For anyone prone to motion sickness, the feeling is all too familiar: the world spins, your stomach churns, and a cold sweat trickles down your spine. Now imagine experiencing that on a chilly winter day while riding in a ride-hailing electric vehicle.
The question "Why do ride-hailing EVs cause motion sickness?" has topped social media trending lists, sparking heated discussions among netizens.
According to China Science Communication, the tendency to experience motion sickness in ride-hailing EVs is not just psychological — it's because the new energy electric vehicles widely used today may indeed increase the probability of carsickness.
So why exactly do electric vehicles make passengers more prone to discomfort?
To understand this, we first need to grasp why people get carsick in the first place.
In medical terms, carsickness is called "motion sickness", and its core explanation is known as "Sensory Conflict Theory".
Simply put, to maintain balance, our brain simultaneously receives three sets of signals:
• The inner ear vestibular system: Detects acceleration and spatial position (the body's built-in gyroscope)
• The visual system: Perceives the displacement of surroundings (real-time visual monitoring)
• The proprioceptive system: Senses posture and pressure through muscles and joints (body position sensing)
When you're sitting in a car (especially when looking down at your phone), these three "departments" send conflicting signals to your brain: You're moving? I'm not moving! He's moving! Don't move!
This inconsistent information confuses the brain, leading to dizziness, nausea, and other motion sickness symptoms.
So why do some people get more carsick in electric vehicles?
"The core reason electric vehicles cause motion sickness is the strong conflict between the power characteristics and driving experience of EVs and the human body's own balance perception mechanism," explains Li Lei, associate professor at the School of Mechanical Engineering, Hefei University of Technology.
Fuel vehicles provide a buffered driving experience with gradual speed changes, while electric vehicles are directly driven by motors, resulting in rapid power response and strong sensations of sudden speed changes.
These instantaneous changes frequently stimulate the inner ear's balance receptors, causing discrepancies in the information received by the brain, thereby inducing dizziness, nausea, and other motion sickness reactions.
Additionally, several design features of electric vehicles can exacerbate passengers' motion sickness.
For instance, some EVs pursue quietness, with almost no engine sound inside the vehicle. Passengers who typically rely on engine noise to gauge speed changes lose this auditory reference, making their balance perception system more prone to disruption.
"To save electricity, electric vehicles are commonly equipped with regenerative braking systems. If not used properly, these can also contribute to motion sickness — this is another key trigger."
When the accelerator is released, the system forcibly intervenes to decelerate and recover energy. This frequent, abrupt "jerking sensation," which defies the brain's inertial expectations, keeps the inner ear vestibular system in a state of continuous, high-frequency confusion and correction.