this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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xkcd #3214: Electric Vehicles

Title text:

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

Transcript:

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Source: https://xkcd.com/3214/

explainxkcd for #3214

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[–] kalpol@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Sure but.....we had that already

[–] Test_Tickles@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

You clearly didn't grow up before lithium batteries. Before lithium, batteries sucked and they sucked hard. You would spend a small fortune to buy 5 lb of batteries to put in your tape player, CD player, remote control toy, anything portable and then you would get between 5 minutes to an hour of total use time. Or, if it was you rarely used the gadget, or it was something like a remote control that were only on for incredibly short bursts as you push the button, you would leave the batteries in it until they went dead. But then you got the treat of opening it up to replace the batteries and finding that they leaked all over the inside and destroyed the device.
I have lost so many portable devices to leaking batteries that I can't even begin calculate how much it's cost me. Before smartphones, I had probably spent upwards of $1,000 ( in today's money) in calculators alone. I don't even work in some kind of math-type job or have a mathematics type degree.

[–] kalpol@lemmy.ca 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

It never occurred to you to keep the nicad or NiMH battery bank full of charged batteries and swap them out?

You can't even leave the lithium ion batteries plugged in when you aren't using them for long periods, they swell. Which is bad.

[–] Test_Tickles@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

I am not sure if you are making a joke or trying to troll me, but either way I laughed. So thanks for that.