With an EV, I Had to Learn to Drive All Over Again

Look, when you drive an electric car, you have to toss out what you know about gas guzzlers. Beyond the bonkers acceleration and quiet-as-a-librarian ride, you have to tackle new complexities like how to tell if the car is…on. Get good and you might even master the art of driving one-pedal without puking.

Plenty of readers know what I’m talking about—and may have already aced the course. But if you’re thinking of buying an EV, or even renting one, you need to anticipate a learning curve.

Why is the Journal’s tech columnist talking about this? Don’t they have a car guy?

As you may have seen in my column and video last week, I tested five leading EV options under $60,000 in search of a second car for my family. Sitting in my garage is the winner, a leased Ford Mustang Mach-E. And yes, I am teaching my sons how to shine it up, Karate Kid style.

My EV exercise wasn’t merely about finding my next car. I wanted to clock just how much the shift to battery power is turning our cars into gadgets, not unlike smartphones and computers. Technology is upending a century-old industry.

For EV adopters, that means waving goodbye to a lot of things we’ve known about driving. I may be an expert at USB-C dongles and buried iPhone menu settings, but I am new to this hot gadget on wheels. Here are things I wish someone had told me before I went electric.

Welcome to Dri-EV-er’s Ed.

How to open the car

“Car door handles, they’re just too easy to use,” said no one ever. And yet EV makers thought they were begging for disruption.

On the Ford Mustang, you press a circular button on the door and it pops open. On the Kia EV6 and Hyundai Ioniq 5, the handle is flush with the car and pops out when the car is unlocked. With the Tesla Model Y, you need to push in the wide part of the handle then pull the longer skinnier part toward you. Thankfully, there’s a GIF for that.

The Volkswagen ID.4’s handle looks like a handle—but you don’t have to pull it out. Nestled under the handle is a sensor. Obviously, you learn how to open the door when it’s your own car, but you’ll always enjoy watching the uninitiated try to get in.

How to turn on the car

My least favourite car game? Power-button hide-and-seek.

“How to turn Tesla on” will be forever burned into my Google search history. I really couldn’t find a power button anywhere because…there isn’t one.

The Ford Mustang Mach-E has a traditional push-button. PHOTO: KENNY WASSUS/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Instead of a physical key fob, Tesla provides a hotel-style keycard. You can also use Tesla’s smartphone app as a key. As soon as you open the Model Y’s door, the touch screen powers on and you can operate all controls. To get it moving, you step on the brake and move the gear shifter to Drive.

Volkswagen’s ID.4 is similar: If you have the app or the key fob with you, the car powers up when you sit in the driver’s seat. Press the brake pedal and the drive system activates.

Ford, Hyundai and Kia stick to start/stop push buttons. There are key fobs, but you can also set up the apps as keys.

How to drive the car

OK, you know how traditional automatic-transmission cars creep forward when you take your foot off the brake? That generally isn’t the case with EVs. To move, you tap the accelerator. (Even in reverse, which can be a little unnerving.) As soon as you take your foot off the accelerator, the car slows and brakes on its own. You only hit the brake pedal itself if the car isn’t slowing quickly enough.

Most EVs let you do “one-pedal driving”—that is, driving with only the accelerator.

Why change how we’ve driven for so long? Regenerative braking. These brakes use motors that capture energy and return it to the battery. Hybrids often have a variation of this too, but EVs are all about it. (Here’s a deeper discussion of how it works.)

The rapid, automatic deceleration can be unsettling at first. And some people told me it can make passengers nauseous or queasy. Don’t worry! On many EVs, you can turn off the setting or minimise its intensity. The Volkswagen doesn’t even prioritise it—you have to select the mode. Its default drive mode feels much more like a regular car.

But I’m a total one-pedal convert now. In fact, when I get back in my gas-powered Volvo, I have to remember to hit the brake.

How to know if the car is running

Unlike internal combustion engines that go “vrrrrr vrrrrr VROOOM” when you start them up, EVs sound like futuristic golf carts. I’ve definitely ended up restarting the Mach-E because I wasn’t sure it was on.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has set guidelines for “quiet cars” to protect pedestrians—especially people who are blind or have low vision. Under 19 mph, the cars must emit some sound. My Mach-E beeps when I reverse. The Model Y’s whirring sounds like the spaceship in “E.T.”

Some automakers use synthetic sounds to make these new cars sound old school. In the Mach-E, when I put the car in Unbridled mode and press on the accelerator, it hums like an internal combustion engine.

How to pull in for a charge

I think we can all agree on the greatest automotive invention of all time: the little arrow on the gas gauge telling you which side the fuel cap is on. There’s no standardisation for charging-port location on an EV. (This diagram is proof.) I didn’t see any handy arrows inside the cars I tested. Turns out Hyundai and Kia show a little arrow on the screen (I didn’t see it) and Volkswagen does have a cool map of the car showing the charging port, but it’s a few taps into the settings.

Tesla displays clear instructions on how to back into your Supercharger spot. PHOTO: KENNY WASSUS/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Again, you learn when it’s your own car. What’s not as easy to get used to? Reversing into a spot to plug in, a must at many charging stations with shorter cords.

Let me be clear, this is guidance, not a gripe fest. You’ll love driving an EV…as soon as you figure out how to get inside and turn it on.

What’s more important than being a good employee right now? Looking like a good employee in the eyes of AI productivity trackers that more managers are using to evaluate their teams.

Employee-monitoring systems are especially popular at tech companies and are also used by other white-collar firms that want to probe how people spend company time. The scary thing: You might not even know you’re being watched because many states don’t require disclosure.

Metrics can include performance data that is undoubtedly relevant, such as sales results. But it also can employ dubious proxies like keyboard strokes and how often your computer screen goes into sleep mode.

We generally accepted, or at least understood, heightened surveillance during the work-from-home era. Back then it seemed reasonable for bosses to keep tabs on employees they couldn’t see.

Yet the oversight has only escalated, and tensions are rising, too.

A group of former Meta Platforms employees alleges in a lawsuit that the company used a “constellation of internal artificial-intelligence systems” when it began laying off about 10% of its workforce in May. Meta says humans make termination calls.

However that case shakes out, a couple of things are clear. Companies eager to gauge which employees are locked in now have sophisticated AI monitoring systems at their disposal. And they believe they have leverage in a tepid labor market.

So while we may chafe at having our worth reduced to numbers on the boss’s productivity dashboard, we have to play the game as it’s being played. Here are some tips, based on conversations with people who make employee monitoring systems—and others who game the systems.

Be meticulous about your calendar

Calendar integration is one way that productivity trackers have gotten more advanced and, ostensibly, fairer.

Let’s say you make an old-fashioned phone call or attend an in-person meeting. Your Outlook or Slack status may switch to “away,” making you appear as inactive as if you were taking an extended coffee break.

Employee monitors like one made by a company called Insightful cross-check your online status with your calendar to see whether there is a valid reason for your apparent inactivity. If that call or meeting is on your schedule, then the system will recognize that you are busy offline. If nothing is on the books, it could look like you’re slacking off.

Hit the activity sweet spot, around 80%

Let’s not go any further without addressing the underlying question: How much downtime is permissible during the workday? After all, people have been scared to let managers see anything non-work-related on their screens since personal computers first arrived in offices.

No one knows this better than Roger Wagner, who is widely credited with creating the first “boss button” in the early 1980s. He designed a keyboard shortcut to instantly display a spreadsheet if the boss walked by your cubicle while you were playing a computer game. Boss buttons have been features of countless diversions since. (I confess to using one built into a March Madness streaming app.)

Wagner, the founder of computer-education company 1010 Technologies, says his original design was a joke—more of a commentary on overbearing managers than a cover for lazy employees. Good bosses understand workers need mental breaks throughout the day, he says.

This matches what I heard from Insightful Chief Executive Ivan Petrovic. He says customers that use his company’s workforce-management platform don’t expect employees to stay on task 100% of the time.

“On average companies are aiming for 60% to 80% of your time being utilized for work during the day,” he says.

Go ahead and exhale. It’s probably OK to watch an occasional YouTube video at your desk.

And if you’re going to artificially inflate your activity level, be careful. Hitting 90% could look suspicious.

Get physical

So don’t leave your mouse jiggler on all day. Choose the right one if you must resort to shenanigans.

There are lots of software applications that mimic the movements of a computer mouse, so you can appear to be working while away from your desk. There are also devices that plug into computer ports and do the same thing.

Corporate cybersecurity systems increasingly block these apps and devices, and productivity trackers claim to be able to detect them. But some workers swear by mouse docks, like one made by Tech8 USA, that keep cursors moving. The company originally made mouse-moving software but now focuses on physical jigglers.

“People are drawn to mechanical solutions because they’re so simple and don’t require software,” says Tech8 Marketing Director Sam Matthews. “As monitoring technology becomes more sophisticated, that distinction has become even more relevant.”

Use AI, but not too much

Another popular metric for employee-monitoring systems is AI usage. Companies want to know who is embracing new tools, and it can be tempting to think more is better.

“There’s a performative aspect where employees overblow their usage of AI so that they appear relevant in the organization,” says Andrea Derler, principal researcher at Visier, which helps companies track and analyze employee work habits.

In a recent Visier survey of 1,000 U.S. workers, 48% admitted to exaggerating their AI usage.

This is already an outdated strategy. Using AI for everything used to score points for experimentation. Now it can seem wasteful because many companies are watching AI token spending more carefully.

Look, productivity theater has always been part of work. Most of us aren’t trying to cheat the system, but expectations are changing so quickly that we need to be savvy about what the latest employee trackers are looking for.

Sometimes it takes a little gamesmanship to get full credit for our contributions.