Talking EVs: Range Anxiety, Charging, and Tech

Welcome to Syntax. On this Monday, hasty treat. We're gonna be talking about electric cars. That's right. Wes and I Scott coding.

No. Not coding. We're gonna be talking about electric Yarn, and and it's gonna be a fun one. We're just gonna be talking about real talk about what it's like to own an electric Yarn, a little bit about things that you know, real experiences. None of this, like, I don't know, bickering and things like that that people tend to do online. So we're just gonna be talking about it. I got an electric car, and I don't have an electric car. I had a sports car before, so I got a lot of experience here. I used to even work at a car company. I used to work at Ford. My name is Scott Tolinski. I'm a developer from Denver. With me as always is Wes Boss. What's up, Wes? Hey. Yeah. I've I've hesitated talking about this because

I feel like anybody who talks about it is insufferable.

Yeah. Because, like, I am not an Elon bro, and I'm not an environmentalist. I care a lot about the environment. But if I'm being honest with myself, that was not really a reason why I bought an electric car. I have lots of other initiatives in my life that I care much more about for the environment. So I feel like people on either side of that conversation are are so obnoxious.

You look out the the comments on any TikTok or Instagram reel or whatever, and you're like, oh, these people just are either, like they're lying to themselves that it is so perfect, or they have no idea of of how awesome it it can be. So I hate the term ICE, which is internal combustion engine. Like, people call gas cars ice cars. Like I know. Come on. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. It's just cult language. Right? You wanna feel like you're a part of a group. You know, these little ice users warp wanna yeah. I know. That's good.

So I thought it would be a, interesting conversation as as we both have driven cars for a little while Node, you you much longer than I. But we'll just kinda go into what it actually looks like. And and if anybody like, the overlap between people who are web developers and people who are interested in electric cars, I think, is fairly large. So we'll give you our thoughts. Yeah. Yeah. Super cool. And, honestly, if your car is running OT updates, hopefully, your car's operating system has Sentry because

let's face it. We all know these things aren't bug free. Hopefully, they are. Hopefully. I even had too many issues with mine. I'm gonna just be up Yarn about that. That,

a shovel is a person every time I drive into the garage. So, certainly, there are issues.

Yeah. Certainly, there are issues there. Sure. I have seen actually, it's funny every time I, I see, like, a a car's UI, and I'm, like, checking for FPS Wes I'm watching and seeing, like, how responsive it is to touch because some of them I mean, honestly, they used to be so bad. I even had a job offer to work on them at Node point for GE or GE GM for GE, that'd be yeah. And I I turned that down so I could actually been working on these slow interfaces back. There you go. They were super duper slow.

But if your software has bugs in your warp, because that's the world we live in these days, you'll want century at century Scott I o to make sure that your software is collecting these bugs.

Century.ioforward/ syntaxfm.

Alright. Cars. So, Scott, you've had an electric car for over 2 years Node. So tell us what you got and and how you decide on that.

Yeah. I have a, an IONIQ 5. I got it in March of 2022. So I've now had it for two and a half years, which I do feel like is a good amount of time to have, like, feelings and assessment on a electric Yarn, you know, or, like, what it's like to to own 1.

I had also considered briefly well, not even considered briefly. I think there were 3 cars that I was looking at more than any of them, which is the Kia EV 6, the Nissan Aria, and the Ioniq five.

I really like the Aria because it has a massive internal cabin. Like, the cabin's huge inside, but it just, like, wasn't released when I I got mine. Oh, I also considered the, the Polestar 2, but they delayed it so much that Yeah. We talked about that for a while. Yeah. By the time that it was coming out, I'd actually been like, you know what? Maybe I want more SUV like Yarn, which the Ioniq five looks like a hatchback, but it is pretty much the same dimensions as my wife's RAV 4. I mean, it's not quite the same, but it is an SUV.

It's just the shape of it makes it look like a hatchback.

So, internally, the cabin size is huge. It has level 3 charging. So it it charges from man, it charges from, like, 0 to 80% in 20 minutes or something crazy if you have the right charger. It's super fast charging if you have that charger. That was a big reason why. Also, I do like that it looks like it it it came straight out of the movie Total Recall or RoboCop.

It's sick. It's like a satin a matte satin?

Yeah. I have, like, a a silver satin or, like, a matte paint on it. And the whole thing just honestly looks like it's it's from a 1980 sci fi movie. So I I love all of that. The the features inside you know, one thing that I really like about it is that, you know, most cars, they have that center console section that takes up and separates you from the passenger completely.

Yeah. My Yarn JS complete open foot room. So from my feet to the other from 1 door to door, it's like a complete open channel there. And the weird little center console you can move up and back, but it is just in between the chairs. And it feels like yeah. Normal cars can't do that because of their transmission.

But because there there's a flat floor in the electric car, man, it just feels so

free and open in the cabin. Just wide open. Yeah. There's no hump in the in the middle. Like, you know, you sit in the back of a car and and you get the middle seat. You gotta sit on the hump. Yeah. There's no hump. Yeah. Totally.

So for me, I you know, those were the the ones I was deciding between. I wanted something in that size of the Kia EV 6, which is pretty much the Kia version of my car, the Nissan Aria or the Ioniq five. The VW Node was also nice, but I I didn't like the range on it.

There was a man, there's a there's a whole bunch else ones.

I wasn't considering a Tesla Wes. I'm not gonna spend too much time dumping on Tesla. I I, I just not a company I I I really wanted to buy from. So, for me, Ioniq 5 was not only that. I just really love the way the Ioniq 5 looked. So Was the one? Yeah. I got it right when it first came out, which is often something you're not supposed to do. I actually I did that with one of my first cars. I well, not one of my first cars, but, I'd gotten a Ford Fiesta when they had rereleased the Fiesta back in the day. And it's because my my grandpa had worked at Ford. I got a massive discount on it. It was a cheap little car. I needed a cheap little car, and I got Node, and it was a lemon. They had to replace the engine after, like, you know, 2 weeks of ownership. They're like, you need a new engine. I'm like, what do you mean? This is a brand new car.

So, so I I I still broke my own rule of not getting a brand new car, like, fresh off the assembly line for the 1st time. But, it's it's been a great experience, and I I really do love it.

Awesome. So I'm 6 months, 5,000 kilometers in, which is about 3,000 miles on a Tesla Model Y Long Range.

And I know people hate Tesla. I'm not I am not the type of person that associates my car with my personality, so I don't really care. To me, it's much more like, I enjoy I appreciate nice things, but I am not someone who is into cars.

So, we also considered when we're looking at it so we have a van. We have 4 kids. We have a Sanity, and we're like, alright. We need a 2nd car. Right? We've had a van, only 1 car for 12 years, something like that. Like, we should probably get a 2nd car because it's starting to get a little bit of a pain. So we started looking into it. I looked at the RAV 4 Prime, which is the plug in version of the RAV four Hybrid.

We also looked at the Kia EV 9, which was at the time, it was only out for a month.

And those were good options, but, ultimately, we wanted a 3rd row for just in case. I mean, that we wanted to be able to fit 7 people Scott all the time. The 3rd row is is a joke. It's super small. But just every now and then, you need to take a friend or you need to be able to to throw an extra kid in there. You wanna take all 4 kids with you. It's so nice having that option. You don't have to juggle being like, oh, well, I I need to take this many people, so let's switch keys. And, that's annoying to me. So we really, the only options in that use case were the Kia e v nine and the Model Y. I know people are gonna Sanity, Rivian r one s Node X. Those things are a $130,000 in Canada.

And in Canada, anything over $100,000 has a a luxury tax on it. So, like, out the door, it Wes, like, $150,000, which is, like, shoot me if I ever spend that much money on a car. So this Scott I get that those are great options, but there's no chance I was gonna put for any that kind of cash.

So I want we want Node y because the e v Node didn't and still does not charge, on the Tesla infrastructure, which in order for us to get to our cottage, we needed to charge some way up there, and there just wasn't the the infrastructure for it yet. So,

we'll do 1 Node well. I wanna step in here, because I am a Kia EV 9 fan. Not to say you should have gotten that because I I understand your needs. It's sick. I love it. For, yeah, for people out there who might be concerned that it's very new and stuff, it's actually built on the same skateboard platform as the EV 6 and the Ioniq 5 and the Genesis. So, the way that Kia and Hyundai did this is they have the same skateboard platform for all of their cars, which means, you know, you can share parts between them and You get the drive motors, the battery Yeah. All the tech. So you don't have to worry about it being, like, a brand new tech or something like that. I just wanna throw that next. I am an e v Node fan. I I like the way they look. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's pretty good. I

I had met a guy at, the chargers one day, and, he he let me take a look. And I was like, this is sick. Like, that's a proper 3 row, not like a, oh, you can squeeze a 3rd row in there if you want, but there's no room for, like, putting a backpack in there or anything like that.

Yeah. And the Ioniq 9 will be the based off of the Kia EV,

Node as well. So there will be an Ioniq 9 that looks pretty sick. That's awesome. Alright. So let's talk about how far you can go, and then we'll get in into the charging because you talk to anybody and myself as Wes. It's just like the range anxiety is is something that absolutely everybody has, meaning that I would like that, but I go places where I need to be able to to gas up in 2 minutes and and keep going on the on the road. Right? So I go to our cottage, many times a year, and our cottage is about a 4, 4 and a half hour, sometimes 5 hour drive depending on traffic.

And that ends up being just over 400 kilometers, which is 320 or I don't know. How many hold on. Let me let me do the math.

I wanna make sure I'm not leaving our American friends out here 250 miles away. Right? Like, that's a in in my opinion, that's a pretty big drive, especially I talked to all these Europeans on on Instagram, and they're like, I could drive across the entire continent with that. But in Canada, in in the states, some of our drives are are fairly long. So the EPA, which JS, like, what the in Environmental Protection Agency, they basically spec out how far these cars can go. So our car is spec'd out for 525 kilometers, 325 miles, which is is a bit of Node, Really, it's not gonna go that far on on a battery if you have it charged up to a 100%.

Really, what happens is when we go to the Scott, the night before, I'll charge it up to a 100%, and you can really get, in ideal situations, maybe 425 kilometers, which is 260 miles.

So that's that's really what you're gonna get out of out of that if you if you get that specific one. The things that affect range is is wildly different. Right? Like, when you have lots of people, lots of stuff in the car, it's quite a bit less how you drive. So I'm I'm a pretty aggressive driver, I would say, so I don't get as far on it. In the winter tires, driving in in slush and stuff like that, that will bring it down quite a bit as well. But none of that has been an issue. None of that has been even remotely an inconvenience, which I spent very many, many years. I've I've been looking at electric cars for many, many years thinking like, oh, I might be able and I'd be able to do this pnpm x, y, and z and, like, never never been an issue.

Not at all. Not even close to being like, oh, this is kinda scary. Right? And it's just like, I can't believe how actually so it's so much better than I would have thought.

Yeah. For me, the range anxiety was you know, I mean, being in Colorado, it it's hard to drive. I mean, you could drive to Utah, right, like that. But, like, if I'm going to go to Michigan to visit my family, I'm going to fly to Michigan because that JS, like, a 2 day drive. We got dogs. We got kids. Like, that's not gonna happen.

So we don't do any super long car trips. For me, the most important thing was that I could go to any of the ski resorts, whether that is you know, even Vail is like an hour 42 hours on a, you know, on on a trip. Or if I wanna go to most of the time, it's like an hour and a half, hour 15 into the mountains, which is mostly, like, really uphill driving.

I need to be able to get to the mountains and back and either charge while I'm there or just drive back. So for me Mhmm. Like, I'm able to go to go skiing for a day, come back, and still have 30%, 40% left on my battery, which is actually another great thing. We talk, we talk a lot about, like, range anxiety. Yeah. If your car is using the 1 pedal driving motor, you're going downhill or whatever, it's recharging the battery. And if I'm going into the mountains and I'm coming back, I've had a I've had a a trip. Honestly, Wes, this was crazy. I had a trip where, like, on the way up, it took 50% of my battery, and I still managed to get home with 40% battery because the way back was, like, pretty much downhill with charging the whole way. The regenerative? Yeah. So, the range for me has always been very good, but, again, I'm not doing any cross country trips with the car. But, again, it charges really fast. When when we, take it into mountain trips for the weekend or for the week and we wanna spend some time, like, away from the house, like I said, my char car with the level three charging, I I'll just take it, bring my computer 15, 20 minutes, whatever, charge it up, and and be good to go.

Yeah. It's it's amazing. So I have needed to charge at a supercharger, I think, 3 times so far. So I can make it 4 and a half, 5 hours to the cottage on with a without a charge at all. And you show up with I think I show up with 15% battery. It's kinda kinda a little dicey, though, because if if it does if you end up needing to to go a different way, there's a detour, then you're it's it's much harder to charge a car that's out in the middle of, out of middle of nowhere than just getting a a jerry can. Right? Like, there's I know there's tow trucks and whatever, but not where our cottages.

So what I'll do is the the 3 times I've actually needed to charge is you stop and you literally I'm not lying. We charge for 6 minutes every single time because it's it's so much different than thinking about, oh, you gotta fill up the gas to a 100%. Totally. Yeah. It's simply just like, how much how many minutes do I need to just top up? Can I grab 10, 15% to get to my next destination? And thinking about it in terms of that has been it's a bit of a mind shift. Right? You always think about, like, oh, how much does it charge Go to 0 to 100% and and how many times I've ever charged from 0 to 100%? Never.

It's always just you plug it in, you get 10, 15, 20% as much as you need or a lot of people will go for lunch or whatever and and charge it up. But the amount of times I've actually stopped, it's it's been done charging before I've gotten back from going to the bathroom with my kids. Yeah. Part of that is because the charges are a kilometer away in the parking lot, though.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And and if you if you need the fast charging, there are cars like mine. Mine here's the official stats. It goes from 10 to 80% in 18 minutes.

It can add 62 miles in 5 minutes. So if you need 62 miles in 5 minutes, pretty fast. So there are cars that that charge very fast if you need, fast charging for whatever the reason. But, likewise, I I mostly, you know, I mostly just charge my car at home. Or if I am going to charge my car away from home, what I do is it's do it when you're going out to to eat or something. Eat. Eat. You Node, you walk to the restaurant or you you park near or something like that. And, and maybe it's just lucky where I'm at in Colorado that we have a lot of EV chargers around. It makes it pretty easy to do that. Mhmm. The the 10 80 thing is kinda interesting because that's how

people judge it. Because when your battery is super low, it charges super fast. And then as you get up to 80%, it's much slower to go from 80 to a 100%.

So that, like, 10.80 is kind of the metric that a lot of people are using.

So we'll we'll talk about the charging levels. There's 3 levels. Right? 1, 2, 3. Level 1 is you simply plug it into a 120 volt outlet. I know the everyone in Europe is laughing us right now because we have such wimpy electricity, but that is extremely slow. I think I did the math on it. If you Yarn at 0 battery and needed to go to a 100, that would take 5 days to to fully charge. However, I I would I I don't remember taking 5 days because I did

the, the level 1 charger for about a year before I ended up getting my home level 2 charger. And I don't re maybe it's just because I don't drive that much that it maybe never got that low. You Node I never got that low as well. Yeah. I would just run it down

15%, and then it would overnight, it would go to it would recoup that that 15%. But if you do the math, it is it certainly does take that much because there is only 15 amps allowed to come out of those those circuits. And at our cottage, we have a an old woodworking shop that has a 2 40 Wes amp plug. So I got, like, a special adapter for it, and it charged much faster. But what most people do is they're not charging on those plugs. That takes absolutely forever unless you're Mhmm. Just leaving it for a full day. Most people go and get a level 2, which is generally a 60 amp breaker. They can go up to a 100 amp breakers, and they will then deliver something like 40 mine mine delivers 48 amps of 240 volts, and it it charges like JS I've never been in a problem where I've like, oh, waiting for this thing to charge because I don't know. I can't even tell you how fast it charges. Right? I just plug it in, and a couple hours later, the thing is full, which is pretty sweet. And and then there's the 3rd level, which is level 3, and that is it goes DC straight to the batteries. So rather than converting AC to DC, which is what your car has a charger in it, you just go DC straight, and that's what supercharging is or or fast charging is. And you'll see them often on the side of the highway.

Those things will will get you really, really fast. Like like I said, I can spend 5 minutes there and get 15, 20%, and, I I can be on my way. Word. Charging standards, you can use any charger out there mostly.

So the the the Tesla charger is called NACS, North American charging standard. And then most of the ones right now that you're gonna see at, like, a mall or whatever, they have a what's something called the j 17/72, and those things are pretty compatible. You can buy a little adapter, and they will convert themselves.

And it's it's not really a big deal. Most new cars are coming out with the Tesla standard, which is the NACS, But I wouldn't sweat about that because it's simply just a little adapter you you have to keep in the trunk, and you can you can charge on on any of them. I've I've charged at 6 or 7 around town just to test it to see if it works, but I never actually Node to.

Yeah. You know what it was? I got, like, 2 free years of charging with Electrify America. So I only, like, go to ESLint I'll go out of my way to go to Electrify America Yeah. Chargers just to take advantage of that. That's good because I should say one thing is the Tesla chargers are not cheap at all. If you are comparing

the kilowatt hour of a Tesla charger versus gas, it's essentially the same. The cost savings here, when we'll get into pricing, is really if you are able to charge at a lower rate at home or a lot of people even have a super low overnight rate, which is almost free to to charge this thing. But if you are thinking, oh, I'm gonna charge at a a supercharger absolutely every single time, which is a lot of people in apartment buildings or street parking or whatever. Mhmm. The benefit of the pricing goes out the window very quickly because those charges are really expensive.

Yeah.

So let's talk and while we're on that, I mean, let's talk pricing. You did some some actual cost analysis here, like real world versus gas. I do wanna say, like like you had mentioned, if you are you Node, you know, don't own your own home where you can install this, That that gets harder. I think that gets much tougher, and and I don't know if that's a decision I would make personally. Yeah. Just yeah. Just because you you'd be what? You'd be charging all the time, especially if you're driving a Scott. You'd be charging elsewhere.

Or if they have them at your work, maybe that'd be nice. That's the thing. Flip Node is a lot of people say,

my work has chargers.

Yeah. That's So your If they do. Electricity bill would be 0. If you plug in at work and they pay for it, that's that's wicked. You you pay nothing.

But I have so I've driven 5,000 kilometers, which is 31 100 miles in about 6 months Node.

And I have spent a $190 on electricity.

So people are like, can you tell it in your bill? No. Not at all. If if if you take the supercharging out of that, it's probably close to, like, $130, that I've I've spent on my home electricity.

And we get fairly cheap rates here in Ontario because we have a massive waterfall that is constantly dumping. Right? So in Ontario, all of our power comes from nuclear or from the waterfall.

So it's relatively cheap compared to other countries and and other places, so we can kind of take advantage of that. So I pay, I think, 11, 12¢ a kilowatt hour.

I've seen people pay 4 or 5 times that. And then you can also if you want, you can get on time based billing where you can get it down to 2¢ a kilowatt hour, and you you can time the car to charge overnight. So you can essentially fill your car up for I don't know. I can fill my car up at 11¢ for $8.50.

But if you're you could probably get that down to a buck $52 if you're doing overnight. We don't do the overnight, though, because I'm home all day. We're Yeah. We have the heaters on. We have the air condition on. I have lights on, so it doesn't make sense for us. Yeah. We have I think a lot of the the home chargers even have, like, settings in the nav for them that allow you to take it up. You can time them. But let me let me show you my real world. If you are a 100% charging at home, which is me driving to the cottage, takes 4 and a half hours, 400 kilometers, I can charge the whole car for about $8.50.

And our vans gas to the cottage Bos us $75.

Wes is a little bit cheaper now, probably a little bit less. So it's almost 10 times cheaper to if you're charging at home and just doing that. And that's not a fair comparison because the fan is much bigger. It's it's not as efficient. Right? But I I did compare it against a RAV 4 Hybrid, and that would be about $40 worth of gas. So it still would have been 4 times cheaper than a, a hybrid, which is is Yeah. Is pretty nuts.

Yeah. And, I mean, there's also, like, all these additional maintenance costs that I don't know if people consider. I mean, my wife has a hybrid. She has the RAV 4 Hybrid. We've had it for a while.

I mean, you do Node a maintenance cost, but, like, going out of your way to a gas station is a Node nothing, you know, thing. She has to stop at a gas station. People act like that takes no time out of your day whatsoever. Where, like, for me, I literally just plug it in, and that actually takes no time out of my day. It's always full, which is wild. People think, oh, I can fill my car in in 5 minutes. That's why I hear a lot of people say, but, like,

I never have to go to the gas station. It's not really a pain in my ass to go to the the gas station. But You gotta go out of your way sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You do. I I just got done shopping at Costco. Now I gotta go wait in the Costco gas line because that's where the the gas is the cheapest. Right? That makes no sense to me.

It's cheaper.

It makes sense to me. But another, you know, another big cost saving measure is brakes. Right? You don't think about that because, with the Node pedal driving, it JS it's magnets or what what is it? Resistance using resistance to slow down the car? I was trying to explain this to my son the other day, and I was like, I I actually don't know how this works. Yeah. Well, the way that a a motor works is that when you put electricity to a motor, it will spin.

However, if you manually spin a motor with your hand, it's generating electricity. That's that's how, generators work. Right? I have a a propane generator that spins a motor fast enough that generates electricity, and then that goes into into the house.

So you can either make a motor go by putting power to it, or if you're flying down a hill, you're not putting any power into it, but the that motor works as a generator and is able to put the power back into the battery, which is pretty cool. Like, I can go I can go down a, like, a 1 minute hill we have here in Hamilton, and my it goes up 1%. Like, it's Yeah. It's not nothing.

Yeah. I know. Node I always use the 1 pedal driving. For people who don't know, the 1 pedal driving, when you take your foot off the gas, it starts to slow down the car, like, pretty rapidly, almost as if you were braking.

So I pretty much only use the 1 pedal to brake until you need to actually brake or you have to brake Yarn or something like that. So your brakes don't get the amount of use that they would get because the motor is slowing it down.

Also, you know, people don't think about this. They the electric cars don't have, like, belts. They you know, your your engine has all these belts, timing belt, whatever belt.

You have to replace these belts, and granted Scott that frequently, but you don't have to do that. You don't have to worry about belts wearing out. 2, oil.

The cars don't have oil. There's no engine to put oil in. You never have to go into an oil change.

Oil changes are a pain in the ass. Let's face it. They're always I don't know if they are in Canada, but here they are. They're always like hate it. It's so annoying. You gotta Yeah. They're pretty quick. But even then, I have to think, oh, I gotta I'm gonna take the car and go through the Jiffy Lube. Or if you go to, like, a mechanic, you gotta book an appointment or whatever.

Yeah. Not to say that the Tesla doesn't have maintenance, but it it or electric cars don't have maintenance, but they are significantly less. Like, the brakes is a huge one for me. It's it's so much that you don't use your brakes on electric car that there's I'm part of all these groups on Facebook.

All the time, people are like, my brakes are rusting over. It's like, oh, you have to use them sometimes. To use them sometimes. There's there's even a, if you go into the service mode of a Tesla, you can turn on this brake burnishing mode, which it will you go really fast, and then it will put the brakes on really quickly. And you do that 6 or 7 times because people are not using them at all. Like Yeah. If if I drive, like, 4 hours, I probably tap the brake 5, 6 times, which is is nuts.

It is a little bit motion sickness when you first get into it because as soon as you take your foot off the pedal, it immediately starts breaking. So you have to, like, relearn how to how to drive the thing.

Yeah. One thing that is way more expensive is first of all, the cars are way more expensive. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. That's why I was laughing at my sister the other day. She's like I was like, it's so much cheaper without paying for gas. She's like, yeah. But you also bought a really expensive car. Yes.

First of all, the Node y is not like a fancy car anymore. I know people think it's like a a super expensive Sanity car.

It's I I call it a Corolla. Literally, everybody on my street has 1. There's it's like the next Honda Civic because people do the math and the numbers work out. It's a little bit more up front. But if you if you actually do the math on things that we're talking about, gas, brakes, maintenance, oil changes, things like that, it actually does work out. Like, believe me, I I'm I'm the guy that picks garbage from the side of the road. I I Wes the math on this type of stuff. Right?

Yes. You're, you're garbage picking stuff. Yeah. Certainly, Yeah. So But

the insurance is freaking ridiculous on these things and so much that, like, a lot of people get sticker shock. So my our model y is $100 a month more than our van JS. It was the same as we used to have a BMW X5. It's the same amount. And the BMW X5 is a very large high end SUV, and Tesla is not a high end SUV. Right? It's a nice car, but it's not high end by by any means, which is is pretty nuts. And it's because insurance companies don't wanna touch these things once they get in a wreck because there's a big battery in them, and they're kind of scared to to repair it. So they just write them off all the time. You see it all the time. And there's this, like, underground of people who actually fix them now, which is kinda cool.

I've been watching on YouTube quite a bit. Richard Builds is probably the biggest one out there, but there's this huge like, the the next generation of mechanics are not get your fingers oily and whatnot. We certainly will still need those. I don't think that every Yarn needs to be electric because there's lots of use cases where you need all of that power and range or whatever. But a lot of the next generations of mechanics are nerds who know this stuff really, really well. I'm part of this, like, Facebook group that is full of, like, Tesla Vercel, like, third party Tesla service guys, and it's wild, the stuff they'll do. They'll be like, this 1 battery cell is corroded. And and they're just like they peel it open. They have all these scan tools that they can use to figure out which battery it is. They take the cell out. They replace it. They balance it. And, like, it's pretty cool what they can do.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You do wonder too, like, as the the battery tech evolves and the tech changes in general, like, what that will come. You know, one thing I never understood about maybe people hating on electric cars is, like, the people who are fast car enthusiasts.

Yes. Because I had I had a a sports car before. Yeah. It's like a turbocharged, you know, nearly 300 horsepower Yarn, and it it's not nothing. It was a a lightweight car, so it's very fast. Right? Yeah. But the Ioniq 5 with 350 horsepower and instantaneous torque is by far the fastest, most fun to drive car I've ever owned for numerous instance. I push the pedal, and my daughter calls it cheetah mode, and you throw your head back like a spaceship. It it shoots off so fast. Yeah. So they're and there and there's so much weight low to the ground that you can corner really well in them. So to me, I never understood. Like, I don't need my car to go vroom vroom for me to enjoy it personally because I it it's fast as hell.

I I have a very good theory on this, and I call it the machine gun Kelly effect.

And it's because Okay. Hear me out. This Yeah. This is I've been I've I talked to my wife about it the other day, and she's like, you're so stupid, but this makes so much sense to me, Is that people who buy electric cars immediately become car people. And almost always, those are not car people previously.

And they all of a sudden are they want to talk about it. They want to tell everybody about it. And quite honestly, car people love to modify their cars, and they love to do the research, and they love to talk about it. And then here comes me who went on the Tesla website, and I picked from 3 colors and 2 interiors.

I picked from those things, and everybody goes to Yarn meets and says, you got the blue.

I got the gray.

Oh, there's also a black, and there's a white. That's it. You Node? Like, Ed, there's not a whole lot you can do to modify it. And then there's this, like, crazy aftermarket of, like, Amazon aftermarket parts you can add to it and and all kinds of crazy stuff.

So my my thing here is that I feel the same way about people who like Machine Gun Kelly. Why? Because you shouldn't be able to just find music that you like and say, I like this.

Because I love music. I love punk. I love hardcore, and I spend lots of time curating my library and finding really hard to find stuff and talking to people about this sounds really cool. And then you see these nerds put the radio on and say, machine gun Kelly is sick.

And and then they go to a they go get a T shirt from Scott Topic and think that they're super into music.

And that's how it should be. I feel the same way about Taylor Swift as well. It's totally fine to like popular music, and it's totally fine to do that. You don't have to be nuts about music to enjoy something, but it bugs us, music people, when we see that type of thing because the guy is a poser, and he's just putting on, like, a bunch of earrings and trying to look cool.

And you know you know what I'm trying to say here is that I know what you're trying to say.

No. I get what you're trying to say. For me, I the only the only thing I'm concerned about with this metaphor is that do people actually listen to Machine Gun Kelly? If you are out there, you are listener.

Yeah. Let me know. I don't I did not know he was an artist of note. I thought he had, like, I thought he was kind of like a, he showed up for a minute and JS he's he's. He's ESLint the

all alternative rock scene. The same thing Wes I was when I was growing up, people would listen to Simple Plan, and it's like rap guy.

No. He's he's like he's like in the, like like, punk rock, like, ESLint 182 adjacent. Blink is really cool. Don't get it. He must have pivoted. Yeah. Because he was That's the thing. Yeah. That's the thing is that he was super into rap. But then Yeah. When rap's not cool anymore, what's oh, alternative is back in. You know? And and now everyone's into that. And I know this is the stupidest thing ever, but it bugs people who spend their life identifying with that.

And, and I guarantee it's the same thing for for car people JS, like, I spent so long. I love to jack my truck up. I spent I I go on the forums. I talk to everybody.

I I put all these aftermarket parts into it, and then you see some guy ripping down the highway with a wrap on his Tesla thinking he's hot shit.

Yeah. It bugs you.

I I get what you're saying. As a former snobby music person, I have since changed my tune. I was a music student, so, you know, I I grew up going to concerts. So believe it or not, I definitely was a snobby music person for a long time. I am free to learn. What they like. Yes.

Alright. So let let's wrap it up here.

The question is so now we have a van that's gas and a car that's electric.

I often think to myself, would you go a 100% electric? And my answer to that is I absolutely would if they come out with something that is as good as the van.

Mhmm. And the Model X is not a van. You can't fold the seats in. People who think that the model x is in a van equivalent have not done van stuff. Yeah. You know? No. Show me when you put 8 sheets of plywood into a model x, and and we'll talk.

You know? But the van is so good. Put a washer dryer in there the other day. I can tow with it. No problem.

All the seats come out really cool. The kids can abuse it. Freaking TV flips down from it.

Give me a Tesla van or give me a Kia EV 9 with sliding doors that you can still take the seats out. There's still room underneath. You give up that room underneath because there's a battery there. Give me all that stuff. A 100%. I would be there, I would be there in a second.

Yeah. I honestly I I, you know, I would do. I I have I would have no problem, getting full EV because, again, we we just don't drive cross country like that.

My wife has the Wes I said, the RAV 4 Hybrid for a while ago. And it I think it's like a 2020 maybe, maybe even 2018. I don't even remember when. Either way, it's still new enough that we're not even considering buying a new car. I'm the type of guy who buys a car and keeps it for, you know, 10 10 plus years. Yeah. Same with me. Paid off and, you know, I have to buy a I have to buy a new car. In fact, my last car was so old. It didn't even have a backup camera.

It didn't have, like, any features. It like, the the fanciest feature it had was, like, the blind spot detection. So Yeah. Yeah. I I rarely buy a new car. But when we do inevitably do, we'll definitely go another EV because they're they're just great.

Yeah. Pretty good. We didn't we didn't specifically talk about the tech in these cars because I don't think that's an electric only thing. You know? Like, some of it is All the well, like, what tech is is EV only?

Oh, well, does your I guess your minivan might have this, but, like, a normal outlet? My car has a normal outlet. Does not. But What? My mini my minivan, 10 years ago, has an outlet,

and the Tesla does not have a a regular 1 20 volt outlet. Drives me crazy.

Literally, the thing is a battery on wheels, and you can't plug, like, a radio into into the back of it. You have to get I do have, like, a inverter, and the USB ports put out,

like power delivery. So they're pretty good, but kind of helps me. Yeah. I plug my Mac I plug my MacBook Pro into the power adapter. That's great. I love the, climate control stuff, so I can have my car set the climate controls for morning. It's just Node. Morning

or something. On when you're at the mall, and you can just run the air conditioning for 2 hours and keep the car icy cold. And then or you can you can heat it up.

It's really the best in the winter. Yeah. Me because our garage is detached.

So even in that short walk from the house to the garage, you're like, oh, it's cold. Let's get in. And you get in the garage, and you get in the car, and the car's all nice and Yeah. Warp. That to me is huge. Yeah.

I'm I'm specifically talking about the, like, the self driving tech. Yeah. Yeah. The lane keep stuff. Yeah. Keeping, whatever. The self driving stuff is pretty cool, but that all that stuff can is added to most cars.

Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing really groundbreaking unless you're using some crazy LIDAR systems there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's that's my beef with the Tesla JS it doesn't have any sensors. It's all cameras.

So, like, the there's, like, the backup, the blind Scott.

It's not as good as our 10 year old thing, and the thing drives itself.

It's not as good as our 10 year old van, which which has sensors in it. So I kinda wish it did have sensors.

Yeah. I don't know what their deal with, not using, like, LiDAR is. I think a lot of really interesting cars do or at least newer ones. Yeah. I agree. Yeah.

If if I got a new EV Wes and I if I ever had the money to spend on a, like, $100,000 car Yeah. Which believe me, like you said, it's not in my future, this is the one I would get. I would get the Lotus Eletre.

It is not in Lotus's typical wheelhouse of being these lightweight British cars. It's this massive SUV, but it is a hyper Yarn. It drives very, very fast. It has 905 horsepower, and it's a 3 c it's a 3 row SUV with 900 horsepower, and it's crazy. So this is my dream car right here. Cool car companies

just popping up. Like, are starting to see them driving around. Although Canada just put a big, like, a 100%, tariff on imported ones, imported vehicles from China. Because, like, BYD is a huge like, we're almost at a spot now where you can get a, like, a $15,000 little electric car.

Yeah. But not anymore, at least not in Canada because they are gonna tax the crap out of that.

Yeah. Like, Node, like, just like Volvo Wes purchased by, Sigrile, one of the Chinese auto manufacturers. So this yeah. Interesting. Yeah. This Lotus looks sick. It's crazy. It's my favorite. A lot of people hate it, which is the one thing I hate about the Lotus fan groups because they're all like, it's not a 2 seater, tiny little I'm like, I nobody's buying them. So Yeah. That's why they're making this. Yeah. Oh, also, one other thing is I'll I'll tell you. Go on TikTok and look up Edison Motors. It's a electric truck company from Canada, Vancouver that is big in the logging industry.

And the way that it works is that you don't plug it in.

It has a caterpillar generator on board. Oh, generator. Yeah. It has a generator, and the generator runs and fills the batteries.

And then the batteries drive the thing. And he says it's it's not about saving the environment. It's about the efficiency of this and the the torque that you can get out of electric motors, and it's really interesting. And then the Ram, the Dodge Ram, which is the good old boy's truck, they just came out with the Ram Rev.

Really cool. It's kind of the same idea where it still has an engine in it, but it's all electric battery, drivetrain, all that good stuff. But then it has a, like, a 3 cylinder engine in it that will charge the batteries for you.

Sick. Well, this was a a very, just like the the weight of these, electric Yarn, this was a chunky episode.

So

very, very yeah. That was a bit long. Maybe we coulda got a a tasty out of it, but, hopefully, you enjoyed a thing or two. I think the people that are interested in this stuff don't necessarily care. They'll they'll they'll listen to it, and we'd love to hear your thoughts on us. Tweet us at syntax f m. I'm at Wes boss, and Scott is at s Tolinski.

Thank you. Alright. We'll catch you later. Peace. Peace.