(Elbil24): One thing no car owner had to deal with 20 years ago was being able to control things on the car from the phone.
In 2024, it is almost a matter of course that the car has an app, although what you can do with it varies slightly from manufacturer to manufacturer.
Varying functionality
While the simplest have limited functionality, such as turning on the air conditioning on a cold winter’s day, there are others that allow you to see the car on the map, lock it, open the boot lid, watch video from the passenger compartment or use your mobile as a key, to name a few. Some even allow you to drive the car out of a tight parking space without you having to sit inside.
But how well do these apps work?
In Elbil24’s large reader survey, which we held in December, there were over 4,000 Norwegian electric car owners who assessed a number of parameters with their car.
We’ve already taken a look at which owners are most satisfied with things like the lights, sound system, air conditioning and winter range.
These electric cars have the most satisfied owners
Elbil24’s readers think so
This time we take a look at what the owners answered when we asked them what they thought of the manufacturer’s app, and here the various cars score very differently. As usual, we emphasize that these are the readers’ own opinions, and that we have filtered out all cars that received fewer than ten responses:
The best-selling Tesla Model Y thus gets the best mention. The 548 owners, however, agree that the app is very good, and give it an average rating of 5.46.
500 Norwegian Model Y owners: This is what they think of their car
The Xpeng G9, which our readers voted People’s Favorite at the Car of the Year awards, takes the silver medal (5.32 on average) before the Tesla Model 3 ends up in third place (5.31).
Voted People’s Favorite – this is what the owners think of the Xpeng G9
At the other end, both the Opel Ampera-e and the Volkswagen E-golf have to find themselves ending up with an average grade lower than two.
That Opel ends up at the bottom does not come as a bombshell – the Onstar service was discontinued in Europe when Opel’s former owners, GM, left our continent. This left the owners without a working app.
