this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
1103 points (96.3% liked)

xkcd

8980 readers
207 users here now

A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Alt text:

An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that's the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (3 children)

I make a 9-10 hour drive to see my family multiple times a year. I normally stop twice to get gas and use the bathroom, and that's it. Sounds like you'd be adding most of an hour to my travel time each way. I've tried stopping longer and grabbing food, it's not worth it for me.

With that said, I drive 25-40 miles a day the other 360+ days of the year, so it'd really make much more sense for me to have a short range EV and rent something for travel when I have too much luggage to fly.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Maybe don't do that? Catch a train it's significantly cheaper anyway.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

No passenger rail. It's car or a once a week bus that doesn't even stop in the town my family lives in.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago

That's an infrastructure problem you can help solve and regardless going on long trips for most people is 100% optional.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

That would become a 15+ hour trip then...

Edit: On further investigation, it's also not significantly cheaper than flying, and is much more expensive than fuel for driving.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

But much better for the environment, sometimes others matter more and when more people use rail it's more likely our country will catch up and build hyper train networks.

[–] Saledovil 1 points 6 months ago

Sadly, yes. I live in Germany, and here you need a BahnCard50 (or better) for the train to be cheaper than the gas for driving.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

you really ought to be stopping a few more times, i don't understand how so many people are just completely fine with driving for 3 hours nonstop