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Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

It already feels out of date

More than that, after six years of Leaf ownership it feels downright primitive. In our ‘81 VW it’s acceptable because, hey, it’s an old vehicle. You know, back when you could really feel what a car’s doing, blah, blah, blah. But in a modern $50K car? Turning mechanical gears to get that rattling contraption of an ICE going, gawd, I’m surprised you didn’t make me crank it by hand. To refuel it, I have to go out of my way to a specialist vendor? Not just plug it in when I get home?

Sounds silly unless you’ve owned an EV, but it truly represents my feelings even when driving our smooth, reliable Scion. But as the old canard goes, if I have to explain then you wouldn’t understand.

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> You know, back when you could really feel what a car’s doing, blah, blah, blah.

There is an argument to be made for this. In most new cars, whether ICE or electric, electric power steering racks have almost removed all feedback through the wheel.

Feedback is good, it communicates what the wheels are doing, what the road surface is like, what traction is like, etc... and I'd argue that good steering feedback is important for safe driving.

There is an argument to be made for this.

There most certainly is, for a tiny, tiny minority of people who buy cars. That’s why I used it as example. Picture the older middle-aged guy going on about how “cars back then..” until your eyes glaze (and if you’ve met me, you’ll have a working example). Yeah, nobody cares, old man, my ‘08 Corolla was cheap.

I already typed this before you deleted, so I’m putting it here. :-)

In summary, I think “feel” matters to a small number of people. To those that notice (I count myself amongst them), it’s pretty important. To the vast majority of drivers I think that as long as the car gets them to work it’s good enough.

The reason I used it as an example is because the ones I find that will argue the importance of “feel” are old, rambling guys like me. IOW, I was originally making of myself to some degree.

You could argue that it’s not that drivers don’t care for good steering feedback, but most drivers never get to experience good steering feedback and therefore don’t know what it is and how much it improves the driving experience. It’s kind of a Catch 22.

You've hit the nail on the head. I'm a performance fan who pulls his car apart to make it exactly the way I want. However, I recommend the 3 (once the price comes down a bit) to friends. If you want a car that makes transportation easy, Tesla is winning that race. I'd love to see other electrics catch up.

I bought an E46 M3 for mostly this reason (feel), and also because it's old enough I can still wrench on it. There's nothing like feeling the road in a car built for it.

I'm looking at getting an E46 330Ci and converting it to a track car. I found a fantastic example for £2,250.

Hmm, should I sell my ICE now before it becomes worthless?

Just got it last year too, ah well.

'Everyone will have 5 years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap'

http://www.autonews.com/article/20171105/INDUSTRY_REDESIGNED...

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