was once mechanical independence has become digital dependence.

Planned Obsolescence.

What manufacturers won’t openly discuss is how perfectly EVs serve the modern business model of planned obsolescence. These aren’t machines built to last decades, they’re service platforms designed to keep you locked within corporate ecosystems. You believe you’re purchasing a car, but you’re actually subscribing to a continuously monitored, remotely controlled appliance.

Your vehicle updates itself, adjusts its performance parameters, and logs your every movement, all without meaningful input from you. Gradually, mysteriously, the range diminishes. Charging speeds slow. The polite term is “battery degradation,” but it’s simply your car dying by design, and you’re powerless to prevent it.

The Illusion of Ownership

True ownership of an EV is largely fictional. Attempt to replace the battery and discover the cost approaches the vehicle’s entire resale value. Try repairing the inverter or power electronics and encounter walls of proprietary software, locked components, and dealership-exclusive service tools. The same people who once spent weekends under the hood, learning and improving their machines, now sit helplessly in sterile waiting rooms, hoping their dealer won’t present them with a 5k repair bill because a circuit board couldn’t handle the heat.

This isn’t progress, it’s the systematic removal of mechanical literacy from car ownership.

Also, EVs are quietly eroding the cultural bedrock of automotive enthusiasm. There’s nothing meaningful to modify, nothing to personalize beyond superficial accessories. Want to adjust throttle response? It’s locked in firmware. Want to upgrade the battery? It’s sealed and serial-locked to prevent tampering. Want to open the hood at a car meet and share your build? You’ll find only plastic covers and high-voltage warning labels.

The entire community that flourished around shared passion for combustion, sound, and hands-on mechanical connection is being sanitized into showrooms full of silent, identical pods. We’re witnessing the death of automotive culture, replaced by the sterile appreciation of efficiency metrics.

Inevitably, someone will invoke environmental responsibility, “EVs are better for the planet.” The environmental mathematics are indeed complex, and I won’t dismiss them entirely. But I will question this: If our solution to environmental problems involves sacrificing user autonomy, long-term durability, and mechanical freedom, are we truly solving anything, or merely relocating the damage?

We’re creating mountains of unrecyclable lithium batteries. We’re strip-mining cobalt and rare earth elements under horrific conditions. We’re manufacturing throwaway vehicles explicitly not designed to last two decades. This doesn’t resemble sustainability, it resembles an elaborate public relations campaign for a different kind of environmental destruction.

The Surrender to Corporate Control

What disturbs me most is how readily we’ve accepted this transformation. In a single generation, we’ve traded freedom for subscription models. Cars once represented the ability to go anywhere, do anything, build something uniquely yours. Now they symbolize software updates, charging schedules, app compatibility, and autopilot permissions.

There’s no rebellion in that paradigm. No romance. No individual expression. Just compliance with systems designed to extract maximum value from your mobility needs.

So no, I don’t hate EVs because they represent change. I hate them because they represent hollowness. They’ve taken something that once offered genuine freedom and transformed it into a mechanism for corporate control. They’ve replaced the beautiful imperfection of human-machine collaboration with the cold perfection of algorithmic management.

If this is the future of transportation, I’ll gladly drive in the opposite direction. Not out of nostalgia, but out of conviction that some things, the right to repair, to modify, to truly own what you’ve purchased, and to maintain a tactile connection with your machines, are worth preserving.

The future may be electric, but it doesn’t have to be soulless. Until manufacturers remember that cars should serve drivers rather than stockholders, I’ll keep my keys to the past.