Is gamification of driving the answer to urban speeding?

Back in 2008, we got a chance to take a look under the skin of Chevrolet’s range-extended hybrid, the Volt. A couple of weeks ago, thanks to the fine people at ShopAutoWeek, I got a chance to spend some time driving one. It was an impressive machine; not the sort of thing a boy racer like me would usually go for, but (in my opinion) pleasing to the eye and equipped with a great interior. The thing I was most struck by was the dashboard, which left me wondering if it might just be the key to modifying behavior on the open roads.

The 2011 Chevrolet Volt Credit: shopautoweek

At first, I jumped in the car and just started driving it normally, or at least normally for me (other people might describe this as spirited driving). But in an electric car (even one with an on-board generator), driving flat-out from point to point isn’t really the idea. That’s when I started paying attention to the dashboard, which Chevrolet is calling the Driver Information Center.

Every other car I’ve driven presents information to the driver in the same way, with dials for speed, engine rpm , and various ancillary dials. But you don’t need to know your revs in a Volt, since the internal combustion engine is not directly connected to the drivetrain; rather, it runs at optimum rpm when needed to charge the onboard batteries. The screen behind the steering wheel displays your speed and estimated range, and a sort of activity level on the right hand side. It’s this widget that has captivated me.

The Volt’s Driver Information Center. The interactive feedback widget is on the right. Credit: © GM Corp

It’s designed to give you real-time feedback on your driving style. When the car is happy (i.e. being driven efficiently), the ball is green and in the center of the gauge. Stomp on the accelerator, and it rises to the top, changing color to yellow. Brake too hard (so you’re bypassing the kinetic energy recovery) and it dives to the bottom, again changing color to yellow. The more time you spend in yellow, the fewer miles you’ll go before you have to start burning hydrocarbons.

GM claims you can drive about 35 miles on a full charge, but this is highly dependent on the driver. Depleting the battery won’t leave you stuck at the side of the road the way it would in a Tesla or Nissan Leaf—but if you wanted to burn gas, why did you buy a Volt in the first place? Very quickly I found I’d adapted my driving style. Instead of hustling it around as I would another car, I became more relaxed at the wheel, doing my best to keep the ball green and in the middle. If anything, the experience was almost like an playing an early video game, except that I was on the streets of Detroit rather than in front of an Atari console.

And I enjoyed it! It’s a really elegant idea from GM, one that very rapidly induced a behavior change from me. Which is quite impressive, as doctors and public health experts from around the world will tell you, modifying peoples’ behavior is a lot easier to say than do. (Others have reported similar experiences with less game-oriented gauges like the Prius’ MPG readout.)

Freed of the desire to race from stoplight to stoplight, the threat of speeding tickets should also diminish. As a commuter car, it actually makes a huge amount of sense, or at least it would to me if I had somewhere to charge it overnight. Bravo, GM.