Buying Electric Cars For Kids: What You Need To Know
Your kid may have been wanting to learn how to drive after seeing you do it, but you can’t just hand over your car keys to them lest you want to see your car smashed. You’re thus considering buying them an electric car instead, which is almost as close to the real thing. You are forgiven for not knowing much about electric cars though as they have yet to share almost equal space with traditional, gas-guzzling ones. But with so many electric cars for kids in the market right now, here are some things that you need to know about buying one for your kid
1. The Look And Feel Of Your Kid’s First Electric Car Matters.
Before setting out to buy an electric car for your kid, you’ll want to ask them first what they think it should look like. Do they want their electric car to look like Lightning McQueen (from Disney and Pixar’s blockbuster movie franchise “Cars”) or one of the Transformers? Or perhaps they want to know how it feels like to drive a Chevy convertible with the top down or a Lamborghini?
2. If your kid is between zero and two years old, buy them an electric car with a one-touch button.
You’ll want your kid to start learning how to drive as early as possible, which is why you’re buying them an electric car. But if they’re between zero and two years of age, they wouldn’t understand yet the importance of switching gears, nor can they differentiate between a gas and a brake pedal.
So instead of a children’s electric car complete with gas and brake pedals as well as a gear shift, you should buy your young kid one that comes with a one-touch button instead.
3. The older your kid is, the more power they’ll eventually want from their electric car.
Let’s assume for a moment that you already bought an electric car for your kid. They might enjoy driving it at first, but as they grow older, they might find their toy car’s battery power to be a bit too limiting. You’ll thus want to brace yourself for the possibility that you’ll have to replace your kid’s electric car with a high-powered one every three years or so.
On the other hand, you shouldn’t buy your kid a high-powered electric car if they’re still too young to handle it. You wouldn’t want your kid to suddenly quit driving their electric car after accidentally crashing it and sustaining traumatic injuries as a result.
4. Consider buying your kid a remote-controlled electric car if you feel that they can’t drive on their own just yet.
Driving any vehicle requires hand, eye, and foot coordination, which your kid might not have developed yet, most especially if they’re younger. You should thus buy a children’s electric car with parental remote control.
However, you’ll eventually have to teach your kid how to properly steer their car, step on the gas and brake pedals only when needed, switch gears, and so on. After all, you wouldn’t want your kid to become overly reliant on parental remote controls as they should ideally learn how to drive on their own by practicing on their electric car.
5. Check your kid’s electric car first before letting them use it.
Just as you’ll naturally want to check if the car that you bought for yourself is in tiptop shape, you’ll want to give the electric car that you’ll be buying for your kid a thorough spot check as well. Inspect every component of the electric car itself first. Don’t let your kid drive the electric car that you bought for them until you’ve ensured that each of its parts is working as it should.
In the case that you find out that a certain part of your kid’s electric car got damaged through no fault of your own, you can send it back to where you bought it and have it replaced.
6. Aim to buy an electric car for your kid with the shortest charging time and longest battery power possible.
You wouldn’t want your kid to get too bored while waiting for their electric car to reach full battery status. Else, they might quickly lose interest in learning how to drive. So when buying an electric car for your kid, you’ll want to check which one has a battery that charges the fastest AND lasts the longest. You can’t afford to waste your money on an electric toy car whose battery charges fast but lasts for only less than 30 minutes or one whose battery lasts for more than an hour while in driving mode but takes forever to recharge.
Toy cars used to be confined to just pedal-powered ones. But as electric cars are becoming increasingly mainstream, more and more parents are starting to consider buying one for their children. You’ll want to carefully choose which electric car to give to your child, which is where the above-listed things that you need to know about buying electric cars for kids would come in handy. Your kid can thank you later for buying them a toy car that can make them better appreciate the art of driving at an early age.
