What's the advantage to driving an electric car?

[Ryland]

More and more cars are going to electric power steering, the Toyota MR2 has had electric power steering for years, same with a number of Volvo's, the Toyota Matrix, Prius and I think a hand full of other current Toyota's have electric power steering, the EV that my parents just bought has after market power steering installed and it works great, feels just like any other car I've driven with power steering, slightly lighter feel then my Civic VX that has fully manual steering, it feels very natural, same with a friends of mine Porsche EV that he installed electric power steering on, no weird feel at all, you really have to get out and drive a few EV's and see how nice they really are to drive before making blanket statements about how poor they handle because no one has figured out how to make them work right!

I am not a fan of battery swap, to me it's like asking all of the auto makers to put a single standard engine in every car made so when it comes time to do a tune up or emission test you can just pull the engine and drop another one in in a matter of minutes, I want a 5kwh battery pack in my little car while the next person wants a 10kwh or even a 30kwh battery pack, some packs are flat and fit in the floor while others are a long block that runs down the center of the vehicle.
For the same reason I don't like the idea of leasing the battery, EV's sell for more on Ebay if they have a battery pack in them and can be test driven, a leased battery brings the resale value of a used EV down a great deal because now you are paying a used car price but are paying full price every month for a battery and if I'm buying a new car that I plan to keep for 10 years owning the battery is going to be cheaper then renting a battery for 10 years.

[NeilBlanchard]

The huge majority of the time, all EV's will be charged at home, on a Level 2 charger. This "infrastructure" is already in place.

My brother just got a Mitshubishi i MiEV and his wife has been driving a Nissan Leaf for almost 6 months, now. They are sharing a Level 2 charging station and my brother often uses his Level 1, since his pack is smaller and he drives less distance to work.

EV's use their brakes much less often than ICE powered cars, since they have regenerative braking. So far, the "maintenance" on the Leaf has been software upgrades.

Doing the math comparing a Leaf vs an average 22.5MPG car, you save ~$17K per 100K miles driven; on fuel and regular maintenance. And buying the 85kWh Tesla Model S and paying $0.31/kWh (which is very high!) is virtually the same cost as buying and driving a full sized pickup truck or large SUV, if you drive ~200K miles on each. If you only pay 8-9 cents per kWh, then obviously, the "payback" distance is shorter.

[MPGranger]

Why does everyone pick the saddest fuel economy possible to compare to EVs? Would some step down from an F150 ecoboost to a leaf? Maybe... Would someone decide to finally ditch an ailing Geo Metro for a brand new leaf? That's a whole lot more believable.
What would the extreme downgrade to car size scenario look like? Probably, parents have kids that just went to college. Otherwise, I see people dropping a size or two at most.

[Ryland]

Originally Posted by MPGranger

Why does everyone pick the saddest fuel economy possible to compare to EVs? Would some step down from an F150 ecoboost to a leaf? Maybe... Would someone decide to finally ditch an ailing Geo Metro for a brand new leaf?

My parents only car was a Geo Metro and is now an electric VW Golf, both were bought used, no one goes from driving a 13 year old (last time they made the Metro hatch back was 2000) geo metro to driving a brand new car, any brand new car, so while I agree that comparing a pickup truck to an electric car is not fair, comparing a Leaf to a Nissan Versa is fair because the Leaf and the Versa share the same platform, or comparing my bosses Saab station wagon (near $30,000 new) is about as nice as a Nissan Leaf or a Volt, and has about the same amount of space as a Leaf so they would appeal to many of the same people who want a station wagon and are in the market for a new vehicle.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Ryland

More and more cars are going to electric power steering... you really have to get out and drive a few EV's and see how nice they really are to drive before making blanket statements about how poor they handle because no one has figured out how to make them work right!

As far as I know, the only electric steering car I have driven is a Honda CRV. I wasn't told it had electric steering, and I didn't even know such a thing existed, but I was certain the car had electric steering because it felt just like a cheep force feedback steering wheel I have for playing Grand Turismo 5 (video game). It felt notchy, like turning a stepper motor, and gave zero feedback from the road. The driving felt very disconnected and reduced confidence. I wanted to steer somewhere in-between the notches that the wheel settled into.

If the CRV were mine, I'd likely disconnect the fuse to the power steering system. I'm not writing off all electric power steering as it's possible I've driven other vehicles with it and not even noticed, but the CRV steering is unacceptable.

[niky]

EPS feel depends on the same thing Hydraulic PS depends on... proper implementation. Even the previous (hydraulic-rack-equipped) CR-V has never had anything that could be reasonably called "steering feel". And I've actually driven one of those hard enough to scrub the tires and wreck the engine mounts.

Better EPS implementations mount the assist motor straight on the steering rack instead of higher up... this allows more feedback to filter through to the steering wheel. I think MINI also used a solid-mounted rack, but I can't recall specifically.

[Ryland]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

As far as I know, the only electric steering car I have driven is a Honda CRV.

Looking at the parts diagram for the Honda CRV it looks like it's power steering might even use a stepper motor and a quick search for Honda CRV shows a lot of people having issues with that design not being reliable, so it could be that the steering rack on the vehicle you drove wasn't even working right, so if you are building an electric vehicle the Honda CRV might be a poor choice.