of its electric steering to the sound
of its engine. So why not equip your
electric car with a sound selector?
You could go to work sounding
like an Italian V12 and come home
sounding like an American V8. But
there’s still no gearbox. No, but you
could programme the electric motors
to behave as if there were and tailor
the sound to suit. You could choose
your own ratios, too. All seems a bit
artificial, doesn’t it? But then so is
life, increasingly. I read that E-sports
(which I don’t understand at all) is
now a $1 billion industry with closeto half a billion viewers, and they
all know that what they’re doing
or watching isn’t real, so maybe it
doesn’t matter.
I n s ome a r e a s e le c t r ic s p or t s c a r s
will be better than those we have now
because they will be able to let you
enjoy driving in ways that are either
impossible or unwise today. People
l i k e me lov e t o t a l k a b out sl id i n g
cars, but you can’t just oversteer
anywhere on demand, even in a car
like a Cayman GT4, at least not safely.
Electric cars promise to bring a new
level of controllability, because power
can be released to the four corners
of the car and controlled to the last
electron in a way that’s simply not
possible with the blunt instrument
t h at i s e v e n t he sh a r p e s t of i nt e r n a l
combustion engines. And it doesn’t
stop there. Remember that electric
cars can put their centres of gravity
at earthworm altitude and that while
they seem hopelessly heavy right
now, they’re already getting lighter,and that process will accelerate
dramatically when someone in
the near future works out how to
productionise a solid-state battery.
So it’s far from all doom and gloom
and I’m trying to figure out whether
it s ay s mor e a b out me or t he c a r s of
the future that I’m still struggling to
get excited about it. How important
is it that what is perceived is the
s a me a s w h at i s a c t u a l l y h app e n i n g?
A sound is a sound and a slide
a slide – why should it matter
whether they occur naturally or are
manufactured in laboratories? But
it does matter, at least to me, and for
two reasons. One is the same reason
my wristwatch is mechanical rather
than electronic, even though that
makes it both far more expensive and
less accurate than it could be. I like
engineering, oil and metal, cog and
wheel engineering. It feels authentic.
I can see how you can synthesise
almost any noise, and even almost
any feeling. But you can’t synthesisecharacter. The greatest appeal of the
Cayman GT4 is not its speed or grip,
nor its balance and poise. It’s the car’s
c h a r a c t e r; it i s w h at m a k e s me w a nt
to drive it. And you can’t fake that.
Stuck in the past though I must
accept I am, my second concern
lies far into the future: follow the
logical progression as cars become
electrified, their sound, feel,
action and reaction increasingly
synthesised. Where does that road
end for the enthusiast? In an arcade
game that marketing departments
will call a simulator, where you can
oversteer to your heart’s content
without wearing out your tyres,
annoying the public, parking yourcar in a field or spending hours
getting to the right road and back.
Then all those selfish speed demons
and road hogs who once had the
temerity to try to enjoy driving in
public can be confined to practicing
electronic automotive onanism, safe
and secure in their own bedrooms.
If that sounds like fun to you, good
luck. For me, and for as long as I still
can, I’ll stick to driving real cars
on real roads. It’s an effort for sure,
but I’ve never come across a proper
enthusiast who didn’t think the effort
was worth it. L
The^ Pininfarina^
Battista^ EV^ also^
promises^1900 bhp
Electric^ Rimac^ C_Two^
claims^ a^ ‘user-friendly
’1887 bhp^ peak^ output
BMW is milking
pure EV power
for the next i 8
Δ interesting to the enthusiast? These
are cars that make no sound worth
listening to, don’t need gearboxes and
deliver all they have to offer at once.
They’re long on instant gratification
and thereafter worryingly short on
giving the driver stuff to do.
And that’s an enormous problem,
not for manufacturers making
electric cars as mere transport
- in fact, for them it’s probably
a net bonus – but for those with
reputations for producing genuinely
fun and sporting cars to maintain.
As statements of the bleedin’ obvious
go, to observe that the more involving
a car is, the more involved its driver
will be is right up there with the best.
But so too is it true.
The reason I love old cars is that
they’re mostly rubbish. If they are
to conduct themselves from one
place to the next with any degree of
de c or u m , y ou h av e no c hoic e but t o
get involved. And that means there’s
always stuff to do. Among your
many other roles, you are the engine
management, responsible for using
the tools at your disposal – the clutch
and gearbox – for ensuring the motor
remains in that narrow band where
it sounds and performs the best. And
that’s not just fun, if you get it right
it’s pretty satisfying, too.
Back in the near future you could,
of course, synthesise much of whathas been lost, and perhaps that will
happen. The car you drive now is
perhaps already synthesising more
than you might imagine, from the feel