Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 105: Electric Problems

Confessions of an Automationeer, Part 105: Electric Problems

With the electric car gaining in popularity with every passing year, I would like to take some time to ponder on why Automation does not support this form of propulsion. There are a few reasons for this. The first one is that back in the earliest days of the Kee era, electric cars were nowhere near as common as they are today, and so the developers decided not to implement EV powertrains, nor have they done so in the UE4 era. The second reason is complexity: implementing electric drivetrains would require a lot more coding than what the game already has, and even after the next game engine update is released, such complications are undesirable. 

It is for these reasons that all EVs shown thus far in the Automationverse, whether created for company lore or for competitions, or both, are nothing of the sort underneath the skin. Instead, a placeholder internal combustion engine is chosen, after which the chassis and trim elements are selected accordingly, as they would be for any other car. This glaring lack of support also partially explains why I chose not to make (or rather simulate) any purely electric vehicles when creating the lore for the Hampton Motor Group during the Generations II challenge, the other reason being that the game does not continue beyond 2020 - a patch to extend the timeline further, to the years 2021-30 would be most welcome, but that's a subject for another time and post.