There are a number of compact shortwave (radio amateurs prefer the term "high frequency" or HF, in contrast to VHF, UHF) transceivers. The impracticality is from the size of an efficient antenna.
I have personally made voice (single-sideband or SSB, which is analog like AM without wasting energy transmitting a carrier or redundant sideband) contacts with a 5 watt portable (Elecraft KX2) between countries in Europe, using a meter-long whip antenna and a trailing counterpoise wire.
These radios are incredibly complex weak-signal equipment, and that is reflected in the price.
That said, it is fun. Using morse code to do the same is even more fun.
I would never rely on this for off-the-grid communication, though.
Practically, this take emphasizes my point on repeaters. Each open active repeater develops its own subculture. (That said, the overwhelming majority of repeaters in the US are idle.)
In dense urban environments, VHF (~144 MHz) actually performs better than UHF (~446 MHz) for a few reasons... Lower frequencies diffract better around obstacles. VHF diffracts more readily around and over buildings than UHF. VHF penetrates building materials better than UHF — lower frequency = longer wavelength = better penetration through walls. UHF suffers from higher path loss over distance compared to VHF.
When you go to an electrical drive train you quickly realize you need computers for things like battery conditioning, efficiency, forward/reverse, charging, route planning, stop/start, and on and on and on. It's not as simple as engine on, engine off. Tesla (rightly, IMO) chose to lean into this. It will be interesting to see what a company like Slate chooses to do.
Note I said minimal. If manufacturers were content to just restrain integrated circuits to those purposes without widespread telemetry or phoning home, or creating software lockouts we'd meet my definition of minimal. Just what it takes to make a functioning device. Instead, we see software used as load bearing supports for predatory or exploitative/surveillance oriented architectures. That is not minimal to me.
IMO the rules should be simple: manufacturers of electronics need to be required to provide private keys for the electronics, plus a source-available MVP firmware for getting the thing to work.
I don't care if GM or whoever wants to ship a buggy, ad-ridden, data-siphoning, subscription filled nightmare with new cars. That's their decision. But they should be banned from trying to exercise any kind of control over a piece of hardware that I own outright.
If you do an aftermarket EV conversion the car will mostly be built using hardware that you can nearly fully reason about and won't include snitch boxes.
For those interested in learning Morse Code by sound, https://lcwo.net (Learn CW Online) is a good resource, although not really usable on a mobile device.
Lastly, if you learn better in more social environments, consider the Long Island CW Club, which, despite its name, has members globally. https://longislandcwclub.org/
My favorite way to learn CW, and what push me over the top into actually using it, was CW Academy from CWops https://cwops.org/cw-academy/ where you work together with an instructor and other students. Running CW over a Zoom call instead of the radio made it much easier to get into and easier to copy without the QRM and other white noise. They do strongly push for use of a paddle, which I like anyways, but those that prefer a straight key might prefer other resources.
Definitely not in the original. Nicely done.