Of shirts and cars

On Monday, for my first day at work, I forgot my shirt. How's that for a first impression?

Wallets, keys, phones, papers, packed lunches, etc—these are easy things to forget. But not shirts. It's hard to slip out the front door of your home having accidentally forgotten your shirt. Unless, of course, your shirt is supposed to be out of sight, packed in one of your panniers because you're dressed in cycling attire. Then it's easy to forget that shirt—which you pressed the night before and what a big deal that is because you haven't ironed anything for years and the iron emitted an aroma of melting plastic because it hasn't ironed anything in years either—draped over a kitchen chair.

The company I work for makes chargers for electric cars. Some people thought the future arrived when they first watched a movie on their phone. For me the future has arrived in that I have the guts of an EV charger on my desk at work.

For a guy like me who's pro-bike, it may seem strange to work somewhere that's furthering car culture—even if it's a new fringe part of it. I also spent more than four years working at a company that made software for car dealerships—and car dealerships are evil, no doubt. The truth is: most software development in the world is, well, corporate, and I'm not above selling out.

That said, I don't believe electric cars are the way of the future. (Shh, don't tell any of my coworkers I said that!) Electric cars require a lot of system complexity just to maintain the status quo. I liken our culture's sudden enthusiasm for EVs as a sign that we're entering the bargaining phase in our grief over the continued erosion of our way of life. Please, please let me keep driving a one-and-a-half ton vehicle 60MPH on the freeway. I'll do anything—even put up with limited mileage, higher costs, and the extra inconvenience of electric charging to pumping fuel. Please?

While sitting at my new desk and familiarizing myself with the details of EV charging, I ran some Physics 101 calculations to compare pumping gas to electric charging. Here's what I got:

• There are 4,184 watt-seconds in a Calorie.
• A gallon of gasoline contains 31,000 Calories—or what I like to call 31 burrito units.
• At the gas pump, gas flows up to 10 gallons per minute, though I suppose most pumps do about half that—let's say 5 gallons per minute.
• There are 60 seconds in a minute.
• Thus, 4,184 watt-seconds per Calorie, times 31,000 Calories per gallon, times 5 gallons per minute, times 1 minute per 60 seconds is 10 megawatts.

To make that clear, whenever you pump gas for your car, you're controlling an energy flow equivalent to about two to three thousand McMansions. Granted, you fill your tank in only a few minutes, whereas those McMansions keep sucking power all day. But the next time you stop and fill-'er-up during rush hour, look around at the other ten or so pumps in use and keep in mind that that gas station is outputting as much power as a small coal-fired power plant.

This is to say people's dreams of electric cars replacing cars as we know them probably aren't going to come true. Even if we solve battery shortcomings—and that's a huge if—there's still the problem of replacing the convenience of fueling at a rate that's three orders of magnitude greater than what your house consumes. I just don't see that happening. Ever.

The way of the future for personal transportation will involve the word smaller and probably the words slower and nearer. Everything between now and then is bargaining and depression.

As for me and my new job, I'm just glad they don't mind me wearing an undershirt to work.