Given the relative simplicity of an electric drivetrain compared to ICE, is all that software absolutely necessary? I'm a bit shocked (pun intended?) to hear that your car got bricked by a software update.

The fun trade-off to the simplicity of the electric drivetrain is that the drivetrain is now almost entirely software defined. In an ICE your torque is a factor of a lot of physics: the physics of the motor, the fuel injector, the gear ratios in the transmission, and so on and so forth. With an EV motor it in theory has 100% torque physically available at all times, if you've got the power stored in your battery for that. You don't actually want to drive that way, though, because that can waste a lot of power, that can be dangerous, and that can cause damage (to tires, if nothing else).

The curves of how much power the car applies to an EV motor become software: everything about the "feel" of the acceleration pedal and even some of the "feel" of the brake pedal (because of regenerative braking) are software-defined curves. That's why EVs often give you multiple "Driving Modes" to explore to find the driving curve that feels the most fun for you to drive, or gives you the most ludicrous performance, or saves you the most battery power, or lets you do everything with a single pedal.

Some of that is that people are just so use to driving ICE vehicles that manufacturers feel the need to make EVs drive like ICE vehicles for comfort and familiarity, even though they don't have to (there's no transmission gears to physically shift).

Modern EVs are software-defined cars.

Thanks for explaining that to me. That's such a fascinating way of looking at it. I wonder how long it will be before we get the Linux of cars. Or the Pine Laptop equivalent.