5. Design to Support Energy Management for Electric Car Drivers

Electric cars (EVs) are a promising alternative to combustion engine cars to lower emissions and fossil fuel dependencies. On the downside, in comparison to internal combustion engine cars (ICE), the user experience (UX) of EVs is seriously compromised due to shorter and more varied driving range depending on driving style other context of use. A further complication is that recovering from unexpectedly low battery levels is tedious due to long charging times. This causes range stress among drivers and research has highlighted a need to improve the information and tools available in order for drivers to better understand range-influencing factors and estimations, leading to increased reliability, and trust in the information. This currently leads to poor UX that may shadow all the benefits and other important environmental and experiential qualities of electric cars. In this chapter, we will provide an introduction to the subject and go through some of our studies and key lessons that have emerged from our research. In particular, we have come to the realisation that we need to energy-empower electric car drivers in order for them to be able to conceptualise how energy is intertwined with their actions and behaviour while driving. This is important, as current tools fail to provide such empowerment, causing unnecessary surprises and worries among the drivers who call the standard tool available in the electric car for the ‘guess-o-meter’. Through our designs and discussion we demonstrate how some aspects might be addressed to energy empower electric car drivers.