Are all EV-drivers this stupid?

Recently I've had the pleasure to be chauffeured around by a friend of mine who has been the overly proud owner of a Tesla Model 3. First of all, yes he's still my friend. There is nothing wrong with owning a Tesla. Second of all, yes he's overly proud and a bit of a Musk lover. That does deduct some friend points, I admit, but he recently managed to gain a lot of places on my 'stupidity ranking'.

You see, dear reader, this Tesla owner of four years has never ever charged at other places outside of Superchargers. I found this out on my most recent trip with him. After visiting a little festival, we went home and he told me he had to charge on the way. We wouldn't make it home otherwise. Seems fine, right. Just charge at a fast charger along the way. At least, that is what I thought. Instead we took an unreasonably weird exit of the highway and drove around on shitty roads for half an hour or so.

Upon me asking why this was happening, he told me the car was going to a Supercharger and that it would only take a couple of minutes extra to get home. Fine, I thought. If he want's to charge at a Tesla product with his Tesla, I get it. It's also way cheaper, and we are after all, very Dutch.

At the Supercharger he then proceeded to explain that it might be a good idea to quit charging and charge again at another Supercharger along the way. Why? Because charging speeds would be higher, since it was already dipping below 60 kW. So we all agreed that would be a plan. But then the experienced EV-driver in me awoke.

If there is one benefit to owning an electric vehicle, it's that you can charge at your destination. You arrive, park at a charger, plug it in, leave, come back 6 hours later to find your car fully charged. That means you can drive straight home, and no have two detours and two charging sessions of 15 minutes each. You save an hour and reap the benefits of cheaper charging, since slow charging is cheaper that fast charging (most of the time).

This makes sense, right? I hope it does, because I had to explain this to my friend, who -might I remind you - has been driving a Tesla Model 3 for four years now. He never even had the idea to charge at his destination. His mind never went beyond the fact he can charge at home and at a Supercharger. He saw all those charging point in the streets and a parking places and thought they looked nice. He never, and I'm very serious here, even though about the fact he could plug his fully electric car into those points and charge while the car was doing nothing but wait for him to come back.

I know there is a learning curve to driving an electric car. I know it's a mental switch you have to make to not stop at a gas station anymore. But to simply switch from all the petrol stations to the few Superchargers and agree that you'll just have to drive half way across the country to charge to be able to get home, strikes me as another level of stupidity I haven't seen before.

But please, do tell me if this is only me. If it's only me that thinks it's really normal and handy to be able to charge your car everywhere you go and most of the time get privileged parking too. I'm not an EV-driver yet. Maybe that's the issue here. Or it's just me again. It's me again, isn't it... Damnit.

In other news.

Good news for the Volvo lovers among us. The Chinese/Swedes have heard your sobbing and decided it's been enough. The halls over at the headquarters in Göthenborg simply can't take much more of the jars filled with salty tears being sent to them with the labels attached to them which say: "please bring back the wagons, I'm dying of dehydration over here." So the one that came back from his pension to save the car maker has told he sees the wagons return in about 5 years. Or maybe not. I'm filling in the blanks between his words which were: "I think we will not only have SUVs five years from now"

Also good news for the BMW Alpina fans. Designer and fellow Dutchman Adrian van Hooydonk the luxury cars will in fact be faster than dedicated M cars while still looking way better. Did I say better? I meant '"visually restrained", that's designer speak for "we worked harder on this". That means V8's and top speeds of 300 km/h.

More good news: A Tesla Belieber thought Elon Musk was telling the truth when he claimed the Cybertruck could be a boat as well. He took his heavy ass truck and drove it into Grapevine Lake in Texas, only to find out 'Wade Mode' didn't really add buoyancy to the car where needed. The truck took on water and stopped working. The owner was arrested and taken to jail, straight to jail. He was charged with trespassing in a restricted area and not having a boat registration and some other stuff the police could think of. They were clearly not amused with having to save someone this high on the stupidity ranking and towing the child's drawn truck from the lake.