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Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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We have an explanation for all 2 xkcd comics, and only 71 (2%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!

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Electric Vehicles
Now that I've finally gotten an electric vehicle, I'm never going back to an acoustic one.
Title text: Now that I've finally gotten an electric vehicle, I'm never going back to an acoustic one.

Explanation

The title text is relating electric vehicles to electric instruments, which are contrasted with acoustic guitars. In the case of guitars, this doesn't refer to how they're powered, but how their sound is transmitted from the strings and amplified. 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.

Though it is not their intended use, motorised vehicles can be used as music instruments. Composer Ryoji Ikeda has composed a symphony for 100 thermal (acoustic) cars. Alternatively, electric vehicle sound must be designed (like an electric instrument sound) so that it is less quiet, thus safer on the road. In some cases, electric vehicle sounds are designed by renowned composers.

Transcript

[Cueball is standing to the left side of the panel, and Megan and White Hat are standing to his right.]
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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