Opinion: are electric car charging stops a gaming opportunity?

One of the main reasons people are still, in 2024, reticent about switching from good old fashioned fossil juice to EVs is range anxiety. But let’s be accurate here, it’s not really ‘range’ anxiety is it? It’s ‘having to pull over after three hours of driving and sit in a car park for the best part of an hour while your car charges’ anxiety. I will admit, it’s a bit less snappy.

BMW’s solution to the problem with the i5 M60 that I borrowed recently is that I should spend this wasted time doing what I would immediately do if I was arriving at home 45 minutes earlier anyway: sit on my bum playing video games. The i5, and indeed all flavours of the G60 5 Series, are crammed with more electronics than a Currys, including a cornucopia of apps to rival even the most cluttered of phone screens. One of those apps is called AirConsole and offers up 17 games to keep you amused while you’re umbilically tethered.

This isn’t an entirely new concept. You’ve been able to pair a game controller to a Tesla and play all manner of games for a while now. The clever bit about AirConsole is that the only controller you need is your mobile phone. Scan a QR code on the screen and every person in the car can join in, playing multiplayer games on the central infotainment screen. Alright, the kids in the rear seats will have a slightly worse view, but they make up for it with their 20:20 vision, uncompromised reaction times and absence of distracting lower back pain.

The games themselves are a mixed bag. Often it’s the more simplistic party games that work better: there’s a bog standard trivia game, Friends Quiz, where you try and guess things about your mates, and Pinworld, which tests who is closest to being able to find Tbilisi on a map.

More ambitious games tend to falter – there are a couple of truly rancid racing games included and the genuinely brilliant kitchen argument simulator Overcooked is hobbled by juddering graphics and touchscreen controls that feel like you’re playing in boxing gloves.

I liked arcade kickabout Golazo! and there’s an entertaining competitive Angry Birds clone called The Neighbourhood that has you launching heavy ordnance at each other and cackling as your opponent’s fort tumbles down and flattens their tiny troops. None of this is likely to trouble Call of Duty, nor will you be sneaking out to the garage at midnight for a quick session on AirConsole’s Wordle ripoff, but as an alternative to staring at the battery charge percentage ticking up or contemplating your life choices as you wait four hours to board a cross Channel ferry, it’s perfect.

Besides, with 592bhp available in an instant and a car that’s surprisingly light on its feet – proper rhinoceros in ballet shoes stuff – AirConsole is always going to be the second most fun thing you can do in the i5 M60. I mean after driving it, obviously. Behave yourselves.