Well I got a friend, she's surprisingly a gold max rank and she has never spent a dollar on APB:R. Most of the things are obtainable for free, without premium days, it just takes 2 times longer. I can confirm myself that the equipment offered you through in game contacts are just as good as the payed variants. I've spent enough time to know these things and also I have no reason to lie to you.

engine lag is between 8 to 10 ms, the problem might be at your end.

Please look at a F2P game like Planetside 2 or Warframe. Both provide adequate incentive to put money towards it without forcing the player to do so right out the gate. APB gives the player no time to experience the game to make an informed decision whether or not they will still be playing in a months time. You are simply 100% useless without putting money forward which defeats the purpose of the F2P model for many consumers.

As for driving, describing it as "arcady" is not an excuse for late, unresponsive controls.

What if I told you there are 20-30 employees working on this game every day ? Development, support, operating costs etc. That's at least 70-100k US dollars each month. Who is going to pay this huge amount of money if not the players through microtransactions ???

Driving is arcady, it's fine for this type of a game.
Shooting mechanics is very good as well. Everyone has chance to score at this game, casual gamers up to pro players.