• by Karl Greenberg , February 8, 2012

Buick is launching a series of games meant to make tracking miles-per-gallon stats a sport, or at least engaging. A suite of three games is part of a single app available at Android and Apple stores. 

One of the games, "Regeneration Road," highlights the fact that Buick’s eAssist mild hybrid powertrain regenerates the on-board lithium-ion battery through vehicle braking. Players must make it through a town and to a destination without running out of fuel. Pedestrians along the way add difficulty.

The "Roll and Boost" game is intended to demonstrate how the potential energy garnered from braking can be released in the form of low-end torque for quick acceleration. It has players taking a weekend drive through a flowing countryside, but a drive limited to one tank of fuel. The goal is distance, not speed -- so battery management strategy is vital.

The final game, which has a wind-tunnel theme, lets players design a vehicle with an eye toward the lowest possible drag coefficient. The tie-in is that the sleeker the vehicle is, the less work the car's eAssist has to do. The game lets players tweak the car’s length and width on the screen, and add and remove things like spoilers and roof rails. Boston-based Digitas developed the digital games with Buick.

A Buick spokesperson explains that the program is part and parcel of a broad strategy to get younger, technology-forward consumers to take a new look at the brand, which last fall rolled out the Regal GS sport sedan, and has entered new territory with the Verano compact sedan, and (soon) the Encore compact crossover.

“It’s another tool we are using to get Buick in front of people who wouldn’t have considered us in the past,” he says. Over the past couple of years, the automaker has created a number of programs to reach such audiences, such as a rich-media online social community, “Moment of Truth,” to promote Buick with third-party endorsements, consumer comments, and other content.

Last year, Buick partnered with Wired to have the Regal in the Wired pop-up high-tech store in New York’s Times Square. The company has also been running a “Discovery Tour” to get the brand’s vehicles in front of people at epicurean-focused lifestyle events, and will have a big presence at the forthcoming NCAA Finals. “Our biggest challenge is getting the brand in front of new people,” says the spokesperson. “Because when people test drive [Buick vehicles], their perception and opinion dramatically improve. It forces a reappraisal of the brand.”

The kind of engagement that Buick's app games evince has become a point of differentiation for automakers, especially for in-vehicle console displays that both tout the gas-saving technologies of a vehicle and get consumers interested in the “game” of saving gas. Whimsical readouts on the Ford Hybrid Fusion car tell you when you are driving in a nature-friendly way with sprouting leaves, which disappear when you floor it, or drive in similar ways.

The readout on the Chevrolet Volt electric car (which has a gasoline battery-charging motor onboard) shows a battery stack that glows green when you are using electricity only, and a similarly shaped vessel filed with glowing blue liquid when you are driving on gasoline.

Honda and Toyota also offer visual analogs for just what mélange of electricity and gasoline is powering your wheels at any given moment.

Buick vehicles with eAssist have an “Eco” gauge in the instrument cluster that indicates how efficiently the driver is operating the vehicle. The car’s infotainment screen delivers more advanced reporting of what the intelligent powertrain is doing.