I should also add that I really want to love this car.
I really do! I want to keep it if possible!
But when something as fundamental as power steering can be compromised and the whole safety factor is now in question, my confidence and faith in the vehicle is now at a minimum.
It's probably like driving a regular gas car and then your alternator dies. It has happened to me once on the freeway and luckily i just coasted to the shoulder on the freeway. But if i was in the middle of a heavy traffic area trying to pass a semi and power is lost, the end result may be a bit different.
FYI, we have had the car for about 2 months, a little over 2000 miles, about 50 miles on average on weekdays.
We live in the San Francisco Bay Area where the climate is very temperate, no extremes.
We don't drag race this things, more like going to Target, groceries, picking kids up. A few hills, mostly flat, nothing special. We charge it almost daily to top off with about the battery about 50% drained. We set the schedule timer and works most of the time, so far fails in about 1 out of 8 tries...in the beginning we just manual charged but since we are on the E9A schedule with PG&E, we charge after midnight now. We use to go out at midnight to plug but the scheduler works mostly, else we use the app to force start the charge. 95% of the time we drive in the eco mode, 5% sport mode to get on freeway or just for fun. Also, we never charge on the extended mode...just don;t need it since it's all around town driving, a little freeway but almost all city streets.