One-pedal driving. Zero engine noises. And goodbye, door handles. Driving an electric car means relearning some fundamentals.
4 min
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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 minimize 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.
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.
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.
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.
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A growing number of employers say Gen Z job seekers are bringing their parents into the hiring process, from attending interviews and negotiating offers to questioning performance reviews. Recruiters warn the trend may raise concerns about independence, even as some families see it as support in a challenging job market.
4 min
Steven Clark had the unpleasant task of firing a 24-year-old—twice. Once was in a brief conversation with the new hire, who’d showed up late or not at all four times in his first week at a construction job.
Then Clark had to do it all over again, this time with the guy’s mother.
She called him a few hours later, pleading to give her son another chance. When Clark told her no, things got heated before he ended the call.
“I said, ‘Look, you know, this is between us and your son. He’s the employee,’” says Clark, who is chief operating officer of a Fairbanks, Alaska-based staffing firm.
Gen Zers make up nearly one-fifth of the adult workforce, and bosses and recruiters say it often feels like the nervous parents who hovered over them through childhood and college are right alongside them. What began as the occasional parent ride-along to a job interview coming out of the Covid era is now full-on career “co-piloting,” said Jasmine Escalera, head career coach at résumé templates service Zety.
More parents are calling up hiring managers, applying for jobs on their adult child’s behalf, and even showing up—or lurking just off-screen—on Zoom calls to help navigate difficult conversations or go over benefits packages.
“The first time it happened, I was appalled,” says Clark, who has fielded calls from parents asking why their child didn’t get a job. “Since then it’s become more of a here-we-go-again reaction.”
Human resource professionals have expressed outrage on social media.
“Parents should not be calling employers to check on their application status or ask questions on behalf of their child,” says Lynne Alba, a director of talent acquisition and physician recruitment at a large health system on Long Island, who vented about the phenomenon in a Tik Tok video she reposted on LinkedIn.
At a recent job fair, a mother approached Alba with her daughter’s résumé, explaining that she wanted to work as a nurse. “While I appreciated that she was trying to help, I intentionally shifted my attention to her daughter. No matter what Mom said, I wanted to hear directly from the candidate,” says Alba.
Some parents who step in say it’s a challenging job market for young people, and that they would only intervene in extreme circumstances—social anxiety, a toxic boss, unfair treatment. There’s also a gray area of intervention that some see as an extension of the parental advice and networking help that’s been happening for generations.
Rick Wainschel last year published a post on LinkedIn asking his network to help his daughter, a recent college graduate, find a corporate entry-level position.
Wainschel, a vice president at an automotive marketing technology company, says he doesn’t think his outreach qualifies as helicoptering. “Well, maybe a little,” he said, before quickly adding he was being half tongue-in-cheek. “It was really merely just to help her get a network established. I just think the work world is a challenging place.”
Wainschel’s post, which was OK’d by his daughter on the condition he didn’t embarrass her, didn’t lead to a job but did result in productive conversations, he said. She found a job with a credit union on her own shortly after.
Recruiters and other HR types say aggressive parental involvement signals a lack of independence and raises fears that mom and dad will be checking in regularly if their kid gets hired.
What’s more, they say, such interference rarely, if ever, works.
The phenomenon is becoming so commonplace it made the agenda of human resources organization SHRM’s national conference in June. When James Harrell asked a room of 250 professionals if they ever had a parent calling on behalf of a young employee or coming to an interview, more than half raised their hands.
“The first time it happened to me, I got high up on my soapbox and I shook my fist,” Harrell says. “The 15th time I said, ‘OK, well, I gotta figure out how to do something differently.’”
Harrell helped run an apprenticeship program for high-school students while he was the human capital management chief for the San Antonio Independent School District. To run interference, the district introduced a “signing day” when parents could come and ask questions.
After a Gen Z employee at Nation’s Best Holdings, a chain of hardware and home goods stores, didn’t get an “exceeds expectations” designation on his performance review last year, HR chief Amber Little got a call asking why.
It was one of a number of calls from parents her office has picked up recently about issues ranging from negative feedback to understanding which health insurance plan to choose. Little has even noticed parents are now calling in sick for their adult kids.
“Instead of coaching them, they do it for them,” Little says. When it happens, she adds, “we encourage them to tell their child to come talk to us and we will walk them through it.”
A Zety survey of more than 1,000 Gen Zers found 20% had a parent attend a job interview with them.
“You get a sense it’s all hands on deck for some families,” says Keith Wolf, managing partner of recruiting firm Murray Resources in Houston. His office has received emails from parents seeking jobs for their children, and Wolf says he’s always wondered if the kids even knew.
Paul “PB” Branson, who graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia in May, bristles at the thought. The 22-year-old says while he understands their anxiety, parents shouldn’t be joining their children’s job interviews or contacting employees on their behalf.
“That trend,” he says, “has really hurt my generation by creating this kind of stereotype that we need our hands held.”
