Post History

Analyze an electric vehicle on Shabbat

I started thinking about this from a random post and thought of many question, probably missing the important ones. So this is structured as an argument between two people trying to follow the law but not knowing any more than me, a non-Jew.

Aaron: "What are you doing?!"
Ethan: "Just driving the kids to the park."
Aaron: "Don't you know what day it is?!"
Ethan: "I'm not shopping or anything."
Aaron: "But you're driving!"
Ethan: "Look, dude, it's electric. No fire, no spark plugs."
Aaron: "You're still creating electric circuits, an act of creation!"
Ethan: "I turned it on yesterday. Any circuits get created, the car computer made them, not me."
Aaron: "First, driving is an act of labor in itself. Second, when you press the accelerator, the computer has no choice but to close a circuit."
Ethan: "All right, all right! I'll use self driving mode."

So this is me being intellectually curious again, though the issue may come up in real life for observant Jews. My particular ask is to find out what the key issues actually are, which may have nothing to do with what occurred to me. 

Followup intellectual question. Does legal analysis allow analogies? There's a rule against riding an animal on Shabbat. A car is not an animal, but might there be a common principle?