Car Ride

Update: 08/28/2026

• New Features:
  - Added a new "Go Home With..." interaction to cars, allowing nearby household Sims to drive back home together in a single vehicle instead of traveling separately. A big thanks to FreakyRufus for suggesting this idea!
  - Added the kGoHomeOutsideHousehold setting. See the XML Tuning section for details.
• Bug Fixes: Fixed an issue where pie menu options did not appear on cars bought directly from parking spaces. A big thanks to Nikkimin for noticing this!
• Translations: Updated Traditional Chinese translation by kimho406.

There's a certain kind of therapy in a long drive. Whether you're planning a relaxing family drive, a late-night romantic cruise, or just need some quiet time to clear your head, it's all possible with Car Ride. Now your Sims can take their car and just go for a drive. They'll ride around town, solo or with company, and head back home whenever they've had enough.

Features:

- Click your own car and pick "Go for a Drive..." (or "Go for a Drive with..." if you'd rather bring someone along). Your Sim gets in and drives around town for a while, with nowhere in particular to be. While the ride is going, clicking the car shows "Speed..." instead, so you can change speed on the move. It works exactly like my Car Speed mod (see the Compatibility section below).
- Going for a ride provides a steady Fun boost for everyone in the car, and Sims with the Vehicle Enthusiast trait get an even bigger increase.
- Three custom moodlets after the drive: Born to Drive (for Vehicle Enthusiasts), Riding Together (when someone rode along) and Lost in Thought (when they drove alone).
- There are a couple more little features. I'd list them, but I've forgotten them myself...

Compatibility:

- It's a lightweight script mod. It doesn't override any core game files.
- It does write to your save, but only its own three moodlets, and those last about 2 Sim hours. If you remove the mod, the game simply drops them the next time you load.
- I'd really recommend running this alongside the rest of my Car series mods: Car Radio, Car Interactions, Car Speed. They're built to work together on purpose, and each one fills in what the others don't. With Car Interactions and Car Radio, for example, your Sims can chat and listen to music while they drive. As for Car Speed: its own "Speed..." menu hides while a Car Ride is running. This only works if kHideDuringJoyRide is set to True in Car Speed's XML (which it is by default). This overlap exists because the speed selection feature was originally part of Car Ride. However, locking speed control behind just one interaction felt wrong, so I pulled it out into a standalone mod that works everywhere.

XML Tuning (via s3pe):

- kSpeedLowFactor: Decide exactly how slow "Low" is. Default: 0.30 (30% of max speed).
- kSpeedMediumFactor: Decide how fast "Medium" is. Default: 0.60 (60% of max speed).
- kRideDurationMinutes: How long (in Sim minutes) the drive lasts before the Sim heads home. Set it to 0 for an endless ride that only stops when you cancel it. Default: 120.
- kParkAtOtherSimsHomes: Allows parking at other Sims' homes. Default: False.
- kGoHomeOutsideHousehold: Allows selecting Sims outside the active household to travel home with. Default: False.

Install:

- Just drop CarRide.package into your Mods/Packages folder. Done!