[Paladin]

This is really not helping my opinion on Drive.

A big part of this episode hinges on us being emotionally invested in the saga of the Shift Cars, which is really hard when they haven't really told us a goddamned thing about them.

And while I don't expect them to tell everything at once there's really no reason NOT to at least offer some brief insight.

There's a big difference between "characters not knowing" and "writers not telling" the reason for something. The former allows the characters to grow & understand their world along with the audience and the story is usually stronger for it.

Drive unfortunately is the latter. Mr. Belt & Kiriko seemingly know all about the Shift Cars & just aren't telling for apparently no reason beyond padding out the story length. That's incredibly lazy writing.