Electric cars and stagecoaches

Most definitely not a gas pump. Image Credit: MotorTrend

Harking back to the old days:

"Traveling by Supercharger shares some odd similarities with what it must have been like traveling in the stagecoach days -- except for the four-dollar Starbucks coffee and 75-mph speeds, of course. Every 120 miles or so you arrive at a close-to-the-highway Supercharger station in a parking lot, and there, like at a stagecoach stop, the horses take a break and water up. For the Model S, this means plugging in for a short while."

But why these are one likely solution for the future:

"However, there's an allure that really is addictive. Traveling in the Model S strikingly reminds you that you're part of an alternate universe of automotive travel. On the grid – electrically – but off the gasoline grid the rest of the world relies on.

For instance, after driving the long term Model S pretty much nonstop for a couple of weeks, I took a conventional car home and had to stop at a gas station. Suddenly the place seemed foreign. Even archaic. It smelled of gas fumes my nose had forgotten about, and the place made my eyes burn a little. OK, maybe it was just a bad night at the gas-n-go, but with all the people around me staring, zombie-like, at the flickering numbers on the pumps – 50 dollars, 60 dollars, 80 dollars – it felt like an opium den of hydrocarbon addicts being rapidly drained of their paychecks."

From MotorTrend