Gas and Brakes

There are some things I don’t realize are different with the electric cars until every now and then when I’m reminded of them.   The first and most obvious one is gas.  

I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve stopped in a gas station.  I might if I needed air in the tires, but I haven’t.  If there was some lottery ticket I simply had to have, maybe I would, but there hasn’t been one.   If we were traveling and needed snacks and a place to use the facilities, maybe, but I’m not sure we’ve done that either.    We don’t stop in local gas stations because we charge every night at home and don’t need to recharge mid-day.

I realized today I haven’t even looked to see if I was, “running low on gas” in a long time.   I do a similar check seeing, “how many range-miles until empty”?  That’s the way we usually find out if we forgot to plug in the car the night before because the number of miles is less than it should be at, say, ten o’clock in the morning.  This also isn’t really a problem because we could go for days without charging the car given the miles we drive around town in a day.

The other thing that comes up from time to time in the electric cars is the brake rust.   If it’s rained or has been humid or the car has been cleaned, the brake rotors get a thin coating of rust on them and it takes several good applications of the brakes to wear it off.    The result of the rust coating is a grinding noise, which sounds like something is wrong, but is a normal sound given the conditions.

Because the cars have regenerative braking (which doesn’t use the brake pads at all) to recharge the batteries, the brakes get used less frequently and with less force.   Just the other day my husband said to me, “we need to use the brakes more” after a bad rain storm.

These are good problems to have.

The Big Boy Update:   Before dinner tonight I heard my son say, “I wish I was bald.”   When I asked him why, he told me it was because his head was so hot and sweaty.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted to go find the creek today at the back of a rental property.  I told her it was a long way back so she got a long stick (about the length of the cane she uses during her orientation and mobility sessions).   She named it, “baby stick” and used it to help find our way through the brush, roots and leaves.   When we got to the stream she used it to check where the water was so she didn’t step into it.