Car2Go’s EcoScore and the Gamification of Driving

We’re a one car family. Our Mini Countryman, which is most often under the command of my wife, is an excellent vehicle for our very urban, city dwelling needs, but it entirely fails to be in two places at the same time. That means I’m a frequent user of Uber, public transit, and — more often than not these days — Car2Go.

A Car2Go Smart Car

For those of you not familiar, or who live in cities that haven’t yet been blessed by these friendly little blue and white numbers, Car2Go is actually a subsidiary of Daimler AG, parent company of both Mercedes and Smart, and the largest buyer of Smart cars in the world. It’s a cousin to services like ZipCar, Autoshare, etc., in that you sign up for a membership ($35 one-time fee), then pay per minute for use of a car ($0.41 per minute in Toronto, up to a $14.99 per hour or $84.99 per day max). The big difference is that you can drive a Car2Go from point A → B and drop it there without having to go ← to the car’s home at A. You can park Car2Gos along any legal street parking spot in all cities other than Toronto, or in a designated Green P or other lot here (apparently they’re working on that).

Custom Smart

This isn’t an ad for Car2Go, although I think it’s an awesome service. Beyond installing tracking hardware and member card readers, etc., and having a pretty slick mobile app that lets you reserve and unlock cars, they’ve customized the cars in a very interesting way. Replacing the standard whatever-is-there in the middle of a normal Smart’s dashboard is a highly customized touchscreen unit.

The customized dashboard of the Smart Car2Go

A few things to point out: the four slots along the top are for the pre-paid parking and gas cards (you can see a white card in the top right slot above). All of those are included in your $0.41 per minute rental fee. The blue dial to the left of that is the volume control. The four buttons down the left edge toggle between the Radio, Nav, Tel, and Apps. Big-ish touchscreen in the middle, key storage slot on the right.

Car2Go touchscreen radio and nav

Radio mode shows a bunch of local stations, Nav does what you might expect (though in much more English than the above screenshot). Tel calls the emergency response hotline, which you may find yourself doing a fair bit as the cars seem to quite frequently have trouble communicating the end of trip or the presence of the parking card. None of these things are particularly interesting, especially in the age of Teslas with 17” touchscreen monitors in them. And, besides, I promised you gamification. GAMIFICATION. It’s like buzzword bingo at its finest.

This is not a Car2Go, but it is pretty awesome.

Gamification

The more observant among you may have noticed that I skipped one of the four touchscreen modes above. The vaguely named “Apps” button doesn’t lead to an app store full of options (though, really, how far off can that be?), but rather to a single app that encourages you to drive in the most fuel efficient way possible.

Again with the German.

I couldn’t find a clear image in English, but the three trees are Acceleration, Cruising, and Deceleration. You start at 50 points each, and they grow (and attract animal friends) or shrink (and get increasingly gloomy cloud cover) from there. The current “EcoScore” is displayed on the leaf icon at the top, though I have no idea how they calculate it. The ? button helpfully explains that you get more points for smoothly accelerating, anticipating traffic ahead, and smoothly decelerating.

Mastering the game

You’re no doubt wondering what happens if you nail perfect 100s in all three trees. Would I be writing this if I couldn’t answer that?

Nailed it.

It really is a glorious rainbow, no? It’s also possible that this entire post is really just a #humblebrag in disguise.

Getting design right

It’s not just a little game to make your commute a little more fun. The designers here did a great job of designing for the specific context and achieving their ultimate goal of saving gas. There are a few things I think they really nailed:

Glance-a-bility: if that wasn’t a word before, it is now. This is the difference between CarPlay and your iPhone’s crowded screen. I can leave this up on the touchscreen and glance at it from time to time without needing to tap a button or read any fine print. Interaction is purely glancing, which is exactly right for the user interface of something I’m driving at 60 kph (that’s about 40 mph for you Americans).

Simplicity: big, easy to read fonts. Simple graphics with obvious differences between the states. Three, easy to understand metrics. I don’t have to do anything beyond hitting the “Apps” button and I’m already playing the game.

Reward: starting at 50 is much better than starting at 0. I feel like I’ve really lost something when the tree goes down, which you can’t do if you start at the bottom. Hitting 100 still feels like an achievement, so the gap between starting, losing, and winning feels about right. And, of course, who doesn’t love rainbows?

Does it work?

The game has definitely changed the way I drive their cars. It’s also changed the way I drive our car, when I can pry it from Bianca’s hands. I’m much more conscious of — well — accelerating smoothly, cruising as much as possible, and decelerating with downshifts and smooth gas. If those are really more fuel efficient, and it stands to reason they are, then the game has succeeded in helping me save Car2Go gas and the environment from all kinds of exhaust fumes.

That said, it’s not entirely without its downsides. Cruising is the hardest tree to grow in the city, which is full of reasons to have to suddenly slam on the brakes. Sometimes I find myself coasting a little closer to those hazards than I probably should in the hopes that they’ll disappear (or turn green) before I get there and have to stop. Also, the closer I get to 100s, the more attention I pay to the screen. Some cars seem to be calibrated differently, making it much easier or much harder to get higher scores. Even with those minor quibbles, the environmental impact and the entertainment factor alone make it worthwhile. Also, rainbows!