Top 10 ways to keep your kids entertained when charging your EV

The good news is, there are plenty of ways to take the stress out of charging when you have kids onboard. Whether you are going on a family holiday, road trip or you are unable to charge at home and want some ideas on how to entertain the kids while you top up the battery during the week, we have you covered!

Some of these ideas you might find so fun that your family just starts using them even when you’re not even charging, and the others, well, the big kids onboard might enjoy them just as much as the little ones.

Don’t panic! There are plenty of great ways to keep kids entertained while charging your electric car and you will soon find the time has flown. I have tested all these out with my kids and family over the last ten years as a mum of two, family car journalist and founder of BabyDrive.com.au.

Here is my list of some of the best ways to keep kids entertained while charging your EV.

Plan ahead. If you plan your charging stops ahead of your trip, then you can choose kid-friendly destinations.

Before embarking on your EV road trip or driving to a family holiday, make charging stops a part of the adventure. Look for somewhere along your route that will be fun or interesting for your family to do near a charger.

For example, near Byron Bay there is a huge charging station beside a petting zoo and farm. Australia Zoo on the Sunshine Coast has chargers so you can make an outing of it.

On a long car journey, find a charger near a playground or walking trail so the kids big and small can get out of the car for a movement break.

If you get your kids involved in the research and planning, they can get really excited about it.

Websites and apps I’ve used for planning EV trips with my kids include A Better Route Planner (ABRP) and PlugShare.

If you’re off on holiday and need to pick up groceries on the way, make one charge where you do your food shop.

A lot of chargers are found at major shopping centres which, if your kids are anything like mine, are the last place you want to take them!

That said, if a mall is your only option, most of them have a play area inside or nearby so again, research before you go so you know where to charge so the kids can move their bodies before they get back in the car.

One of the simplest ways to charge your car on a long journey and the kids not even notice the charging duration is to plan your stops around meal times.

I did this with my family on a UK holiday to a wedding and although the journey was very long, we stopped for morning tea and lunch where there was an EV charger and the kids didn’t even notice how the time flew while they were busy eating.

When there’s nothing interesting nearby, it’s night time or the weather’s bad and you want to keep everyone in the car while you charge, car karaoke is a great way to entertain the kids.

The two most-popular EV brands, BYD and Tesla, both have karaoke in their media systems with lots of great kid-friendly songs ready to go from the latest Disney movies to Taylor Swift, so you can easily get the whole car singing along!

Those without an car karaoke system can easily improvise with in-car sing-alongs. Play the music on the stereo and if you don’t know all the lyrics, a lot of music streaming apps now have a mode that will display the lyrics on your phone. Failing that, there’s always YouTube music videos with karaoke-style lyrics.

A lot of EVs have in-built computer games in the media system. In the Tesla Model Y we drove recently, being stuck in a traffic jam for hours was made less stressful thanks to video games in the latest version’s rear screen, which kept my daughters entertained for hours.

Teslas also come with YouTube, Netflix, Disney+ and other streaming apps for in-car viewing while charging or parked. Recent BMW, Polestar, Porsche and Volvo models have YouTube and some Mercedes-Benz models have Disney+ access.

If you’re a family that’s not big on screens, you can make it a treat the kids only get while the car is charging. If you are a tech-friendly family, then your kids won’t mind the extra screen time.

If you’re looking for something to connect you as a family, try some old-school card games.

A pack of cards is nice and small and fits easily in the glovebox and you can pull them out whenever you need to. We find the lid of the central console box is usually enough space to play on.

Depending on the ages of your children there are some great options, like UNO which can be tailored to suit most ages of children, Red light Green light is a good one for younger children and a regular pack of cards can be used for snap or more traditional card games like cribbage.

You can keep score on your phone or with a pen and paper. Our family favourite card game is Billionaire – it has every generation eager to play it!

Some cars have in-built artificial intelligence chatbots but nearly all modern cars have Apple CarPlay, which with a recent software update now works with ChatGPT.

A great use for this is asking ChatGPT for trivia quizzes. You could ask it to make a trivia quiz specific to your kids’ ages and interests. For example: make a ten-question trivia quiz for a ten-year-old about horse riding. Or: make a twenty-question quiz for a seven-year-old about Minecraft. Or: make a twenty-question quiz about Harry Potter.

One thing I’ve found is that the more specific you get with the quiz topic, the less able ChatGPT is to work out if you answered correctly. But this can be a source of hilarious entertainment in itself!

Using in-car AI is such a fun way for the whole family to get involved and at a fast charger you’ll only need a couple of quizzes and the time will have passed without you noticing.

ChatGPT can do other games like Quick, quick, quick a round-robin game where it will ask you to “quick, quick, quick name three vegetables” for example. Another great whole-family game that ends in laughter and is suitable for all ages.

These are also good options for long family car journeys to keep everyone entertained and the driver alert. 

Keep an iPad in the glove box that is pre-loaded with movies, so you are not reliant on internet connection, and just in case, a power bank for, let’s face it, when device charging turns out to be more of a drama than car charging!

The kids think it’s a BIG treat and it can buy you a good chunk of charging time, especially if you have to wait for a charger to become available.

The tech can also be a great stress-saver for other times where the kids may be stuck in the car, such as ferries, traffic jams, or breakdowns.

I know from personal experience that when bogged while off-roading, the device can buy you precious time knowing the kids are safely entertained while the grown-ups dig the vehicle out!

When you want to keep everyone in the car while charging, traditional car travel games like eye-spy can be oldies but goodies!

Because our youngest daughter can’t spell yet we do colour eye-spy – so you can tailor it to the age of your children.

A traditional family favourite of ours is spot the difference. Everyone closes their eyes while one person changes something in the car, and when everyone opens their eyes they have to try and spot what’s changed. It can be as subtle as turning a dial or as big as moving a sun visor – such a fun way to pass the time for all ages.

Our kids love a challenge, so this range-based one is a favourite! There are two parts to this: The first is range-based tasks, using the numbers of the battery range to determine how many of something family members have to do.

For example, if the car’s battery is on 15 per cent, everyone has to skip from the car to the tree and back fifteen times, or do fifteen burpees, or do fifteen laps of the playground equipment.

The second part is the range-based quiz – everyone has to guess how much the car will have charged and the range will have increased by the time they all get back to the car. This can be really fun, especially if your family is competitive! Be warned though, hopping on one leg 75 times can be quite tiring!

Join the conversation at our Facebook page
Or email us at editor@carsales.com.au