There’s a trend - in my opinion - that domestic car manufacturers drag their heels when introducing new generations, or mid life upgrades, of the cars they sell in Taiwan.
Ford, Honda, Toyota, Mitsubishi, and possibly Nissan keep producing older generations of certain cars while other countries have had the next generation for 1-2 years.
I’m not entirely sure about Mitsubishi being made here but they’re still the worst offenders. The Outlander sold /made here is still using a 15 year old design. Other countries are 1-2 generations ahead. Granted they will add the latest safety tech but the old, tired design is terrible.
Toyota aren’t planning on introducing the new Sienta - a massive improvement on the current model - because Taiwanese tastes are ‘different’. Instead they just switched around a few options and called it the new model.
It took Honda around 2 years to introduce the new Honda Fit and we’re still waiting on the new CRV.
Ford aren’t quite as bad but it’s still since 6 months to one year before they start producing/selling new models here, and they still try to stuff older tech in some new models for the basic versions. Sync 2.5 in the new gen entry level Kuga SUV!?
It seems as though domestic car makers are happy to add a few changes to the interior or technology while keeping the previous gen design.
I know, not the biggest issue in the world at this time of night but still annoying.
Anything that stems the tide of crap even a little has to be a good thing, though that was probably the last twitch of the IC and it should slow down naturally a bit as electric takes over.
Electric cars have dying batteries to give built-in obsolescence so they might not have to work so hard to fuck them up.
The trend you complain about means that, for example, you could still get the old, rock solid Nissan Micra (March locally) when the POS new one was everywhere else, you could get the older Nissan x-Trail with the better drivetrain when it was long dead elsewhere, and you could still get a utility like the Zace with a simple maintainable pushrod engine otherwise restricted to American muscle cars. These are all good things.
Same thing happens with German cars sold in the US. German car manufacturers need to take into consideration that their cars are less competitive in the US market, and therefore need to do everything they can to lower prices. They do that by not selling the latest and greatest.
Cars are already a luxury for most people in Taiwan considering the lower income and the fact that they’re not a necessity here, so manufacturers can’t always sell the latest and greatest here especially if they’re targeting the lower-end market segments.
Personally, I still kinda like the older Outlander designs. A bit sluggish when I rented one stateside and it’s silly to only have the right front speaker work for Bluetooth, but at least it doesn’t look like a cat taking a dump.
If Ford is using Sync 2.5 (the 4 corner design) then that’s terrible; my 2017 Explorer had Sync 3.0 when I got it, but I bootlegged 3.4.22200 onto it (last stable version; I’m still waiting on error reporting for newer versions, and 3.4.22251 almost bricked the stereo so don’t install that!). If you REALLY wanted Sync 3, there’s someone in my Explorer forums that sells the APIM (module) for it.
Everything else? Can’t really comment since I don’t really follow car stuff in Taiwan too closely, and I’m still deciding on whether or not I even want to buy a car when I fly back next month. I have an uncle that works at Yulon, but I’m not sure how much good that’ll do me since we’re not on close terms (long story), not to mention if it’s built anything like a US-spec Nissan, I don’t trust their CVTs.
If they fix the battery life problem, I would expect they’ll feel commercially obliged to make sure it breaks somewhere else, probably in all the touch screen garbage I assume yáll are enthusing about above, though of course I have no experience of that stuff and really don’t want any.
An electric car could quite easily be made almost zero maintenance and very long life.