Why Do Electric Cars Make Some People Feel Sick?

TL;DR

• There is a measurable EV effect, but it is specific. A small on-road experiment found stronger regenerative braking caused more motion sickness in susceptible passengers.
• Knowing what the car is about to do appears to matter. In the same experiment, auditory cues reduced sickness when strong regenerative braking was being used.
• Some people are biologically more susceptible. A 2026 study found an objective measure of vestibular function predicted nausea during regenerative deceleration considerably better than a standard motion-sickness questionnaire.
• Road and driving conditions matter too. A separate real-world EV experiment found S-curves caused considerably more sickness than simple turns.
• But EVs have not been shown to be universally worse. A survey of 639 people found sickness was more frequent in conventional cars but more severe when it occurred in EVs.
• The complaint has appeared in the real world. Danish researchers began studying the problem after police officers reported motion sickness during emergency driving as the force trialled electric vehicles.
• The simplest interventions remain familiar ones. Looking ahead, avoiding phones and reading, sitting in the front and getting fresh air are still recommended for travel sickness.

Why Would an Electric Car Be Different?

Cars have always made people sick, so the question is whether something about an electric car changes the movements and sensory information that produce it. There are reasons to think it can. Most EVs have no conventional gear changes, electric motors can alter torque rapidly, regenerative braking means lifting off the accelerator can itself produce substantial deceleration, and much of the engine noise and vibration familiar from a petrol car disappears.

Motion sickness is generally understood as a problem of conflicting information about movement: the inner ear detects acceleration and changes in direction, the eyes provide another account, and the brain has to reconcile the two. That is why looking at a stationary phone while your body feels a car cornering and braking is such an effective recipe for nausea. Prediction matters too, which is why drivers fare better than passengers. Electric vehicles potentially change both sides of that equation, altering how the car moves and the information available to anticipate it.

Regenerative Braking Looks Important

The clearest EV-specific finding concerns regenerative braking. Instead of slowing entirely through friction brakes, an electric car can use its motor to decelerate while recovering some of its kinetic energy, so with stronger settings, easing off the accelerator slows the car noticeably without the driver touching the brake pedal.

In 2025, Weiyin Xie and colleagues tested whether that characteristic affected motion sickness. Sixteen people known to be susceptible to it travelled in an electric vehicle during an on-road experiment, each experiencing combinations of low and high regenerative braking, with and without auditory cues communicating the car's movement. Higher regenerative braking produced more motion sickness, and when strong regenerative braking was being used, providing auditory motion cues reduced it.

Sixteen people is a tiny experiment, and all had been selected for susceptibility, so it cannot tell us how commonly regenerative braking causes problems in the general population. But it establishes something more useful than an anecdote: researchers changed the braking behaviour of the same vehicle and changed the symptoms its passengers experienced. It may also explain why one-pedal driving feels peculiar to a passenger unused to it, since a driver accustomed to controlling both acceleration and deceleration through the accelerator makes those transitions almost unconsciously, while the passenger feels the forces without knowing when they are coming.

Why Some People Are More Susceptible

The car is only half the equation; the other variable is the passenger. A study published in Scientific Reports on 6 September 2026 measured the vestibular time constant, or VTC, in 24 women, of whom 21 completed four 30-minute acceleration sessions and all 24 completed nine 30-minute deceleration sessions involving regenerative braking. People with longer vestibular time constants tended to develop worse symptoms, particularly during deceleration and among those who became sick.

The more interesting comparison was with the Motion Sickness Susceptibility Questionnaire, or MSSQ, a standard instrument based on someone's previous experience of motion sickness. Its associations with sickness during the experiment were weak and not statistically significant. During deceleration, VTC distinguished people who reached the study's nausea threshold considerably better than the questionnaire, with an area under the curve of 0.89 against 0.60.

This is still a small study involving only women, and VTC is not about to replace asking someone whether they get carsick. But it suggests susceptibility may involve measurable differences in how the vestibular system processes movement, rather than simply what someone remembers about past journeys. That could eventually explain an everyday puzzle: two people in the same car, on the same journey, having completely different experiences.

The Road Matters as Much as the Motor

Driving conditions can produce equally large differences. Another 2025 study put ten motion-sickness-susceptible participants through six road scenarios in an electric vehicle while measuring both their symptoms and physiological responses. The two worst conditions were S-curves, uphill and downhill, with average sickness scores of 8.4 and 7.7. Sudden stopping and starting scored 6.3, linear acceleration and deceleration 4.4, and simple left and right turns just 2.0 and 1.4.

Ten participants cannot establish a hierarchy applicable to every passenger. What the experiment illustrates is that "travelling in an electric car" is not one exposure: curves, stop-start traffic, gradient and driving style all change the forces reaching the passenger. An EV travelling steadily down a motorway presents a very different motion environment from the same car accelerating and regeneratively braking through congested streets.

Are Electric Cars Really Worse Than Petrol Cars?

This is the question the current research cannot answer cleanly. In a 2025 preprint that has not yet been peer-reviewed, Xie and colleagues collected survey responses from 639 people in mainland China about their experiences as passengers in electric and conventional vehicles during the previous year. If EVs simply caused more motion sickness, the result should have been simple. It wasn't.

Motion sickness was reported more frequently in conventional fuel vehicles. When sickness occurred in EVs, however, respondents reported more severe symptoms. Severity was also associated with age, sex, sleep habits, existing susceptibility, activities inside the vehicle and road conditions.

A retrospective survey has obvious limitations: nobody was randomly assigned otherwise identical cars on identical roads, answers depended on recalling a year of journeys, and time spent in each vehicle type may differ. It still makes the important point. The evidence doesn't justify saying electric cars generally make people more likely to suffer motion sickness, while the narrower claim, that some characteristics common to EVs can affect sickness, is well supported.

What Danish Police Officers Noticed

The question has also emerged somewhere removed from ordinary family journeys. During a pilot introduction of electric vehicles by the Danish police, officers repeatedly reported motion sickness during emergency driving. Researchers at Gødstrup Hospital subsequently recruited 16 volunteer officers, alongside 16 age- and sex-matched controls, for a study published in Frontiers in Virtual Reality in September 2026, and eleven of the officers said they had previously been sick during emergency driving in an EV.

That figure is not a prevalence estimate, because the officers volunteered and most had already experienced the problem. Nor was the study designed to prove EVs were responsible: its purpose was to test whether a virtual-reality simulator could reproduce the symptom burden of real emergency driving safely enough for future research, and the authors acknowledge they cannot yet separate EV-specific characteristics from the extreme acceleration, braking and cornering of emergency driving itself.

That is precisely why it is interesting. The research question didn't begin with complaints on social media but during a real fleet transition, in an occupation where aggressive vehicle movement is part of the job. Whether electrification added to the problem remains unanswered.

What About the Missing Engine Noise?

The 2025 regenerative-braking experiment offers another clue: auditory information reduced sickness when stronger regeneration was being used. That does not establish that the silence of an electric car causes motion sickness, because the study supplied deliberately designed auditory motion cues rather than comparing a silent EV with a noisy petrol car. But it suggests that information about upcoming or current movement can matter.

In a conventional car, changes in engine note, vibration and gear selection accompany changes in acceleration, and an electric drivetrain changes that sensory environment substantially. Whether removing those cues contributes meaningfully to real-world sickness still needs testing. The defensible conclusion is narrower: in one small experiment, giving susceptible passengers auditory information about an EV's movement helped when regenerative braking was strong.

What Can You Do About It?

For all the new research, the practical advice remains conventional. The NHS recommends sitting in the front, looking straight ahead at a fixed point such as the horizon and getting fresh air, and advises avoiding reading, films and electronic devices if you are susceptible. That makes sense in an EV too, because looking through the windscreen gives the brain visual information about the movement the inner ear is detecting, while looking down at a phone removes much of it.

Driving style is also a reasonable target. If a passenger repeatedly becomes sick during strong regenerative deceleration, trying a gentler setting where the car allows it is sensible, though the direct evidence comes from only 16 susceptible participants. Smooth accelerator inputs and anticipating traffic may also help, although the EV-specific research is not strong enough to prescribe a technique. Pharmacists can advise on medicines for people who regularly suffer travel sickness.

What This Actually Means

There is now enough research to take reports of electric-car sickness seriously, but not enough to say that EVs as a category make people more motion sick than petrol or diesel cars. Researchers have shown that stronger regenerative braking can increase sickness in susceptible passengers, that road conditions produce large differences, and that vestibular physiology may help explain why one passenger becomes nauseous while another is unaffected. What we do not have is a large controlled experiment comparing otherwise equivalent electric and combustion-engine journeys and showing that one consistently produces more sickness than the other. The 639-person survey complicates that assumption rather than confirming it, since conventional cars were associated with more frequent sickness while EV episodes were more severe. The emerging story is therefore not that electricity itself makes people sick. It is that electrification changes some of the movements and sensory cues passengers experience, while susceptibility varies enormously between individuals, and among those changes regenerative braking currently has the clearest experimental case.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do electric cars cause more motion sickness?

We don't know. Experiments show that characteristics common to EVs, particularly stronger regenerative braking, can worsen motion sickness in susceptible passengers. Current research does not establish that passengers overall are more likely to become carsick in an EV than in a petrol or diesel car.

Why does regenerative braking make me feel sick?

Regenerative braking can produce noticeable deceleration when the driver eases off the accelerator. In a small on-road experiment, stronger regenerative braking caused more motion sickness than a lower setting among susceptible passengers.

Does one-pedal driving make travel sickness worse?

It could for some passengers, because one-pedal driving can involve relatively strong regenerative deceleration, but current research does not establish that one-pedal driving itself generally causes more sickness.

What can I do if an electric car makes me feel sick?

Sit in the front where possible, look ahead rather than at a phone or book, and get fresh air. Smooth driving may help, and if the vehicle has adjustable regenerative braking, trying a lower setting is reasonable. A pharmacist can advise on travel-sickness treatments if symptoms remain a problem.

The Bottom Line

Electric-car motion sickness is more than an internet anecdote. Researchers can alter regenerative braking and change how sick susceptible passengers become, and recent work suggests the vestibular system itself may help determine who is most affected. But that is not the same as proving electric cars generally make people sicker.

For now, the better explanation is more specific. EVs change how cars accelerate and slow down and alter some of the sensory information passengers receive about that movement. For certain people, under certain driving conditions, those differences appear to matter. The most useful question may therefore not be whether electric cars cause motion sickness, but which characteristics of electric driving do, and which of them can be changed.

This article is for general information and does not replace individual medical advice.