Abstract The paper examines the problem of developing cost effective teaching and research tools for automotive dynamics. Different available solutions are presented and the need of human feedback is emphasized. Based on the demands from industry and academia (benchmarking, virtual prototyping, comparative testing of alternative technologies, development and tuning of the automotive control etc.) a solution is proposed. At the core of the proposed tool is a H2iL (humanand- hardware-in-the-loop) simulator based on an electric vehicle. An architecture is elaborated for the simulator and the proof of concept is done in three steps.