🌈 Driving in a Changing World
- Your First Electric Car: What Actually Feels Different?
- Your driving experience hasn't disappeared
- The first surprise may be the silence
- Then you press the accelerator
- Taking your foot off can feel different too
- The car may be making decisions alongside you
- You'll start noticing energy rather than just fuel
- Range can change the way you think about journeys
- You might drive differently
- A test drive may only tell you so much
- Learning didn't end when you passed your test
Your First Electric Car: What Actually Feels Different?
You may have been driving for 10, 20, 30 or even 40 years.
You know how to drive.
Then you sit in an electric car for the first time and suddenly some surprisingly familiar things don’t feel quite so familiar anymore.
There’s no engine starting.
There may barely be any noise.
The car can accelerate remarkably quickly.
Lift your foot from the accelerator and it may start slowing much more noticeably than you’re used to.
There are screens, settings and driver-assistance systems you might never have encountered before.
Even something as simple as selecting drive can be different.
None of this means you need to learn to drive again.
But perhaps it does mean there’s something new to learn.
Your driving experience hasn’t disappeared
I think this is an important place to start.
If you’ve been driving safely for decades, buying or trying an electric vehicle doesn’t suddenly make you an inexperienced driver.
You still understand roads.
You still anticipate other road users.
You still make decisions at junctions and roundabouts.
You still understand speed, space and risk.
Those skills remain.
What has changed is the machine you’re controlling.
And there’s nothing particularly unusual about needing a little time to understand a new piece of technology.
We do it with phones, computers and televisions.
Cars are becoming another example.
The difference, of course, is that we’re using this particular piece of technology while travelling along a road.
Understanding what it’s doing matters.
The first surprise may be the silence
Press the start button in a petrol or diesel car and something happens.
You hear the engine.
Perhaps you feel a little vibration.
There is confirmation that the car is running.
An electric vehicle can be rather different.
You press the button and…
Not much.
Perhaps a symbol appears on the dashboard telling you the vehicle is ready.
That’s it.
For somebody encountering an EV for the first time, that can feel surprisingly strange.
It also means developing a slightly different awareness of whether the vehicle is ready to move.
The absence of engine noise doesn’t mean nothing is happening.
Then you press the accelerator
This can be one of the bigger differences.
Electric motors deliver their power differently from conventional engines, and some EVs can respond very quickly when you press the accelerator.
You don’t necessarily need to understand the engineering behind that to recognise what it means for you as a driver.
Your right foot may need a little recalibration.
Smoothness matters.
Particularly when manoeuvring, pulling away, joining traffic or driving in busy areas.
After a while, this becomes normal.
Initially, however, it’s worth giving yourself time to discover how the car responds rather than assuming it will behave exactly like the car you’ve just stepped out of.
Taking your foot off can feel different too
Then there’s regenerative braking.
This is one of the things I find particularly interesting from a driver-education perspective because it changes something we’ve been doing almost automatically for years.
In a conventional car, lifting your foot from the accelerator generally allows the vehicle to gradually lose speed.
Many electric vehicles can slow much more noticeably.
That’s because the electric motor can help slow the vehicle while recovering some of its energy and returning it to the battery.
Different vehicles offer different levels of regeneration, and some allow you to change how strongly the car slows when you lift off.
You may also hear the term one-pedal driving.
That doesn’t mean the brake pedal has disappeared.
It means that, in suitable situations, much of your normal slowing can be controlled through how you use the accelerator.
The first few times you experience it, it can feel unusual.
With practice, it can also become remarkably intuitive.
And that’s the important word:
practice.
Not because driving an EV is inherently difficult, but because your feet have spent years learning how another type of car responds.
The car may be making decisions alongside you
This isn’t exclusively an EV issue.
Modern petrol, diesel and hybrid cars increasingly have the same technology.
Lane assistance.
Adaptive cruise control.
Automatic emergency braking.
Speed-limit recognition.
Parking assistance.
Blind-spot warnings.
Driver-monitoring systems.
Some are extremely useful.
Some can initially feel intrusive.
And sometimes a driver doesn’t actually understand why the steering wheel has just moved, why something has beeped or why a warning has appeared.
That’s where I think we need to be careful about assuming that newer automatically means easier.
Technology can help us.
But as drivers, we should still understand what the car is doing, why it’s doing it and, where appropriate, how we remain in control.
You’ll start noticing energy rather than just fuel
For most of us, owning a petrol or diesel car has involved a very simple routine.
The gauge gets low.
We find a petrol station.
We fill the tank.
We leave.
An electric car introduces another way of thinking.
How much range do I have?
Where will I charge?
Can I charge at home?
What’s the difference between a charger that takes hours and one that can add substantial range while I stop for coffee?
Should I charge to 100% every time?
What happens on a long journey?
Suddenly there are kilowatts, kilowatt-hours and charging speeds being discussed when all you really want to know is:
Can I get where I’m going?
This is exactly where good information should make something complicated feel simpler.
You don’t need to become an electrical engineer to own an electric car.
You need to understand the parts that affect your life.
Range can change the way you think about journeys
For decades we’ve been conditioned to look at a fuel gauge.
With an EV, you’re more likely to see an estimated number of miles remaining.
That can be reassuring.
It can also create anxiety.
Watching 83 miles become 79 and then 74 can make energy consumption feel much more visible than watching a petrol needle move almost imperceptibly.
Weather, speed, heating, driving style and journey type can all affect energy use.
Over time, owners generally learn what their vehicle is capable of in the same way we’ve always learned the characteristics of our cars.
But the first few journeys can involve rather more attention to that number on the dashboard than you’d eventually give it.
Understanding the car helps replace uncertainty with experience.
You might drive differently
This is perhaps the most interesting part.
An EV can encourage you to become more aware of how you’re driving.
Accelerate aggressively and you’ll see the effect on energy use.
Drive smoothly and anticipate what is happening ahead and you’ll see the benefit.
Learn to use regenerative braking effectively and you begin thinking further ahead about when you need to lose speed.
None of these are really new driving principles.
Observation.
Anticipation.
Planning.
Smoothness.
They’re things good drivers have always done.
The technology simply gives us another reason to practise them.
A test drive may only tell you so much
Imagine you’ve driven conventional cars for 30 years and are considering your first electric vehicle.
You visit a dealership.
Someone explains an unfamiliar dashboard, perhaps demonstrates several settings and then you drive a car you’ve never driven before on roads you don’t know particularly well.
Twenty minutes later you’re back at the dealership.
What did you learn?
Probably quite a lot about whether you liked the car.
But perhaps not enough about what living with and driving an EV will actually feel like.
That’s one of the areas I think driver education could increasingly explore.
Not another driving lesson.
Not a sales demonstration.
Simply giving experienced drivers the opportunity to understand unfamiliar technology at their own pace.
Ask the questions that might feel silly in a showroom.
Try regenerative braking.
Understand the displays.
Explore the assistance systems.
Talk about charging.
Drive normally.
Because there really shouldn’t be anything embarrassing about saying:
“I’ve never driven one of these before. Show me how it works.”
Learning didn’t end when you passed your test
This, ultimately, is why electric vehicles belong on WS Driving Collective.
Not because I think everybody should buy one.
And certainly not because I want to tell people which manufacturer they should choose.
I’m interested in something broader.
Driving changes.
Cars change.
Roads change.
Technology changes.
And we change.
The driving test gave us permission to continue learning independently. It wasn’t a certificate saying there was nothing left to learn.
Your first electric car might feel unfamiliar.
That’s okay.
Give yourself time to understand it.
Ask questions.
Experiment with the technology safely.
Discover what works for you.
Because whether you’ve held your licence for six months or forty years, the principle remains the same.
Learning never stops.