> Electric cars probably are the future, but I don't like this future. They don't have a soul.
The idea of a transportation machine having a "soul" is ridiculous.
The idea of a transportation machine having a "soul" is ridiculous.
I find the ability to understand the concept of a car's "soul" to a very reliable way to separate them out.
Why? Because "soul" doesn't mean the immortal soul endowed by our Creator. It refers to the feel and responsiveness of a car. The car's personality, if you will. It refers to every unique behavioral trait that the car has acquired through its design and life been driven.
On my old truck the clutch would feel different after my wife drove it. It took a few miles to get the feel back. It drove better with a couple hundred lb on the bed. On my '13 golf I can feel a slight "give" on the steering from wear. I can feel the car and drive it through a corner with the wheels slightly squealing [1]. Thats the edge grip. On the KIA I can feel the difference in the engine and transmission (especially) behavior before and after the oil has warmed up. On the Golf, the shifter is "lazy" until she warms up.
Within 10 miles of getting a new set of tires I know if I hate them or love them. I get a feel for their limits.
I hate renting cars. Despite the low millage, they feel worn and lose. I also feel like a fish out of the water in a car that is not mine.
As you add mechanical/electrical complexity these various feedbacks from the car are washed away. Professional drivers hate these aids. This is widely known in the aviation industry and many planes add artificial feel to give pilots feedback on the fly-by-wire systems.
So ya, a good driver feels as if his car has a "soul" just like a good pilot can feel his plane's "soul". There's no immortal soul in a car, no consciousness, but there is a whole lotta love.
[1] obviously on track days
Unsurprisingly electric vehicles, which do not have clutches or transmissions at all, or temperamental engines with inconsistent power curves, will exhibit little signal in the areas you have tuned yourself to perceive. This does not indicate anything about them in a universal way.
Your response indicates that you are perhaps incurious about the nuances of driving an EV. Since it sounds like you have invested a lot in sensing personality specifics of gasoline vehicles, this makes sense.
Perhaps early EV attempts were muted in their expression of activity personality. Entry level Teslas certainly are not fun to drive in the same way as an old Golf. Have you tried the Ioniq 5?
For starters, I wouldn't call the Golf cheap. As to my "old" truck, if had 30k miles when I traded it in. I used "old" as in "previous". As to the Golf, it has <60k miles on it. As far as Im aware, EVs still have steering columns that loosen overtime.
EV do have their own characteristics, namely low end torque and insane amount of engine braking. They're also heavy hogs. I am not the poster who said EVs lack a "soul", I just explained what "soul" meant to someone who snickered at the idea of a machine having a "soul"; I introduced the idea that the "personality" is better suited and explained why.
I have no bias against heavy, torquey, rear wheel drive sedans - my first car was a crown vic, and I loved it for what it was.
As to my interest in EVs, you're right, I don't like them. I think they are unconscionably immoral in their impact on the environment (by taking precious batteries from hybrids that have a greater impact on CO2) and the labor (ie Congo) market.
But I am not a tech-dinosaur for in transportation. The manual tranny is long dead, having lost any advantage twenty years ago. I believe that hybrids should be highly promoted, no matter how insipid Toyotas are.
Infact, if I'm being completely honest, I dont even like cars. If much rather ride a motorcycle, and I believe that, for environmental reasons, the wider the vehicle the lower its speed limit should be. Cars should be limited to 40 mph by the factory. Trucks to 30, motorbikes 90 :D
Toyotas are boring. BMW and Honda (the cars too) were fun. Cars are expensive appliances, and most people are terrible drivers distracted by their phones.
/rant
A lot of people anthropomorphize machines, as it helps engage our built-in anticipation instincts to track when the machine will be "hungry" or "tired" without expending conscious thought. If the machine starts to sound or feel different, even in ways we can't put into words, that may surface as a sense of "attitude" or "unhappiness", and it may do so long before the difference would be dramatic enough to merit other mention. On-board diagnostics are great at identifying certain malfunctions in the engine and a few other systems, but driveline and suspension are still largely unmonitored except by ear, by feel, and by intuition. And there are still plenty of engine conditions that manifest as a gut feeling long before they set a DTC. Getting something checked out when it feels "off", versus waiting until it fails more obviously, may avert an unscheduled mishap in the middle of a cross-country roadtrip.
There are certainly lots of people who haven't spent that much time behind the wheel, or whose coming-of-age wasn't inextricably linked to the jingle of keys as a symbol of freedom and independence, or whose appreciation of rock and roll doesn't equate the growl of an electric guitar with the growl of an engine. Those people are to be forgiven for not seeing cars as having souls, but that lack of imagination on their part should not limit the imaginations, or the useful instincts, of the rest of us.
EVs have their own quirks and feelings, but there's not such a complicated web of air and temperature and chemistry and hydraulics and cable-stretch and dozens of individual bearings and mounts and linkages behind their behaviors. And they don't have a century of hot-rodding culture built up around them yet, no flames painted on the side, nor any combustion to inspire same. No exhaust notes to tune; if an EV's noises show up in music, it'll be more like Aphex Twin than Van Halen. Which is all well and good, but all of these things move EVs farther from any of the behaviors that we refer to with the shorthand of "soul".