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LOVE OF DRIVING







THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2024


TEST DRIVE: HYUNDAI IONIQ 5 N



As I mentioned in my Tesla Model S Test Drive, I'm on a mission to see if an
electric vehicle could be a realistic choice for my next car - something that
serves my commuting and family hauling needs as a daily driver but can be tons
of fun when I find some curvy back roads. Yesterday I took the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N
out for a spin. The quest isn't over, but the Ioniq raises a completely
different set of questions than the Tesla.

My first impression jumping inside the car was how performance-oriented the
whole interior is. The steering wheel (at least compared to the Tesla) looks
almost like an F1 wheel. There are buttons for driving mode, launch mode,
paddles for "shifting," engine sound - all the things that affect the driving
feel are right at your fingertips and don't require going through the screen.
The dash display behind the steering wheel has several options that all look
like a great mix of traditional driving with modern technology. They also nailed
the mix of buttons and touch-screen interaction in the main center screen. While
playing with the buttons and screens, I noticed there's a race mode with more
adjustments you can make to how the car drives, as well as a lap timer! Clearly
this car was built for serious enthusiasts.

Getting the car set up to drive, I was surprised to find that the seat and
steering wheel position adjustments were entirely manual. I'm sure the manual
seats come with the territory with the very race-inspired seats in the Ioniq 5
N. They were indeed great for tackling curvy roads but I wonder if they'd start
feeling a bit cramped after a long commute.

Once I got going, I was immediately impressed with how the steering and
suspension felt so connected with the road. The acceleration was also plenty
fast. It certainly isn't the insane acceleration of the Tesla, but a few seconds
of full throttle will still produce grin-inducing G forces that rival any normal
sports car.

After finding some curvy back roads, I switched into "N Mode," which decreases
the traction control and stability control, turns on the "N Active Sound+," and
turns on "N e-Shift." Now I have to admit, when I tried the different simulated
engine noises earlier in the drive, it felt a bit gimmicky. But when combined
with the paddle shifting to simulate the experience of upshifting and
downshifting through a (totally pretend) RPM range, it was nothing but pure
driving fun. Braking into a corner, downshifting, carrying some speed through
the corner, then accelerating out and jumping back up through the gears was an
absolute joy. That audible feedback of power and the active participation in
choosing a "gear" were a huge part of what was missing in the Tesla. The
fantastic suspension and steering feel complete the package to create a
genuinely great driving experience.

For as fun as this car is, the question I'm now left with is actually whether it
can serve all those other needs as a daily driver. I could see those seats and
that suspension all feeling a bit tiresome after 30 or 60 minutes in traffic
every day. Is sacrificing everyday comfort worth it for what you get on those
occasional weekend joy rides? I suppose in some sense, the very fact that
that's the question I'm left with is already a credit to the Ioniq 5 N. As my
daughter and I approached the dealership at the end of the test drive, I told
her I had been wondering whether the lack of fun in the Tesla was a problem that
would plague all electric vehicles. She summed it up perfectly - "apparently
not."








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Labels: Electric Vehicles, Test Drives




TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2024


TEST DRIVE: TESLA MODEL S



I recently came across a Road & Track article about the best electric sports
cars and it got me wondering whether my next car should be an EV. For a long
time I've assumed electric vehicles were for people who just want to get from
point A to point B, but maybe I've been too quick to dismiss them.  Only one
solution - time to test drive some electric vehicles myself! Yesterday I drove a
Tesla Model S - my first time driving an electric car of any kind. Some things
went just as I expected, but there were some interesting surprises for me too.

The first surprise came before I even got in the car. I chose the Model S
because, to me anyway, it has the sportiest looks of any Tesla. The thing I
didn't realize until seeing it up close is just how big the car is though. Sure
it has a sporty shape, but the size makes it look more like a Porsche Panamera.
In fact the dimensions bear this out - 197.7" long for the Tesla compared to
198.8" for the Porsche, and both identical "width without mirrors" of 78.2".

Inside, everything feels high quality and comfortable, except for the visual
weirdness of having that huge screen dominate the center of the car.
Ergonomically, it was also weird having to use the touch screen for so many
functions that would otherwise be one-touch buttons or knobs in a normal car.
Even choosing between forward, reverse, and park was done via the touch screen!
You don't realize how much all the little knobs and things are a part of the
normal tactile sensation of driving until they're all gone and all you have is a
screen.

Once on the road, the two immediate things I noticed were how quiet the cabin
was and the odd feel of the regenerative braking. The silence without the engine
noise was to be expected but it gave the weird sensation of having my my ears
clogged and needing to pop at first. One surprising thing about the lack of
engine noise, though, was that it made it hard to tell what my speed was at any
given time. I had to constantly keep my eye on the speedometer and frequently
found myself accidentally going 10+ MPH faster than I thought I was going.  As
for the braking, the dealer told me the whole idea with EVs is letting the
regenerative braking slow the car for you (while converting the kinetic energy
to charge the battery) without you ever having to touch the brakes. This means
that as soon as you come off the gas pedal, the car starts slowing down quite a
bit. It was a little weird at first but I actually got used to it quicker than I
expected.

One thing I really liked about the driving setup was how configurable it was. I
could change the ride height, suspension stiffness, steering feel, and
acceleration profile. Any car I'd be using as my daily driver serves as both my
commuter car and my back roads fun ride so it would be great to be able to
switch back and forth between comfort and sporty settings.

After getting used to the car a bit, I made my way to some curvy roads where I
could get a better feel for the handling and acceleration of the car. This is
where the biggest surprise of the whole day came in - the "insane" acceleration
mode is freaking fast. The Tesla takes off like a rocket ship and just keeps
pulling harder and harder until you reach the limits of your own bravery. I've
been fortunate to drive some pretty fast cars
- Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches - but this was a face-distorting mind-bending
level of acceleration I had never experienced before. There was also plenty of
cornering grip. I'm sure the amount of grip you need to launch that car 0-60 in
less than 3.5s means getting it around a tight curve is a piece of cake.

However, for all this abundance of torque and grip, something was missing.
Driving curvy back roads just wasn't that fun in the Model S. It's possible that
one culprit is actually having too much power. Exiting a corner and getting on
the gas was reduced to the briefest jolt of acceleration and then, once pegged
at whatever max speed I was comfortable with on that road, waiting around for
the next corner to eventually come. It also didn't help that the braking and
turning were lacking of any real "feel" of connection with the road. It started
making the Tesla seem a bit like a one trick pony. It was great at the
jaw-dropping acceleration, but nothing else really inspired any joy of the
driving experience.

As I headed back toward the dealership, I tried out Full Self Driving for the
first time. I was ready to spring into action if anything went wrong, so I don't
know that it really saved me any mental energy compared to just driving myself.
There was also a moment where a rookie driver was in the shoulder doing
who-knows-what and I would have changed lanes to steer clear of them. The Tesla
instead just happily carried on passing directly by the rookie driver before
changing lanes. It's a little thing, but it was interesting getting some
first-hand experience of what it feels like to hand those decisions over to the
car. The Full Self Driving did get me all the way to my destination without any
intervention on my part, and I have to admit I arrived back at the dealership
feeling like it was a pretty cool piece of tech.

In the end, the Tesla Model S felt like just that - a cool piece of technology.
It felt like a car made for people who love cool tech, not a car for people who
love driving. It was like driving an iPad - the fastest-accelerating iPad you
can imagine, for sure, but still an iPad nonetheless. The big open question for
me now is - are these just Tesla problems (or even just the Model S? Should I
have tried the lighter-weight Model 3 instead?). Or, are they problems with
sporty electric vehicles in general? Fortunately, there are now quite a few
sporty electric vehicles on the market to help answer this question. I'm hoping
to try out as many of them as I can get my hands on. Watch this space.


nakhon100, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons


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Labels: Electric Vehicles, Test Drives



SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2024


RETURN TO UNITED KARTING



This weekend I made my second visit to United Karting for a few sessions of
arrive and drive with their rental karts. It was a gorgeous day and three really
enjoyable track sessions.

One pleasant surprise compared to last trip was how well I knew the track
layout. I found it slightly challenging to learn the track my first time there
so it was nice to be able to jump in and know where I was going right away this
time.

The biggest thing that stood out to me this trip was how different my karts were
in each of the three sessions. The first kart was relatively neutral and it was
fun inducing a little trail brake oversteer to get the kart rotated into each
corner. The kart in the second session must have had more worn rear tires or
something because it was much looser through the corners. As soon as I attempted
a little trail brake oversteer, I got the kart so sideways that I spun out! The
looser kart must have worked out for me though because I ended up shaving over
half a second off of my personal best time. The third session, by comparison,
felt like the slowest kart all day by far. I managed to get slightly better than
my first session's time, but nowhere close to my best lap of the day during that
second session.

If I was competing with others for fast lap or just trying hard to set a
personal best time, I might have been bothered by the inconsistency in the
karts. As it was though, I actually really enjoyed making the adjustments in
things like braking point and turn-in to get the best out of each different
kart.

I know I wrote this last time, but it stands out to me just how much UK
maximizes track utilization. Almost as soon as one session is over, they have
the next group on track so you're never sitting around waiting and wondering
what's taking so long (which is my consistent gripe with Autobahn).

Finally (also much unlike Autobahn) I had no issue with traffic in any of the
sessions. The wide track and the layout itself make it relatively easy to find a
way around slower karts. Plus, with such a long track and only 5-8 karts on
track at a time, everyone ended up pretty spread out and I had tons of open
track the whole day.

Overall it was a great way to spend an afternoon and I'm hoping it won't be
another year before I make it back there again.



For more pictures, check out the loveofdriving Instagram feed!



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Labels: Karting




SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2024


LOVEOFDRIVING ON BLUESKY


Loveofdriving has joined the over 19 million Bluesky users!  Go join bluesky
yourself and follow my feed at https://bsky.app/profile/loveofdriving.com.  Only
downside - so far there isn't a great Blogger widget to embed the loveofdriving
feed in the blog sidebar.  Hopefully that's coming soon.  In the meantime,
here's my first Bluesky post:






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TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 2024


FORZA MX RACING SIMULATOR


I recently discovered the best possible reason to be early for your flight - the
Forza MX Simulator! The return flight from our recent family vacation to Cancun,
Mexico involved getting to the airport extra early because we were carpooling
with another family on an earlier flight. I figured it wouldn't be hard to kill
a couple hours in the airport, and it turned out the Cancun airport did in fact
have some pretty good shopping and dining. The best part though, was this sim
racing rig where you could get 12 minutes of racing for only $24!


The car choices ranged from sports cars like the Porsche 911 GT3 all the way up
to a modern F1 racecar. There weren't a ton of tracks to chose from but I
believe there was Watkins Glen, Road America, Circuit of the Americas, and
Spa-Francorchamps. They also had several different sim setup options depending
on your familiarity with racing sims.  I opted to turn off the brake assist and
the racing line. The hard part was choosing a track and car. I wanted a track I
knew fairly well but would also be fun to drive. I opted for Spa and, just
because it was the fastest option, the modern F1 car.


The first thing I noticed with the sim was just how weird it was getting used to
the viewing angles involved when you have three large screens wrapping around in
front of you. I'm so used to video games at home where you need to fit
everything you want to see onto a normal-sized TV that's at least five feet
away. This means, at most, you have to look from one edge of the screen to
another to see through the approaching turn. You barely need to move your eyes,
let alone your head. That first set of turns at Spa on the Forza MX sim,
however, looked like everything was on mega-zoom and it was very weird having to
turn my head noticeably to the side to see through the corner.  This was
something I got used to after a minute or two, but the three-screen setup never
really felt like the awesome game-changer I expected it to. Of course, I was
only doing solo hot laps and not racing other cars, so I'm guessing if I was
trying to navigate around other cars on track the added visibility to each side
may have felt like more of an advantage over my home setup.


Another interesting feature of the sim rig was the moving seat. I have to admit
this felt a bit more like a gimmick than something that genuinely immersed me in
the driving experience. Turning side to side rolled the whole rig in each
direction, and hitting the brakes hard pitched the whole thing forward. It
didn't really feel like a true replacement for the G forces you'd experience
driving a car. More importantly, it didn't produce any sensation that actually
mattered for car control. It would have been a totally different story if you
could feel through the seat of your pants the rear end of the car stepping out
with oversteer.


The best feature of the racing setup that really was a big upgrade over my home
setup was the steering wheel, which was some version of the McLaren GT3 wheel
from Fanatec mounted onto a Fanatec direct-drive podium base. I think this was
my first time driving a direct drive wheel and the sheer power of the force
feedback in the steering wheel was outstanding. The build quality of the wheel
as a whole was also great, with the shift paddles having a very satisfying solid
click to them when shifting. After finishing my laps, my hands were feeling
tired from wrestling with the wheel around Spa similar to how they felt my last
time out karting, which was pretty cool from a simulator.


As far as how the actual driving went, Spa is a long track and it took some time
to get familiar with the turns and the rig and the car. The funniest part was
just how quickly the F1 car decelerated. I would err on the side of caution for
an upcoming corner, brake a little too early, and before I know it I'm barely
creeping forward and still have 50 or 100 yards before the actual turn. By the
end of my time, I was getting more aggressive in the corners, which did result
in some satisfying fast turns but also resulted in a few off-track excursions
that totally killed my lap times. Luckily the simulator was more forgiving of
taking an F1 car through a sand trap than the real thing would be.


If I was doing it again, I think I would have chosen a slower car like the
Porsche GT3. Although it was fun going blazing fast in an F1 car, there was so
much grip and speed that you never really felt like you were balancing the car
at the limit through the turn. It was brake-turn-accelerate all so quickly that
you were out of the turn before you really had a chance to feel the edge of
adhesion through the steering wheel. I think a slower car with less grip,
relatively speaking anyway, would have given me a chance to see what the wheel's
force feedback was capable of from a "feel" standpoint.


Overall it was a really fun experience. It must have looked fun to passers-by in
the airport because the Forza MX stand was deserted when I started and by the
time I finished there were a bunch of people waiting in line to try it for
themselves. It's hard to say where I'd rank the "love of driving" aspect of it
compared to other racing video games or real life track days, but as a way to
kill a few minutes in an airport in definitely can't be beat.







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