Experiencing Electric Vehicles: The Car as a Digital Platform

Abstract

The transition towards electric vehicles (EV)s is rapidly increasing, and the automotive industry has been busy exchanging to electric engines. However, electrification of cars is not only about hardware, but it also implies a digitalisation of cars. Charging and maintenance of EVs is enabled through digital platforms. Little is known of how this digitalisation of cars affect people’s everyday lives. What happens when the car moves from being simply a machine that provides means for transport, but also becomes a power source and a sensor platform with computing capacity powered with AI driven technologies that is controlled via digital platforms? In this article, we present findings on how people experience and learn to live with EVs in their everyday life. We argue that ethnographic understandings of EVs as evolving digi-physical phenomena provide opportunities to foresight how to implement EVs from a people-centric perspective.