Just wonder how deep they intend to go in terms of driving mechanics and how the vehicles actually handle. CDPR has stated manual shifting is out, so what about power braking, drifting, burnouts etc. And that's just based on standard cars/bikes with wheels. Will there be hovercars/flying cars at some point as shown in the concept art? That presents a different set of handling I'm sure. Also, lets not forget that the vehicles in the city will handle different from something built for the wasteland, which would have a much different feel when driving on raw terrain/off road/sandy environments.
Based on the demo and deep dive, driving seems pretty basic on a gameplay level. Not quite sure if or how stats will affect driving ability and handling as well as vehicle tuning/customization but it will be interesting to see.
I hope its one of the deeper features of the game and to be able to really invest in building a garage full of purpose built assortment of vehicles for various objectives and fun. I hope to see the ability to build race cars, death race, mad max battle, trucks & cargo carriers, multi purpose type vehicles. Each vehicle can be upgraded in specific ways for various functions for speed, armor, cargo or spare passengers for missions.
A scenario I would suggest is - The player is at the far west coast bay of Night City, you're meeting a contact that needs help retrieving some valuable "resources" of a larger quantity far east outside NC in the badlands. Your contact can send a small recon group to notify you when the marauders guarding these recourses are spread thin due to another group that can be sent to plan a ruse to get their attention, a distraction to allow you to get in, take out what enemies that are left, get the goods, and get gone.
This is where you come in. The mission objective is many miles outside of NC, Do we take a vehicle built for speed and limited cargo space and get as much as we can get in, get out? Or do we take something a bit more cumbersome and extra cargo space and some extra manpower with the chance the enemy could eventually find and catch up to you, and you have to hold them off as long as possible, making the mission more challenging but the pay off is greater. In preparation for the mission, you can spec out the vehicle to optimize mission effectiveness in advance.
The wastelanders vehicles are built for it, so building a vehicle to complete the mission in that type of environment is key to success. I think these kind of decisions should have real weight on how much you know of the situations you're dealing with and how you prepare for them. Witcher style.