I drive a 2014 Jeep Compass. It only has about 190,000 miles, but it’s accumulated something like six thousand dollars of hail/large–drunk–Lyft–passenger damage, which makes me think it’s probably worthless on the open market. Also, please don’t tell CarMax this in case I do try to sell it, but the air conditioning is half-broken. It kind of works, but it doesn’t fully work. Hopefully, this won’t be an issue for the next six months.
Anyway, I’m at the point with this car where I have to decide whether to:
1. Get it caught back up on maintenance,
2. Sell it and buy a new one, or
3. Drive it until it really makes itself undriveable
I was leaning towards Option 2 for most of the summer, but lately I’ve been leaning back towards Option 1. If you have opinions, shout them loudly. I might hear.
The only reason I share all this is that I think it’s important context for what happened yesterday: The car wouldn’t start. My old, severely dented car wouldn’t start. This has happened to all my family’s cars eventually, so long as they’ve reached the age of four or older. It’s always been the battery. I don’t really get why the battery goes from starting just fine to not starting even with a jump, but I’ve told myself it has to do with the heat in Texas. Is that true? No idea. But it’s enough to stop the internal pondering.
Indeed, the issue yesterday was only the battery, and after twenty minutes of wrestling the bolt on that little clamp Jeep puts somewhere analogous to the car’s prostate (and still expects you to remove with a socket wrench, those fucking fucks), I got the battery out, rolled up to AutoZone six minutes before they closed, and swapped it for a new one in exchange for some currency and some gratitude. My knuckles were bleeding and there was grease on my face, but my car started running again, and I think the rattling noise I heard on every bump on the test drive was just my toolbox, which was sitting in the trunk.
As I was doing the wrestling—as I was bending my back like a boomerang and contorting my arms so I could push with six fingers on the wrench, trying to progress one click of the ratchet so I could push it back and try again—I wondered: Do electric cars have batteries? I mean, I know they have batteries, but do they have a car battery? One you have to change?
Something my dad taught me, back when I was a kid, is that replacing a car battery is pretty straightforward. If I remember right, my brother’s car had died in the high school parking lot, and my dad and I drove over after…a middle school cross country meet? I think it was the fall, because I think my brother had been hitting in the batting cage after school, but this is a hazy memory. Anyway, that little bit of wisdom has always stuck with me: Brakes? I don’t mess with brakes. The battery? If it’s ever the battery, I assume I can fix it myself.
I’ve always taken a little bit of pleasure in this, this replacing of car batteries. It’s a satisfying feeling, taking a two-ton machine and making it run when it previously wouldn’t. There’s a bruise on my hand today, and it feels good. These blogger hands don’t often get beat up. So I wondered, as I pulled on the socket wrench and the clamp and bolt and wrench all bent and groaned, whether I’d ever have to change the battery on my wife’s Kia Telluride, or whatever the next car is we buy. And that got me wondering about the electric cars. Again, I know they have batteries. That’s the point. But is there maintenance you do yourself on those? Or is it all above the pay grade of a guy using a phone flashlight to see what he’s doing because the streetlamp’s inconveniently located?
Is there oil to change? Do you need an IT professional to change it? A software engineer? A séance, to call upon Steve Jobs?
Even if I do go with Option 2, from above, getting rid of the Compass and buying a new car, I’m not going full electric. Not because of any ideological reason, of course, but just because with cars, my highest priority is being inconspicuous. A friend once described another friend as “the kind of guy who thinks his car matters,” and that resonated with me. There are car guys, and they are cool because they’re participating in an interest of theirs, and then there are guys who use cars for their self-esteem, and they are uncool because they’re trying to make you think they’re cool. I’m from the Midwest. If I have to plug this car into something, count me out.
Still, I wonder when the next time is I’ll change a car battery. Are cars getting too complicated? Are we getting too soft? Am I getting too soft? I wonder if there’ll be a next time at all.
Hopefully it doesn’t happen tomorrow. I was gonna get the car washed tomorrow. Big day for Lyft in Austin this Friday, if I can find the time.
