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| Electric Vehicles |
 Title text: Now that I've finally gotten an electric vehicle, I'm never going back to an acoustic one. |
Explanation
Even at the time this comic was written, many potential customers of electric vehicles are still concerned about range anxiety, and the ability of the vehicle batteries to allow the same freedom of travel as with those using the internal combustion engine. No one wants to be stuck on the side of the road, having run out of power, and finding a filling station for fuel (gasoline/petrol, or perhaps diesel fuel for larger vehicles) to refill a traditional gasoline-powered motor vehicle is still easier (at time of writing) than finding an electric vehicle recharging station in most areas. Manufacturers have been trying to ease these fears by developing longer-lasting batteries, along with more recharging stations being set up, but the concerns remain for many.
This comic exaggerates this concern to an absurd degree: Cueball, up until he was corrected, had apparently mistakenly believed that electric cars were powered by single-use, non-rechargable batteries. In reality, of course, such vehicles have and always had used techargeable battery technology (of varying usefulness). He should indeed feel incredibly silly about this, given that rechargeable batteries are very common and exist in many other devices, as well as in internal combustion engine vehicles themselves (to operate the starter motor and other vehicle electronics, at times when the engine isn't yet powering the dynamo in return). His objection makes about as much sense as saying he'd never buy a fuel-powered car because eventually he'd empty the fuel tank.
A modern electric car commonly has a range above 300 km/200 miles. Combustion engine cars usually reach at least twice this range on a full fuel tank. All types of vehicle can only be driven so far, or even idled for so long, without refilling its energy storage; be that liquid fuel or electrochemical potential. Because of this, any vehicle (other than perhaps a solar car, or similar) will require occasional top-ups at roadside facilities or even through a direct feed (overhead lines can provide electricity to suitable road or rail vehicles, and a third rail is an additional option for the latter type, along some or all of their prepared routes). Many countries now have vast networks of public charging infrastructure, to echo the almost ubiquitous presence of refuelling stations across the road network.
Their spacing in the all but the most sparsely populated areas usually permits any electric vehicle (even one with an unusually low range of <100km) to recharge before it runs out of energy, and fast charging capabilities of 400kW and greater makes the current waiting time to recharge more and more like the quick topping-up process people are used to in liquid refuelling. As an alternative, battery swapping is also a possibility in some places, for suitably designed EVs, and has been commercialized. In these cases, replacing the battery does not substitute charging it, but it reduces the “refill” time from a possible thirty minutes stop-over to just a few minutes (the time needed to pull out the discharged battery pack from the vehicle and put in a fully charged one). The prior batteries are then charged by the facility, and later used to directly replace some other vehicle’s battery when it requires it.
The title text imagines that electric cars are distinct from others in a similar way as electric instruments. In particular, electric guitars are contrasted with non-electric (aka acoustic) ones. In the case of instruments, though, the 'electric' and 'acoustic' don't refer to how they're powered (the latter isn't even 'powered' at all), but how they transmit and amplify the sound produced by the player. There's no such thing as an acoustic vehicle, though sound can be used to generate propulsion on a small scalein a variety of ways. It has become a common practice to refer to bicycles without a motor by the misnomer 'acoustic bicycle', but this does not seem to be much the case with cars. (Bicycles are sometimes also referred to as 'analog bicycles' — this is even more of a misnomer, being borrowed from the distinction between mechanical and digital devices, where the latter are sometimes misnamed as 'electric'.) When particular bicycles were developed to supersede the "ordinary" type (later) known as penny-farthings, the new bicycles with wheels of the same size were called "safety bicycles", to promote the idea of their being less tricky to ride, a term that later fell out of use as the new design became more standard (and, in its own way, 'ordinary').
Electric vehicles are commonly designed to emit sound, sometimes like an electronic instrument, to give an audible warning of their presence for the purpose of safety, particularly when traveling at lower speeds. Several jurisdictions around the world require them to emit a minimum sound level. In some cases, electric vehicle sounds are designed by renowned composers. Though it is not their intended use,[citation needed] motorised vehicles can be used as music instruments. Composer Ryoji Ikeda has composed a symphony for 100 thermal ("acoustic") cars.
Transcript
- [Cueball is standing to the left side of the panel with his arms out, and Megan and White Hat are standing to his right, facing him.]
- Cueball: I would never get an electric vehicle.
- Cueball: Sure, they sound great, but what do you do if the battery runs out of charge?
- [Caption below the image:]
- I felt pretty silly when someone finally explained to me that EVs are rechargeable.
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