Great summary of driving an electric car.
After not paying for gas, I think the 1-pedal driving is the thing I like the best about my Bolt.
The Leaf is zippy. The Caddy is going to be…more. Couple goofy things in the Leaf–you pull back on the shift knob to put it in drive, forward for reverse??? And it seems like you must engage one-pedal each time you start the car, which is annoying. I was expecting low-end torque, but I’m really impressed by the passing power at 50-60 which I did not expect. It’s an excellent value IMHO.
I test drove a Leaf 3 years ago and to be honest I was not overly impressed with the “zip” and feel of the driving. We ended up getting a Hyundai Kona Electric, which felt much zippier to us. That said, we have good friends who own a Leaf and love it (and did NOT like their own test drive of a Kona).
My Kona lease is up in a few months and I have to decide if I’m going to keep it or not. Right now I’m leaning toward keeping it because the other comparable EV options out there are so much more expensive. I feel like I leased at the right time and got a pretty great deal, but the deals are much worse right now.
To be fair, this Leaf is a '22 SV+, so it stickers at $38k and is eligible for a $3750 tax credit (you might get $7500 if you leased), so not the $28k 150 mile range starter.
My new Audi has the same starting and shifting quirks. It’s an gas model, so this isn’t limited to electric vehicles. I still don’t really like it though.
[SDMB nitpickery]
Speedmaster (Professional)
[/SDMB nitpickery]
EV’s have priced themselves out of our range, but I may have to come out of retirement to buy a Hyundai Ioniq 5 N. Holy cow, that thing ticks all my boxes. IF you like tinkering, just about everything in it is adjustable. Torque split, suspension, etc. It has track and drift modes, and a very cool synthetic 8 speed DSG transmission that apparently works very well.
It’s like a combination video game and car. It feeds you computer generated cues like fake engine noises, it moduilates the lectric motor to simulate a gasd engine and a transmission,etc.
I’m not sure why you’d want a synthetic transmission. IMHO, not having a transmission is the best part of driving an EV.
I went to the auto show in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago and very muck liked the looks of the Ioniq 5 but didn’t particularly like the looks of the Ioniq 6.
The Ioniq 6 looks like a Tesla 3 and a VW Bug had an ugly baby.
Electric vehicles would benefit from a two-gear transmission: one for maximum acceleration and one for cruising. But only a couple actually have two-speed transmissions and they’re high performance vehicles (Porsche Taycan and Audi e-tron). There’s a discussion in this article that explains it better than I can.
https://www.edmunds.com/electric-car/articles/do-electric-cars-have-transmissions.html
I posted over in the Future EV AWD thread (https://boards.straightdope.com/t/future-ev-hybrid-plans-awd-edition). We were originally considering a PHEV but now we are thinking of a pure EV and keeping our old Subaru for the trips that don’t have lvl 3 charging along them. Trying to figure out when to go in to test drive some vehicles, but we are excited about it.
What’s on your short list?
Tesla X and Y. We travel with a larger dog and often with a lot of gear so the X looks like it would be the best for him, but it is so much more than the Y so we are hoping the Y is large enough (we also like the more efficient Y “mileage”). The Volkswagen ID.4 looks to be about the same size as the Y, costs more, and has less range. Other than that, most of the “suv” like all have smaller cargo spaces (Lyriq and Kia EV6 for example) or are just too expensive (Rivian R1S). I’m open to suggestions though 
For what it’s worth, we love our model X, and we have a 95 pound dog. There really is a lot more room than you would expect in this car. It’s fun to drive and we have the “extended range” version and given the way we use it have never had a range issue. (also, superchargers are plentiful where we have gone so far).
What Tesla (and probably others) do is gear the front and rear motors differently (as you say, one for max acceleration and the other for max efficiency). Effectively, you get different gearing by changing the relative amount of power sent to the front vs. rear motors. Typically, the front motor is set up for max efficiency, so when cruising down the highway, the rear motor is totally disabled.
The Tesla Semi and Lucid Air take it a step further and physically disconnect the motor (so it’s not even paying the freewheeling cost). Interestingly, they can do this without a complicated clutch–the electric motors are so precise that they can exactly align the input and output shafts and engage a solid connector when they are aligned. There’s no need for any slip compensation at all. And they can reduce the torque to zero so even disengagement doesn’t require a beefy actuator.
Of course, this only works for multi-motor systems, but that’s going to be the case anyway for any performance vehicles.
I haven’t yet seen the Y or X, but just from the data I would expect the X to be very roomy. It looks to have 37 ft^3 behind the rear passenger seat and 85 behind the drivers seat compared to 33 and 68 we’ve lived with with our Forester. It would be quite a bit larger. The Y is 30 and 72. It’s the 30 that concerns us but once we take an actual look, we can make a fairer assessment.
Because it’s more fun. Downshifting into corners, accelerating out of them, etc.
Then CVTs came out, the industry thought they would be a bit hit. No shifting required, the car always stays in peak torque power range, etc. What’s not to like? Well, people instantly complained thatnthr CVT felt lifeless. They were used to a ‘performance’ drive including the feel of the car accelerating to each gear change. Hearing a constant whine while the car accelerates continuously just didn’t feel fast or responsive. So CVT cars started faking having gears.
Aside frommthe ‘video game’ modes, the Ioniq 5 N also has a ‘race’ mode that does away with the fake transmission but gives you a one-pedal mode with extreme braking if you let off, so you can basically race the car with just your foot on the accelerator. But if you like race cars and want to hear a race car engine banging off the rev limiter as you row through the gears, it will do that for you too.
The Top Gear reviewer thought these things would be complete gimmicks, but he wound up loving them.
The EVs I’ve owned and driven do this just fine without fake transmission steps. And I say that as a manual transmission junkie; someone who bought his most recent car based on the fact that the model would no longer be available with a stick.
The EV off-throttle regen is just as good as engine braking, and the torque out of the corner is better than any gas car I’ve ever had the pleasure of driving or riding in. The transmission simulation would just take the area where the EV beats a gas car hands down and cripple it.