3214: Electric Vehicles

Electric Vehicles

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Title text: Now that I've finally gotten an electric vehicle, I'm never going back to an acoustic one.

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Explanation

This is one of 71 incomplete explanations: This page was created by an EV WITH A NON-RECHARGEABLE BOT-TERY. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

Cueball has somehow misunderstood the way electric vehicles work to be that they have one single-use battery, presumably with a vast capacity sufficient to run them for years. He should indeed feel incredibly silly about this, given the ubiquity of rechargeable batteries in other devices (including internal combustion engine vehicles), and the large amounts of recharging infrastructure springing up to support the running of such vehicles. His objection makes about as much sense as saying he'd never buy a gas-powered car because eventually he'd use up all the gas.

A modern electric car commonly has a range above 300 km/200 miles . By contrast, combustion engine cars usually reach at least twice this range on a full fuel tank.^{[actual citation needed]} Nevertheless, no kind of car can be driven very far or for very long without refilling its energy storage, be it liquid fuel or electrochemical potential. Many countries now have vast networks of public charging infrastructure, often for fast charging of 400kW and more, and their spacing in the all but the most sparsely populated areas usually permits any electric vehicle (even one with an unusually low range of <100km) to recharge before it runs out of energy.

Nevertheless, though not (yet) widespread, approaches for replacing batteries in EVs have been commercialized. In these cases, replacing the battery does not substitute charging it, but it permits the “refill” time to be reduced from often over 30 minutes to a few minutes (the time needed to pull out the discharged battery pack from the vehicle and put in a fully charged one). The batteries are charged while uninstalled and used to replace some other car’s depleted battery later on.

The title text is comparing electric vehicles to electric instruments (particularly guitars), which are contrasted with non-electric (aka acoustic) ones. In the case of instruments, this doesn't refer to how they're powered, but how their sound is transmitted from the strings and amplified. There's no such thing as an acoustic vehicle, though sound can be used to generate propulsion on a small scalein a variety of ways. It has become a common practice to refer to bicycles without a motor by the misnomer 'acoustic bicycle', but this does not seem to be much the case with cars. (Bicycles are sometimes also referred to as 'analog bicycles' — this is even more of a misnomer, being borrowed from the distinction between mechanical and digital devices, where the latter are sometimes misnamed as 'electric'.)

Though it is not their intended use^{[citation needed]}, motorised vehicles can be used as music instruments. Composer Ryoji Ikeda has composed a symphony for 100 thermal (acoustic) cars. Electric vehicles are commonly designed to emit sound, sometimes like an electronic instrument, to give an audible warning of their presence for the purpose of safety. Several jurisdictions around the world require electric vehicles to emit a minimum sound level for the safety of pedestrians.^{[actual citation needed]} Above a certain speed (around 30 km/h)^{[actual citation needed]}, the noise produced by wheel-to-road friction outweighs any potential engine sounds from combustion vehicles, eliminating any difference in audible noise and derived safety properties, and electric vehicles usually no longer generate artificial sound. In some cases, electric vehicle sounds are designed by renowned composers.

Transcript

[Cueball is standing to the left side of the panel, and Megan and White Hat are standing to his right, facing him.]

Cueball: I would never get an electric vehicle.

Cueball: Sure, they sound great, but what do you do if the battery runs out of charge?

[Caption below the image:]

I felt pretty silly when someone finally explained to me that EVs are rechargeable.

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Discussion

How's the transcript, guys? --Utdtutyabthsc (talk) 03:41, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Heck if i know 216.25.182.141 03:46, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

idk man, most cars I've encountered sound pretty acoustic to me. EVs are quieter though since they lack combustion engines 137.25.230.78 04:00, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Just added a real life cars-as-instruments section, and to prove I'm human I must select photos with cars. It didn't tell me if I should pick the acoustic ones though, I'm confused. 78.244.70.135 08:11, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Didn't it give you the option to use an audio version of the captcha? 82.13.184.33 09:37, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

You know, it is possible to run out of charge while you're driving. Then you have to figure out how to move your car or recharge it when there aren't any sources of electricity handy or convenient. Dogman15 (talk) 09:39, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

That's hardly a unique problem, though - the same is also true of gas-powered cars (or any other fuel you care to mention, for that matter). 82.13.184.33 10:08, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

As and when I might transition to EV, I've been thinking of getting a handy sized PV panel (or, better, a 'roll' of PV fabric, which can be pegged out; perhaps even used as a windbreak/sunshade) stowed in a corner of the boot(/trunk), that I can take out and use to trickle-charge the vehicle when needed. Although that's more for like just making a bit of use of the sunshine if I'm stopped anywhere for long enough, to reduce my reliance upon commercial power sources. 81.179.199.253 14:39, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

When i was in school one teacher was keen on distinguishing batteries from accumulators. a battery was something you use once, an accumulator could be recharged. this was in a non-english speaking country and i am not sure if this strict distinction exists in english. but it could cause such a misunderstanding.--2001:62A:4:408:2541:D6E7:7A86:B8DC 10:25, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Until I read the whole paragraph I was thinking accumulator would be the same as a capacitor. Maybe they thought rechargeables are actually giant capacitors, but they aren't. They store energy in a (mostly) reversible chemical reaction (tons of energy, slow to charge-discharge (unless spicy pillow releases magic smoke and fire)). Capacitors hold charge physically along the surfaces of the plates (fast charge-discharge, (relatively) tiny capacity). Totally different storage method. 130.76.187.47 13:34, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Of course, the usual (and, by now, entirely moot) confusion is between "battery" and a "cell". It should only really be a "battery" if there's more than one "cell" in series (or maybe in parallel, but I'm sure that can be argued about) within the full item that you're naming as such. And rechargable batteries/cells have been so long a thing (are "electrical accumulators", as opposed to non-electrical equivalent ones for other forms of energy storage and release, like pressure-/gravity-tanks, flywheels, etc), although lead-acid batteries (yes, they're internally cells in series!) was often identified as an "accumulator" to contrast with the (single-use) solid-state chemical cell/battery. 81.179.199.253 14:39, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

I think acoustic propulsion is a thing, but it doesn't work for human-scale cars. One, the sound generator is external and two, it's usually small things. 2603:8081:9700:E9D:0:0:0:2 14:25, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Isn't an explosion technically sound? As gas-fueled cars are powered by exploding the gas, they really are accoustic cars.(talk) 16:36, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

The sound is a side-effect - not the means of propulsion. 82.13.184.33 16:54, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm not convinced the penny farthing line is relevant - the preceding discussion, in reference to the title text, is about misapplying distinctions from one field to another inappropriate one where they aren't relevant. The 'safety' epithet was applied because the new bicycles were considered safer - whether or not that was correct, it was entirely relevant to the distinction being made. 82.13.184.33 16:54, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
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