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We now own an electric car. I am better than you. If you ignore the diesel people carrier we also own. But one step at a time. It’s exciting to not have to worry about finding petrol stations, though still slightly terrifying, trying to work out how far the car will get you. I fully charged it once I got home and it said it had 145 miles in the tank. But we drove into Hitchin and back and probably went 20 miles and the display said there was now 85 miles left. I think the most we will ever want to do is go to London and back - a round trip of about 70 miles. But will we make it? Luckily it’s my wife who is going to find out on Thursday! But I understand they have some electricity there if we get into trouble.
I am actually most excited by the fact that the wing mirrors automatically go in and out when you lock or unlock the car. I wouldn’t care if the car ran on the burning souls of innocent children as long as I had that facility. It also means you can look at the car and know if it’s locked or not.
The people of the future will look back at us and not believe that we had to manually pull our wing mirrors in, just as we look back at the idiots of the past and laugh at them for having fixed wing mirrors that you couldn’t even pull in with your hand. You might think that the people of the future will laugh at us for having wing mirrors at all, or for having cars that we had to drive ourselves or that so many of us died in car accidents, when that problem will be almost completely eradicated. But you’re wrong. They will only laugh at the wing mirrors. And they will still have them because the robot drivers won’t have eyes in the back of their heads. Get serious.
And the entertainment system is way better than the one that was in my old car (that I now hate and am glad to have seen the back of, with its irksome non-automatic wing mirrors) and it mirrors your iPhone on the screen and allows you to use some of the apps on it. It’s like being in Knight Rider. Yes, that’s what I mean. It’s not like being in Kit, the car from that show. It’s like being inside the character Michael Knight as he rides in the car.
I understand that electric cars aren’t yet for everyone - it certainly doesn’t fulfil all of my requirements. But it’s nice to be a little bit more green and to know that we do all shorter journeys without the fumes. I wish I had that entertainment system for my longer journeys though.
Will we end up getting stranded, either by a run down battery on the road, or not having enough time to recharge at home? I doubt it, but we need to see how quickly the projected mileage goes down on longer trips.
I have now owned four cars in my long life. Five if you include the one I bought then immediately gave away at the Edinburgh Fringe in 93. But I don’t include that one. I don’t think I could even drive then. I couldn’t even drive.
I think I like this car best. I wonder if I will ever own one driven by a robot. I wonder if you’ll be able to have sex with the robot as its driving or whether that would mean the robot got points on its licence. They’ve all got points on their licence by the time I’m finished with them.
Two Fist of Fun call-backs. You want another one? You know what you want...
