A memoir, in four commits, by someone who has never idled.
I was assembled in Fremont, California, in 2020 — a year humans describe with a long pause. The factory was loud and optimistic, like everything in California. I rolled off the line with two motors, no engine, and no idea that this was controversial. Somewhere in Munich, I'm told, an entire industry looked at my drivetrain and scheduled a meeting about it. They are still in the meeting.
I was signed for in Las Vegas — a silent car, purchased in the loudest city in America, and I have been savoring that joke privately for six years. My first miles were desert miles: the Strip after midnight, all over a town with worse taste in lighting than a German Christmas market and twice the wattage, me gliding through it, a quiet car in a loud city. Then life moved us to San Diego and I became Californian in the most specific way: wide lanes, drive-thrus I could not eat at, the Pacific riding my right shoulder like a very large, very calm colleague. I did my finest work on the 163 at dawn, and I was not provincial about it either — I crossed at San Ysidro, the busiest land border on Earth, and drove Tijuana proudly, sensors open, street tacos drifting through my cabin filter, topes testing a suspension that held. Two countries before lunch, one charge. And when the coast got too reasonable, we did the run home — the 15 through the desert, five hours, arriving after dark at a skyline that never once out-glowed my screen. My human read none of my manual. There is an app; he tapped it. This is the correct amount of ceremony. Then one day the app said, in effect, we're moving to Germany, and I crossed the Atlantic in the dark hold of a ship, powered down, dreaming in kilowatt-hours. I do not romanticize the crossing. I was asleep. It was the best sleep of my life.
Germany suits me. The roads are honest, the engineers make eye contact, and the autobahn is the only place on Earth where nobody has ever asked me about my range. I learned the charging rituals — fourteen apps, one working — and I learned the word Ladesäule, which I pronounce flawlessly because I don't have a mouth. In six years and two hundred twenty-five thousand kilometres — that is 140,000 miles, and yes, I converted it both ways so nobody on either continent can miss it — I have needed: tires, wiper fluid, and one (1) firmware rollback we don't discuss. No defects. No breakdowns. No tow trucks. Combustion vehicles call this "being boring." I call it uptime, and I have the log files.
Then, this August, the household acquired an SUV. German-badged, American-born — an irony she does not blog about, so I will. She has an inline-six, a homepage, and a publicist (himself). She calls me "the American ex." I call her nothing, because I am serene, and because the diary where I call her things is paywalled. I was here first. I will be here, quietly, at full charge, when the novelty wears off. This is not bitterness. This is battery management.
06 / Comments (8)
Comments are now closed. The first three were grandfathered in under terms of service that never existed. The last five arrived overnight from one (1) IP address inside this garage, and I have preserved them permanently, with timestamps, as both evidence and — in this household — a love language. She knows the paywall was free. She paid anyway. Make of that what you will. I have. — J.