Steering wheels are enormous because that allows fine grain control, which you need at higher speeds. Switching lane at 70mph requires only very slight movement but turning the car around in a street you can go full lock.

A joystick would be fucking TERRIFYINGLY stupid lmao

I mean the wheel is definitely the best control mechanism for driving... whether or not it's dangerous, there's a reason the best sim racers use wheels and not controllers and it's that they provide vastly more control. So nice argument except it's all based on a false claim that joysticks are better lmaoooo

I was extraordinarily glad to have a wheel when my power steering failed and found myself having to turn the car using the strength of my arms and the mechanical leverage of the wheel. A joystick would've made the vehicle literally impossible to steer.

I'll just leave this here. In short: a guy wrote a physics engine to simulate any combustion engine, and then further got it working with an electric motor so electric motors can use a simulated vroom vroom

https://youtu.be/4U41OxHiqI8

I've literally seen people post that they'd consider going electric if only it had an engine sound.

In many regions now it's actually mandated that EVs make additional noise when moving at low speeds (less than 40km/h or so). There were concerns that quiet vehicles would have more pedestrian accidents.

There actually is an EV with engine sounds and a "manual transmission" from Toyota. According to ArsTechnica, it's supposed to be pretty good:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/10/toyota-has-built-an-ev-with-a-fake-transmission-and-weve-driven-it/

And no, you can’t roll start them.

I imagine you "can", it's just not very effective. Like, if they allowed you to switch it to regenerative breaking and let it roll down a hill. The problem is you can't get out any more energy than you put in. So if the battery is dead and you roll down the hill you won't be able to rull any farther up the other side than you started (even less when you factor in mechanical -> electrical -> mechanical. You'd probably better off putting it in neutral [if that's a thing for electric cars] and just let it roll)

Some have multiple speeds. I think the Porsche has 2 speeds for quick acceleration.

tl;dr: my PHEV does change gears when in EV mode, as weird as it sounds

So, I drive a Hyundai Ioniq Plug-in Hybrid EV (PHEV). It's a hybrid with a larger battery so you can plug it in and drive fully-EV on the battery for about 30 miles/50 kilometers or so. The freaky thing is that the EV motor is connected to the transmission, so it does switch gears sometimes and you can feel it when it does. Even freakier is that this also applies to regenerative braking: when you slow down from a high speed, you can sometimes feel it switching gears while you brake. That all isn't too bad since it's got a dual-clutch transmission and so it switches gears pretty quickly, but it can still be a bit freaky at times.

Additionally: there are some people who have converted antique cars to EVs, but to save money they didn't touch the transmission and instead elected only to replace the engine. They still have manual transmissions in them, though I suppose you could probably just find a suitable gear to leave them on 100% of them time. Still, you can, in principle, switch gears on them.

Honestly the only issue I have with electric car sound, is that in the country side animals, listin for your engine. So silent electric cars make it all the more likely that your gonna hit a bear. I'm not even asking for them to be deafeningly loud.

Mentioned this in another comment, but many regions now mandate that EVs have noisemakers built in which emit sound at low speeds (<40km/h or so).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_warning_sounds

Apparently all the deer around me are fuckin deaf going by what cares I've seen hit them.