Carsick in the backseat of an electric car

She closed her eyes hoping for a reprieve. Jammed in the rear with two other passengers, her only lifeline at the moment was the car seat window to her left. By proximity, she was less than 10 cm away from the glass surface. That was as close as she could get to the outside.

She had stared out of it as soon as she hopped onboard thinking it should help. A few minutes into the ride, and she's overcome by that familiar oscillating wave of nausea and lightheadedness.

It wasn't news. Though each time it happened, she found herself wondering what caused carsickness and why riding in some cars made her feel more unwell than others. 

The chatter of her fellow passengers did nothing to fill the deafening silence of the cabin. They were talking about the electric car they were in, designed to be as quiet as a bank vault. In her mental notebook, this has just topped her growing list of "uncomfortable cars".

When she opened her eyes, her gaze panned over to the driver. "The person behind the wheel never seems to get carsick," she mused.

A high-pitched ring sounded in her right ear and dissipated in five counts. Then, the soft opening notes of her favourite pop song played in the cabin. Before she could decide whether it was just an earworm or a phantom melody, it was gone.

Temples beaded with sweat, she got out of the car as it whirred to a stop. If not for lipstick, her pale, dry lips would have been noticeable.

Is silence really what we need?

As it turns out, sonically untainted spaces do not make for the best ride experiences - especially for those vulnerable to motion sickness. If internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles induce that feeling of imbalance in you, electric vehicles (EVs) are likely only going to worsen it. Unless the 25per cent to 30per cent of people who regularly suffer from varying degrees of carsickness feature more strongly in the considerations of automakers.

Silence can drive you nuts, it seems. For all that we know of the human body, it's still very much shrouded in mystery. When we live in a city, we yearn for the suburbs in search of some semblance of peace and quiet. But when in an anechoic chamber, we discover our brain and ears reacting in strange ways we never knew our body was capable of.

Sound is far more constant in our life than we think. If starved for input, our system goes into overdrive and starts picking up sounds that are not real. These auditory hallucinations may become more common in EVs, with car manufacturers racing to embrace groundbreaking noise-cancelling technology alongside electrification.

While we associate the sound of an engine revving with acceleration in a conventional car, EVs deprive us of this reference point. We dissociate, lose locus of control over where we are headed, and the dizzying spell begins. 

Just good ol' Physics at work

Sitting in the backseat can get you more carsick than those in the front, and the reason is less abstruse than you may think. Everyone has a balance centre within, which receives auditory, visual and tactile signals that collectively inform us of our position vis-à-vis our surroundings.

If these indicators go out of alignment, for example, when our eyes perceive movement but our body isn't actually moving, we get attacked by motion sickness.

Taking the helm allows the driver to anticipate trajectories and maintain spatial balance in-cabin. This autonomy, however, is removed from the passenger in the backseat.

By extension of the Physics philosophy, the front-seat passenger tends to be less affected by motion sickness. Since they sit right above the front wheels that steer the car's direction, front seat passengers are less likely to make out any force when the car turns around corners.

The further one is from the front, the stronger the force one feels when the front wheels turn. That's when the sensory balance of the backseat passenger goes awry. In an electric car, the reduced ability to recognise (or pre-empt) landmarks and more abrupt movements — no thanks to regenerative braking — can aggravate the feeling of unwellness in passengers.

The fall of the moving gallery

When was the last time you looked out of the window during a drive and engaged meaningfully with the landscape?

Infotainment systems are fast becoming huge selling points in vehicles of the future. These smart systems act like the brain of EVs, providing navigation, cabin climate controls and — entertainment.

Some brands, like BMW and the collaboration between Sony and Honda, even take their infotainment centres to new heights with in-car gaming and dedicated screens for rear-seat passengers. Harnessing that obsession to make good of passengers' idle time while on the roads, screens will only become more and more common in cars.

The extent of how inseparable we have become from our phones has not escaped the shrewd carmaker. That is why we get masses of USB ports packed (almost with a vengeance) into every nook and cranny of literally any new release we get today. At some point, I won't be surprised if cars with windows that function not as glass surfaces but screens for virtual reality entertainment, form the standard for normalcy.

Going by the trajectory of automotives, digital real estate will likely gain a stronger foothold in car interiors, conquering territory inch by inch.

Couple this with our addiction to smartphones, and it's no wonder why the passenger is kept from maintaining pace with the landscape on the outside. Once again, carsickness — bolstered by the invisible strength of enabling — wins the tug-of-war against passengers. 

Removing silence from the carsickness equation

EVs are fundamentally quieter than ICE cars because of its absent engine. Yet automakers seem determined to perfect their mastery of this feature, with the components they are employing to achieve near silence. 

Do we honestly need absolute quietness in our cars, though? If silence is what messes with our sense of balance and, in turn, our in-cabin experience, my take is for us not to go down that path of making cars even more quiet than they should be.

Statistically, carsick passengers make up only a quarter of the population. However, in actuality, carsickness does not discriminate against its victims.  

Beyond building cars with just drivers in mind, passengers need to form a bigger pie of the design thinking process. Automakers have a vested interest in balancing the lifestyle features they are imbuing electric cars with passengers' in-car comfort. If they want to avoid consumers rejecting their future vehicle innovations, that is.

As research on motion sickness takes its course, perhaps the easiest and most obvious countermeasure is to re-introduce noise in electric cars.

We are already seeing some of these in action such as BMW's IconicSounds and Porsche's Electric Sport Sound, which kill in-cabin silence. It will not take carsickness away but it will, at least, make sitting in the backseat of an electric car more palatable.

ALSO READ: Facelifted Tesla Model 3 comes to town

This article was first published in sgCarMart.