ED is not trying to be EVE, so they should't really be compared. ED is more of a traditional game where you can kick back and play an hour after work without having to worry about anything other than yourself. In EVE you have to sink hours into the game per day if you want to accomplish something. Luckily this is not hard because that game gets addictive very fast. EVE also has a point where after 6-12 months of playing solo you have to make a decision whether to join a corporation or not if you want more out of the whole experience. Some things in EVE can only be accomplished with the help of a coordinated group.
However there are definitely things ED can borrow from EVE without committing to being a hardcore PVP oriented MMO.
Persistence: ED appears to have very little of it outside of your ship, your credits and your rank. In EVE, if I'm out traveling in the less populated regions and come across a small fleet of NPC ships around a jump gate, those ships will still be there if I return hours later unless someone else has destroyed them (in which case the wrecks will be there, maybe, unless someone has salvaged them). In ED persistence only lives on as long as there are players around. NPC ships are created and destroyed because your (or someone elses) PC rolled a dice.
Purposefulness of items: In EVE almost every item in the game has some purpose that different from the monetary value it holds. If someone is transporting items from point A to B it can be for several different reasons, not necessarily profit. In ED if someone is transporting something from A to B it's only for making credits. Basically the items aren't real, they are just numbers taken from a list at location A and deposited to a list at location B. The numbers can be dropped into space in containers but they are still just numbers that represent a monetary value. If someone scoops up cargo it's to sell it for credits. In ED you have ships, modules and market items, they are all different. In EVE they are all the same, a ship is an item, a module for the ship is an item, ammunition is items, and they can all be traded on the same market. Only free stuff is exempt from being sold on the market, like the starter ship you receive.
Seamlessness: People like to rip on the gates in EVE, saying it's just a way to connect rooms together. Well ED is the same even though it doesn't have any gates, but that's just a technicality. EVE too has ships that doesn't need gates. ED however, due to the terrible SC exit mechanics, feels like a disjoint series of rooms even when you're sticking to the same system. This is turn makes you feel like every room is a separate mini-game. Exit SC near a station; pop! welcome to the docking mini game. Exit SC near a resource extraction site; pop! welcome to the mining mini game. Flying in SC; welcome to the interdiction escape mini game. I really hope they can fix this in the future. Doing the P2P AFTER exiting SC, and then fading in other ships as connections are established would already be a hundred times better than the current system. Also some people seem to believe that in EVE they can't hang around in space with nothing around them, like between two planets far away from any points of interest but that's not true. Yes the warp drive requires a target but that can be a target you set up yourself anywhere you want to. You're not physically removed from regular space when you enter warp in EVE.
A living universe: Somehow the ED universe feels largely devoid of life (and it's not due to the lack of player interaction). Even systems with billions of inhabitants have just a few stations and they aren't even that big. When you dock to a station in ED it doesn't feel like you're entering a place inhabited by millions. I hope and believe this will be fixed over time as they add more content, I mean just seeing some persistent NPCs would help a lot. ED is a game which focuses mainly on PVE interaction but right now the universe is populated by mindless drone pilots and faceless bulletin board mission.
