What could be more satisfying than owning and driving an electric vehicle? You can feel proud that you are not contributing to global warming every time you drive to the grocery store. You can marvel at the absolute quiet that envelops you, even as you turn on the “engine.” You can put the pedal to the metal and literally get thrown back into your seat by the acceleration, because the car doesn’t have to switch gears to speed up. There aren’t any freakin’ gears. When you’re stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, you switch to “regenerative braking” and your car’s range actually increases! For sake of full disclosure, I recently bought an electric vehicle and it has indeed been a life-changing experience, but not for any of the above positive reasons.

I am now in full possession not only of a new car but of a new fear called “range anxiety.” The car can supposedly go 270 miles without a recharge. More like 240. And when that range figure dips below 100 you start worrying. Where the hell is the closest charging station? And is it a level 3, that delivers a full charge in under 2 hours, a level 2 that does the same in 12 hours or a level 1 (like what you plug your bedside lamp into (which can complete the task of a full recharge in 100 hours,) which if you’re not a math wizard, is 4 full days plus an additional 4 hours. I took the occasion to drive to John’s house so we could work out the comics and wording for our upcoming Comic Book anthology. It is about 100 miles in each direction, and whaddya know, I had range anxiety. I didn’t feel confident I could go to John’s house and back on a full charge, so John had to pick me up at his local public library, where there happens to be two chargers. Rather than wait there 6 hours for the partial recharging, we went to his house, worked and came back 6 hours later with the car fully recharged. A pain in the butt? Undeniably. As we have stated in the past, our collective misfortunes may be unfortunate, but they are often the grist of the mill for our comics, including both of this week’s efforts.

Back to electric vehicles. The point is, you tend to plan your activities around recharging. One night, my wife and I drove to a mall in another county (about 15 miles away) because they had level 3 charging, PF Chang’s and a movie theater showing the Oscar nominated “Everything, everywhere, all at once.” That made the 2 1/2 hour recharge a non-factor. A win-win-win if ever there was one. I was so happy with that decision, I didn't even contemplate the fact that I drove 30 miles round trip to recharge my car, which only gets 240 miles to begin with. Incidentally, if you find yourself at PF Chang’s, try the chicken lettuce wrap, damn good. As for the movie, not so much. I fell asleep during it (due to a combination of boredom, confusion and a cocktail from the aforementioned PF Chang’s).

One last thought about the comics: we had fun with the level 1 charger that takes over 4 days to fully charge your car. As Marv (and we) imagined, that would mean your invited company would have to stay for 4 days (and 4 hours). We leave you with this quote John remembered from Benjamin Franklin that John remembered: “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after 3 days.” Have a great weekend and we’ll see you again next week with two new ones hot off the press.

Andy and John