What did? Traffic driving or EV driving? And what EV?
Long post.
EV driving in traffic. I was loaned a black gen1 leaf of unspecified battery capacity to run an errand across the city.
I am not quite sure where I read that, as a car enthusiast, you enjoy things in a car that most people don't. I guess that is accurate for me. Even if I am sitting on traffic as I normally am, I still get feedback from the car, it hums (or thumps in the case of my full-size), there's engine vibrations, even the 1st-2nd-neutral (or variations of) gearchange on gridlock is a multi-sensory experience, whether I do it myself or leave the job to a torque converter. There is always the sense that things are happening with the car even when you're not moving.
Basically all of these experiences are denied to me on an EV. It is a completely effortless drivetrain. It makes no noise (at least not at the speeds I would use one). It doesn't emit heat or sound like a vacuum cleaner or indeed do anything. As I was sitting there, surrounded by cars, I was surprisingly, and annoyingly, filled with a sense of ennui. Here I am. Most of my job is sitting in front of a screen. Most of my entertainment is delivered to me as I sit in front of a screen. Now here I am, on one of the few bits of my life not completely co-opted by that paradigm...sitting in front of a screen. With no feedback on anything except the radio and the fan, sitting here, looking at a display, waiting for the percentage indicator to drop.
I kinda found myself having a bit of an overthink, which is never a good thing to do when sitting in traffic. When we are at the point where the EV has indeed completely replaced ICE, what exactly is going to happen to the auto industry? There's no distinguishing engine characteristics. An electric motor is an electric motor is an electric motor. Power figures will be more or less irrelevant as we all sit restless about our energy consumption and how to squeeze more miles out of our range. I saw a future where buying a car on the end of the market I would unless I get extremely lucky was similar to buying a van in Europe. A couple of manufacturers making three or four basic designs and then all other brands taking them and lightly massaging the body and giving them their own twist on the interior. And everyone would be fine with it because all of them would drive and handle more or less the same, their distinguishing features limited to mild performance differences (rather irrelevant in traffic and at "normal speeds") and handling changes imperceptible to all but to the few souls left flogging them. What is, exactly, the point? Oh sure, they could add sounds with them, but those are artificial, a .wav file somewhere in the bowels of whatever file system is managing everything. I would know that, and I expect even the hacked in Jetsons noise would get boring after a while.
I expect this is how watch enthusiasts feel about the Apple watch. The rest of the car was fine, regen braking is kinda odd and This particular leaf was fitted with one of those cabin scents that makes you think the owner is trying to hide a smoking habit. However, in a single journey it made me question exactly what is my future as a "car enthusiast". I expect the more reasonable governments won't outright ban ICE from the roads, especially as the automotive fleet gets refreshed by buyers who don't think the sky is falling because their car doesn't vibrate anymore. The electric motor is absolutely the correct way to power a car. I find the technology fascinating. As mentioned somewhere else on FG I don't think that batteries are the final answer on how to provide energy for those electric motors, but that is more or less incidental to the EV itself. Engineers will figure that bit out.
I just don't find the cars coming out of the other side of that technology interesting. I have to assume even the special ones are just as droll to sit in traffic on. And I am just not sure where that will leave me. Hopefully not in another traffic jam, having a chuckle at me realizing that the only thing missing to get me to consider jumping in front of the fuel tanker coming the other way is R.E.M's
Everybody Hurts being played through the stereo, which incidentally benefited greatly from the lack of any other sounds in the cockpit.
