I think you can have some system design in mind upfront, but agree the bulk emerges as you code. Clean Code practices worked exactly this way in which you write and then rewrite the clean code.
three.js and Vite, very basic, I set out originally to make a game where Neil knocks over cones and grew it from there. If I was to start again I would use a game engine as it has scaled further than I intended.
Absolutely, I honestly thought it would be my kids and a few people into indie would like it, Cloudflare says there has been over 50k unique visitors which is pretty amazing, and a good sign that it could be more.
Joystick has been improved, I just dampened it down a little.
I will look at the cars, I deliberately added the back and front sensitivity in an early version, it is okay on desktop horrible on mobile.
Battery improvements implemented dropping the load by 90% with a minor change :)