To me, sorry, it's a non sense evaluation.
The electric steer wheel exists, here in Europe, formo almost 20 years. Initially it was developed for small city cars. Fiat and Renault, on Panda and Twingo respectively, were the first brands to introduce it.
Then, they install it on bigger cars. It has more pros than cons: compact, easier, lighter and cheaper construction but, most important advantage, electronic controlled. It means that take control of the oil pressure can also change the steering feeling as well as its behaviour.
In other words, updating the steering cpu box can change complete its feeling, it's just a software, as well as Ford is doing on their cars from few days.
Obviously English isn't your first language, so bear with me on interpreting this. Electronic power steering can have the software updated, true. However, how one chooses to implement it can't, and there are multiple ways of implementing it with certain advantages and disadvantages. Some provide more lag, and some provide less lag, between steering input and wheel response. Then there's the big differentiator, which is how they handle road feedback. That's almost entirely software, but it can be done well, or it can be done poorly.
As for hydraulic, it has lag too, but it's pretty constant. It has it's own oil supply and except for leaks, or wearing out the fluid by overheating it, it should remain fairly constant. Feedback, is also fairly constant.
Also, not all EPS units are smaller than hydraulic. In the BMW 5 series, the EPS was available only on the four cylinder model because it didn't fit with the bigger engines. Moving the parasitic load from the steering pump to the alternator doesn't result in huge efficiencies either.
Also, the first EPS was in a suzuki in 1988, so it's been around a lot longer than 20 years. The NSX had it too 23 years ago.
Part of the problem with judging EPS as a whole is very often you are comparing different cars to make your judgment. For example, my experience with the hyundai elantra was ok for boring traffic, but in bad weather was awful. Just because it was like the with EPS is no guarantee that hyundai wouldn't have made an equally poor system with hydraulics.
There's no reason EPS can't be good, it's jsut that it is only recently, especially in US market cars, that they seem to be making an effort with it to do so, rather than slapping it on as an afterthought to get a couple more MPG out of the car.
