Running On Empty
- Tracy Grathwohl
- 18 hours ago
- 4 min read
Have you ever been driving at night in Sagaponack on Route 27 towards East Hampton – say after an errand-filled day in New York City, including lunch with a friend, a mammogram, and a visit to the shoe repair guy (because god forbid we have a shoe repair guy in the Hamptons) – so, by the time you leave, it’s rush hour and you endure the grueling slog of the Long Island Expressway only to get caught behind a car traveling at 42 mph, in the 45 mph zone just past the Wolfer vineyard and all you want to do is get home but it’s going to take you four more stressful – because you have to pee – minutes to drive those last seven miles?
If the above, heavily punctuated, run-on sentence has happened to you: I feel your pain.
I, too, have been in that trailing car, Kegeling furiously (because I have to pee), and summoning all my powers from the Force, to will the car in front of me to go the speed limit. At least.
But I’ve also been that pokey lead car. I’ve been the person you’ve flashed your lights at and weaved side to side behind in the hope of passing because I am driving at exactly three mph below the speed limit.
Although even in the lead car, I still have to pee.
Basically, when I get to within fifteen miles of my house, I have to pee. I chalk it up to giving birth to four hockey pucks and then entering upper-middle-age. Our bladders simply aren’t engineered to live this long under that sort of wear and tear.
If I’m driving and Kegeling at 42 mph in Sagaponack, it’s because while my bladder is full, my electric car might be running on empty.
Usually, when I drive to Manhattan and back, my little Chevy Bolt has more than enough power get me through the 200-mile journey. 90 percent of the time, I have no problems. I’m just like everyone else, rolling along five to twelve mph above the speed limit, singing my songs, looking for the next place I can stop to pee.
But I’ve had times, mainly in winter, when I’ve suffered from severe range anxiety. Car batteries don’t hold as much power when it’s cold. And the cars’ apps, such as, wipers, radios, or heat, use a lot of wattage. Too bad I can’t minimize my battery usage by putting the car on airplane mode.
An electric car’s heating system is a big power drain. The folks at the Buzz Chew dealership told me it would be more efficient to use my in-seat heaters, rather than circulate warm air throughout the car. I’ll be warm, but my backseat passengers with no in-seat heating will need to bundle up. Next winter, I’ll install a wood burning stove for them.
I get range anxiety when I don’t know where my next shot of voltage is coming from There are several places along the Long Island Expressway to charge. Unfortunately, everyone knows about them.
Westbound, my favorite charging point is in the Chipotle parking lot at Exit 52. But I can’t always get a spot there, which is too bad: That Chipotle bathroom is acceptably clean. Obviously, if I’m going to charge, I’m going to pee (it’s a requisite of driving with an upper-middle-aged bladder).
Every car charger requires its own phone app. And it’s a phone app, that once downloaded, I will never use again. It’ll just lie dormant in my phone until I get an email from the now-defunct charger company telling me they’ve had a data breach.
To download an app, you need internet (or is it WI-FI? I can never remember). Once, we had no service in an underground parking garage. Mr. Hockey had to walk to the top of the ramp to pull the app out of the ether.
At least we were protected from the weather. I’ve been out in the elements trying to download an app with a cute name like “Make Car Go” or “Watts Up.”
There’s nothing like standing in a freezing Holiday Inn parking lot, trying to use my fat fingers to produce an eight-character password with caps, symbols, and numbers that I will accurately recall when I need to re-confirm that password. I like to go with “K1LLmeN0W!”
The experience is enhanced when I then climb a Mt Kilimanjaro-sized snowbank to grab the plug. In heels.
You wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Mr. Hockey has heard these complaints a million times. He believes I should ditch the electric car and go back to a hybrid EV/gas model like my trusty old Ford C-Max (Ford stopped making them, RIP). A gasoline back-up plan is more reliable.
I don’t want to go back to the hybrid. What I want is it to be as easy to buy electricity as it is to buy gas. This means many more charge points, faster charging, and – here’s a crazy idea – more credit card touchpoints so I just can tap and charge without an app.
By the way, these things are happening. It’s just slow. About as slow as I sometimes drive my last couple miles on Highway 27.
It will get better for us electric car owners. But until then, wish me luck. Next week I’m going to the Berkshires. I’ll probably have to stop a couple times to charge.
I sure hope the bathrooms are clean.
Published in The East Hampton Press on July 16, 2026.
Photo by Me!!!