Echoing another comment, if you were to develop it further, it could be interesting to have sliders that allow someone to put in the specs of a car not in your library, or of their current car make/model to then compare them against the recommended ones in your guide.

Centrality of participation:
The whole piece is an interactive game, where you make decisions based on representations the car data. Participation is very central.

Rationale for design choices:
Doing a playful game makes sense for this audience to me. The visual treatment is strong and echoes the playful approach. In future iterations I’d like to see some justification that young people are a significant portion of car purchases, or miles travelled, or something like that to justify focusing on them.

Layers of reading:
There are strong multiple layers presented here.I like the multiple approaches here, from the car cards, to the data-based game outcomes, to the pollution alerts. The game report you get at the end is another example of this.

Appropriate data use:
You’ve got a few dimensions of data about each car on the cards. The pollution data is also based on real information. The money and pollution data are well represented in the game play and mechanics.

Suitability for audience:
Targeting young folks making decisions is a good narrowing in on an audience to help you make reasonable design choices. I can easily imagine the ad campaign that would accompany this game’s launch. A quick reminder – some people enjoy shopping for and comparing between cars (not me, but I know some folks that do).

Narrative:
Rule-based design is tricky, but I think you’re starting from a good spot. Ideas like unlocking new cars are a nice nod to ways to keep it interesting and surprising. I’d consider doubling down on the Tesla-in-Space link to help the game make sense and respond to current-ish events.

Call to Action:
I like the “save mankind” goal. The idea of generating a “game report” at the end as a takeaway is a solid start at thinking about what the potential longer-time impacts of the game experience could be. The hopes to educate the audience about the potential impact of their choice, so the call to action is well aligned with the audience description.

To make this more directly engaging to an audience who may be looking to buy a car, you could consider making the car selection more flexible in the beginning to allow users to filter to a certain brand or price range, and then “unlock” similar cars as the game progresses.