I couldn’t just hook up an extension cord to charge it. What a pain! To add insult to injury, the car lacks a standard charging port. This meant that the car’s tiny battery lost its charge and couldn’t turn the gasoline engine on. ![]() Troubleshooting took a while, but I eventually figured it out: A gasoline car needs gasoline and electricity to run! Apparently the headlights didn’t automatically turn off after I left the car. The next morning I tried to start the car but nothing happened. The car became silent, so I got out and went inside to make dinner. It was quite easy, as it was basically the reverse of starting the car: You turn the key in the opposite direction and remove it. ![]() Again this step is unusual, but it’s necessary to save fuel. Shifting gears can be fun in the right circumstance, but it can also be tedious and frustrating, especially in stop-and-go traffic.Īfter lots of practice and profanity, I got back home and turned off the car. I won’t get into the details, but shifting gears is definitely a skill that must be learned. This process of shifting gears involves careful coordination of the gas pedal, the clutch pedal (an extra pedal to the left of the brake pedal), and the shifter knob. As you gain speed, you shift into higher gears to avoid hitting the engine’s RPM limit. The lower gears are for when you start moving. To get around this limitation they use a transmission with multiple gears, sort of like a bicycle. Too slow and the combustion reaction can’t self-sustain. Unlike normal electric motors, gasoline engines have a narrow range of RPMs that they can operate at. With the engine running and the cabin warm, it was finally time for me to get moving. This only takes a few minutes, but on a cold morning it can feel like an eternity. This means that the cabin won’t get warm until the engine has been running long enough to heat up. Instead of using electricity to heat up coils or pump heat into the cabin, it uses the engine’s excess heat to warm the cabin. At first I thought it was broken, but it turned out that a gas car’s heating system is unique. My next bit of confusion was regarding the climate control. That’s the sort of noise that comes out of a gas car. Imagine if a steam locomotive had a baby with a machine gun. I succeeded on the first try, causing the car to jump to life and emit all kinds of crazy noises. The starting process is pretty painless: You insert your key into a slot on the side of the steering column, push the clutch pedal (more on that later), then turn the key and hold it for a second or two. Apparently it would be wasteful and expensive to keep the gasoline engine running all the time, so you’re only supposed to run the engine if you’re moving the vehicle. I called their support line and quickly figured out the issue: Unlike a normal car, a gas car needs to be “started”. I pressed the accelerator (Mazda calls this the “gas” pedal) but again, nothing. ![]() I opened the door (the handles are very prominent), sat in the driver’s seat, and… nothing happened. I don’t fully understand the details of how it works, but this difference in propulsion technology totally changes the experience of owning and operating a vehicle.Īfter taking delivery of the car, my first hurdle was getting it to do anything. The vehicle has an engine that mixes the gasoline with oxygen from the air, ignites the mixture, and uses the resulting combustion to push the car forward. ![]() This car is interesting because instead of running on electricity, it is powered by a combustible liquid called gasoline.
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