Driving an electric car feels like a game — and that’s a good thing

The rolling hills of Northern California appeared before me; the river where gold was first discovered in the 1800s rushed past. But all I wanted to do was gawk at the electronic dashboard behind the wheel.

I was in an all-electric Chevrolet Bolt, driving from the state capital of Sacramento to Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, deeper into gold country. After putting the car into Chevy’s battery-saving “low mode” at the start of my trip, I hadn’t touched the brakes, even when slowing down or at a stop sign or traffic light. Simply letting up on the accelerator dragged me to enough of a stop. I was regenerating energy in the battery, and it was thrilling and addictive. 

I started with 247 miles of range and after about 50 miles of driving I was at 178 miles. What really sparked the competitive, “challenge accepted” side of me was the theoretical maximum battery range you could hit with efficient driving. Starting off with a freshly charged car, I had almost 300 miles of range if I played it right on the road. My Mashable colleague Chris Taylor “played” this same “game” back when the Bolt first arrived in 2016. It’s just as enticing now.

You can’t drive a certain way and bring in more fuel in an internal-combustion engine vehicle; your fuel gauge only goes one direction: down. The hypermiling community tries to maximize fuel efficiency while driving, but the fuel supply never replenishes. But driving an EV, I was hooked — driving could essentially become a game, saving me money and energy as the battery recharged when I slowed down or naturally sped up heading down a hill. It also helped that the screen would indicate in real-time how much power I was generating or using. 

Regenerative braking is commonplace in electric vehicles like Teslas, BMW’s i3, and the Nissan Leaf. The hybrid Toyota Prius really pioneered the concept into our everyday vernacular, by taking energy from braking or slowing down and applying it to the battery to recharge it, instead of letting the heat and energy dissipate.

But despite this awesome perk of electric vehicles (and other advantages, to be sure), purchasing an electric car isn’t happening enough. U.S. car buyers only recently hit more than 1 million electric vehicles purchased — ever. Each year Americans buy about 17 million cars. Other perceptions about electric vehicles are detracting from the could-be benefits, like zero or low emissions and the end of fossil-fuel reliance. An EV coalition survey from Veloz released this week found the top worries about EVs are limited range, lack of charging stations, and performance and cost issues.

So let’s play up the fun aspect. Other more logical, financial, environmental reasons to switch to electric aren’t working fast enough. In the U.S., EV market share for new car sales is below 2 percent. Stories like this one in the New York Times about charging on long trips over-emphasize the downsides of EV life. Yes, there are still issues to work out, but what about the East Coast couple, Vivianna and Peter Van Deerlin, who successfully drove a Tesla Model 3 cross-country to Modesto, California, last month? 

The couple said to Mashable, “We found the experience of road tripping with a battery electric vehicle quite pleasant. Really not any more inconvenient than a standard gas burning car – though our fueling cost was less … Our cost was $130. The number of gallons of gas we would have used is 127 gallons.” That would have been more than $300 on gas fill-ups.

Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who converted his Hummer and Mercedes SUVs to electric, is embracing the fun approach. In a conversation this week about a video poking fun at gas cars (and himself) to encourage consumers to go electric, Schwarzenegger reflected on a recent road trip to Las Vegas and back to Southern California: “It’s really fun to do,” he said. He noted the peppy acceleration that’s simultaneously (and for some, unnervingly) quiet.

As California Air Resources Board chairwoman Mary Nichols said in an interview this week, videos like the one Schwarzenegger starred in “stress how much fun EVs are.”

ChargePoint electric charging network CEO Pasquale Romano sees how electric vehicles have a built-in game-like feel. “The beauty of electric vehicles is that it’s a mobile-first environment,” he said in a call this week. To check on your car’s status and charge level you go to an app; with EVs like Tesla you can control the climate and other features from your phone; and for finding charging stations while away from home plugs, drivers rely on apps like PlugShare or ChargePoint. 

He sees even more potential to “gamify” electric cars — and not in a degrading way. He’s found online communities naturally form through charging networks like ChargePoint’s, which earlier this month added its fifth agreement with outside charging networks — this time EVgo — to seamlessly expand charging options. Within that same community, Romano suggested offering up a point system, like Waze’s community-based navigation app that tracks points based on feedback submitted, miles driven, and edits to maps. Electric vehicle drivers could earn points and level up for submitting photos of charging stations or flagging an issue with a port or even just charging their car. 

“We have to make it easy” to have an electric car, Romano said. After all, if I’m as involved in seeing how much energy I’m saving as I would be to making it to the next level on a video game, that could make it easier to laugh off concerns about going electric.