I love manual transmissions. Every car I’ve ever owned that wasn’t electrified has been manual. I love analog, tactile, engaging driving experiences and have gravitated to lotus for these reasons.
But, I think we’re headed in the wrong direction on this. All of this fake engine noise, simulated shifting, artificial drive modes, it’s not the way. It’s pandering. It’s also an admission that EVs are not as exciting as what came before. An EV pretending to be a gas car will never be as good as a gas car is at being a gas car. So what are we doing here?
How about this: let’s develop new ways that EVs are exciting and engaging and give the driver more direct feedback from the chassis and inputs. Instead of clinging to the past, let’s embrace the future and come up with something that plays to the strengths of EVs.
One way I can think that EVs are more engaging and connected than gas cars is the accelerator pedal. In an EV, it feels like there is a direct linkage between your foot and the electric motor. It’s almost like you can “feel” the torque curve and roll it around under your foot. Combine it with strong regenerative braking and the feeling is like a scalpel. It’s a higher fidelity input than a gasoline car. Let’s start there, because not every EV automaker gets even that part right.
But then what? I’m not sure. But here are a few ideas:
Active aero. Air brakes flipping up under hard braking, wings tilting, air blades ejecting, etc. that new Nissan Hyper Force has a bit of this actually. Lotus does it too on Eletre but it’s very subtle. It shouldn’t be subtle. The driver should feel and/or see that it’s happening. Give audible cues so the driver understands what the aero is doing. It makes the car feel alive.
Give us sound, but not fake. I don’t know what the engineers have to do but warp or modify the real acoustic noise than EV motors make in ways that are more satisfying than a high pitched sound. We do this for gas cars, engineering the exhaust note. There must be a way to EVs.
Drop some pounds for crying out loud. This is going to take some battery breakthroughs but the EVs need to shed weight so the chassis communicates more and the assists (steering, traction, torque vectoring) can all be dialed back.
If you’re going to pipe in fake noise, make it mean something. Let me “hear” the amount of power going to each wheel through torque vectoring.
Give my left foot something to do. What can that control? Maybe stronger regen. Maybe it cancels regen like a clutch. Maybe it increases or decreases the torque vectoring to change chassis dynamics mid-corner. Hell maybe it’s a boost pedal idk.
These might not be great ideas, but my point is this: we have this new technology. Let’s leverage its strengths to great more engaging experiences rather than stifling it with nostalgia. We’re drivers we want fidelity and control, not a binky to console us.
I think a huge mistake governments the world over are making is that they’re treating the ICE/EV debate as a binary: To get wide adoption of EVs you need to get rid of ICE, when that’s not the case.
There will always be an enthusiast segment of ICE buyers, and there’s no reason to shut the door to them. Once mass adoption of EVs becomes reality, the emissions from the few sportscars that are left will be a rounding error. Just let people who love ICE cars drive them and keep making a few new ones.
Petrolheads aren’t the ones driving climate change. Stacy who lives next door and owns a Chevy Suburban for the grocery shopping run does, and she couldn’t care less about the powertrain of her car as long as the car fits her kids and takes her from A to B.
That could actually be fun! I have a Model 3 and I love the strong one-pedal regen driving, but there are a few rare times where it feels a little strange, like when you’re pushing the accelerator pedal in to keep your momentum while you’re driving down an incline. It’d probably be fun to push in on the “clutch” to let yourself temporarily coast down the hill more.
I love manual transmissions. Every car I’ve ever owned that wasn’t electrified has been manual. I love analog, tactile, engaging driving experiences and have gravitated to lotus for these reasons.
But, I think we’re headed in the wrong direction on this. All of this fake engine noise, simulated shifting, artificial drive modes, it’s not the way. It’s pandering. It’s also an admission that EVs are not as exciting as what came before. An EV pretending to be a gas car will never be as good as a gas car is at being a gas car. So what are we doing here?
How about this: let’s develop new ways that EVs are exciting and engaging and give the driver more direct feedback from the chassis and inputs. Instead of clinging to the past, let’s embrace the future and come up with something that plays to the strengths of EVs.
One way I can think that EVs are more engaging and connected than gas cars is the accelerator pedal. In an EV, it feels like there is a direct linkage between your foot and the electric motor. It’s almost like you can “feel” the torque curve and roll it around under your foot. Combine it with strong regenerative braking and the feeling is like a scalpel. It’s a higher fidelity input than a gasoline car. Let’s start there, because not every EV automaker gets even that part right.
But then what? I’m not sure. But here are a few ideas:
Active aero. Air brakes flipping up under hard braking, wings tilting, air blades ejecting, etc. that new Nissan Hyper Force has a bit of this actually. Lotus does it too on Eletre but it’s very subtle. It shouldn’t be subtle. The driver should feel and/or see that it’s happening. Give audible cues so the driver understands what the aero is doing. It makes the car feel alive.
Give us sound, but not fake. I don’t know what the engineers have to do but warp or modify the real acoustic noise than EV motors make in ways that are more satisfying than a high pitched sound. We do this for gas cars, engineering the exhaust note. There must be a way to EVs.
Drop some pounds for crying out loud. This is going to take some battery breakthroughs but the EVs need to shed weight so the chassis communicates more and the assists (steering, traction, torque vectoring) can all be dialed back.
If you’re going to pipe in fake noise, make it mean something. Let me “hear” the amount of power going to each wheel through torque vectoring.
Give my left foot something to do. What can that control? Maybe stronger regen. Maybe it cancels regen like a clutch. Maybe it increases or decreases the torque vectoring to change chassis dynamics mid-corner. Hell maybe it’s a boost pedal idk.
These might not be great ideas, but my point is this: we have this new technology. Let’s leverage its strengths to great more engaging experiences rather than stifling it with nostalgia. We’re drivers we want fidelity and control, not a binky to console us.
I think a huge mistake governments the world over are making is that they’re treating the ICE/EV debate as a binary: To get wide adoption of EVs you need to get rid of ICE, when that’s not the case.
There will always be an enthusiast segment of ICE buyers, and there’s no reason to shut the door to them. Once mass adoption of EVs becomes reality, the emissions from the few sportscars that are left will be a rounding error. Just let people who love ICE cars drive them and keep making a few new ones.
Petrolheads aren’t the ones driving climate change. Stacy who lives next door and owns a Chevy Suburban for the grocery shopping run does, and she couldn’t care less about the powertrain of her car as long as the car fits her kids and takes her from A to B.
That could actually be fun! I have a Model 3 and I love the strong one-pedal regen driving, but there are a few rare times where it feels a little strange, like when you’re pushing the accelerator pedal in to keep your momentum while you’re driving down an incline. It’d probably be fun to push in on the “clutch” to let yourself temporarily coast down the hill more.