I haven't been posting much on the blog lately because of a personal project I'm working on. Maybe it's because of my stubborn personality where, once I start something, I can't focus on anything else until I finish it — I just can't concentrate on other things.

But honestly, most of that time is spent just going back and forth agonizing over it rather than actually working.

Recently, over the weekend, I went to Jeju Island for the first time in a while. As it turned out, I rented an electric car — specifically the icon of EVs, a Tesla Model 3 (I think that's what it's called?).

Having only driven internal combustion cars up until now, this was my first time driving an EV, and there were things I liked and things I didn't.

Since I don't have anything else to post right now anyway, and it's been a while since my last blog post, I figured I'd write up a review of the Model 3 as a bit of a non-development-related experience.

This review is written from a purely subjective point of view. I've only ever driven internal combustion cars up until now, and I don't have much driving experience to begin with.

[Notice] I wish this post had been written with some sponsorship from Tesla.

• Decent front-seat ride comfort
  • What I kept thinking throughout the trip was: this is a fun car to drive. Usually, when people say a car is "fun to drive," they picture a cool, flashy design, high speed, or a booming exhaust note.
    But even though the Model 3 is pretty far removed from all that, driving it was fun the entire time, at the very least. Step on the pedal, and it flies off satisfyingly every time.
• Fully digitized car information
  • I don't know how other cars are, but everything the driver needs to know — and even things you don't need to know — about the car could be checked on a single display.
    I suppose since it's powered by electricity, the components handling that are more naturally suited to being digitized compared to an internal combustion engine. Both the information you need and the information you don't need show up in detail, quantified.
• Cheap charging cost
  • I charged about 8,500 won worth, and I think that brought it up to just over 30%. Extrapolating linearly, a full charge would come out to around 30,000 won.
• Great speaker performance
  • Connect via Bluetooth, blast some music, and soak in the trip vibes. You can experience what it's like to be the owner of a tricked-out K3 aimlessly roaming the busy streets at 1 a.m. on a Saturday with nothing to do.
    Of course, your license plate will probably have everyone smiling and laughing at you, so don't get too cocky about it.

• Miserable back-seat exit feeling
  • The more fun the driving feels in the front seat, the worse it gets for the back seat. I felt pretty carsick the first time I rode in it, and looking it up online afterward, it turns out I wasn't the only one — plenty of people reported the same feeling.
    The basic motion is quite different from what we're used to with internal combustion engines. The car itself is a bit less refined in terms of quietness, and no matter how gently you go over a speed bump, you still feel like you're getting jostled around in the back.
    Especially with the carsickness — apparently it's due to the EV-specific regenerative braking or something like that — and if you're not used to it, the resulting motion sickness is brutal at first.
    Unlike an internal combustion car, where taking your foot off the gas gradually loses power and slows down, an EV decelerates as if you're lightly tapping the brake, and this sensation makes it very easy to get carsick. Step on it and it lurches forward immediately, and even just lifting your foot decelerates like a light brake tap, so it felt like riding an intense amusement ride.
• Confusing UX
  • Every control in the car is replaced by the large central tablet. There isn't even a speedometer. All information about the car is shown on this tablet. Since the buttons that used to be on the steering wheel and console are gone and moved into the tablet, trying to do even a simple thing while driving feels no different from looking at your smartphone while driving. (Thankfully, there are still a few physical buttons for some key functions.)
    Even changing the AC temperature or turning it on and off has to be done through the tablet, which makes it very awkward to operate while driving. Compared to a button you can feel with your fingers, a flat tablet makes it hard to tell what you're pressing.
    Try turning on your smartphone right now, without looking at the screen, and go into the settings to find the display menu. It's hard. And the problem is you have to do this kind of thing while driving.
    This kind of UX that relies entirely on a display completely goes against the instincts of most drivers who are used to internal combustion cars. Even for someone like me, who's practically a blank slate when it comes to driving, it was startling enough.
• Charging
  • Sigh...
    Tesla has a lot of strengths, but it has one huge weakness. And that one huge weakness swallows up every other advantage.
    Because of the inherent nature of charging, you absolutely have to invest time into it. This has a significant impact even on how you plan your travel route.
    What's even more annoying is that, compared to gas stations, charging stations, which are basically unmanned, are managed terribly — really, terribly.
    You finally find a charging station, which are few and far between to begin with, and it's lucky enough to be empty? First, assume it's broken. There's a 90% chance the spot is empty because it's out of order.
    And it's not like a smartphone either — sometimes charging starts and stops due to a bad connection, and some cars can't fast-charge because the charging protocol standard isn't fully implemented across manufacturers. I never once looked down on people for console wars while playing Overwatch out of respect for my teammates, but exactly 1 hour and 43 minutes in, I finally understood the urge to complain about "brand wars" — this time about charging stations.
    When charging doesn't work, you have to suspect everything. The charging station could be the problem, your car could be the problem, the charging cable could be the problem. All sorts of bizarre issues that you'd never even think about while pumping gas start popping up out of nowhere.
    In my case, I went to three different charging stations, all showing connection errors, and I hadn't managed to charge even once since renting the car. On the last day of the trip, with the battery at 5%, I got up at 5 a.m. like I was desperately trying to make a delivery deadline, and made one last attempt to charge at the Aewol town office. It worked. That was the happiest, most joyful moment of my entire Jeju trip.... and it was summer.
• Ex--plosion
  • The Michael Bay of the automotive world. If you get in an accident and it's hard to get out, or it looks like you'll only halfway make it out, give up and move to the center of the car as fast as possible. A massive flash of light and an earth-shaking KA★BOOM will end your suffering as quickly as possible.

There's plenty to consider in many ways, but I think it's still too early.

The infrastructure is lacking, and safety is also a concern, but when it comes to charging, it's basically inferior to refueling in almost every respect. If even Jeju Island, which has relatively excellent EV infrastructure domestically, is like this, I can only imagine what it must be like outside of Seoul, or in suburban and rural areas.

This problem would get even worse for long-distance trips especially. I recall seeing on YouTube that if there's an EV ahead of you at the next rest stop on the highway needing to charge, you basically have to overtake it no matter what.

And if you're doing something like the mass holiday travel rush, this problem would probably get twice as bad. You might think, "just charge it the night before," but you never know what might come up, and the fact that you even have to worry about that in the first place is already a problem in itself.

While I was charging at the Aewol town office early in the morning, around 7:30 a.m., a lady showed up.

She probably thought she'd come out early enough to charge, but she probably didn't account for one extremely fast and desperate tourist.

The lady parked over there and waited for my charging to finish, but just as I was getting ready to leave, another EV conveniently showed up at the same time.

That driver probably thought they were super lucky that a spot opened up right as they arrived, but they probably didn't think about the lady who had already been waiting.

Of course, regardless of who it was, I just moved out of the way and left, so I don't know what happened after that. I'd already wasted plenty of time there as it was.

If either of those two people happened to have a bad temper, they were both probably in for an unpleasant morning. If you drive an EV, situations and worries like that become part of everyday life, and honestly, my life is already saturated enough with competition without adding one more.

It would be a bit easier if the charging issue alone got resolved, but unlike oil, electricity is energy itself, which makes it very difficult for people to handle directly.

By the time EV charging issues get resolved, I imagine there will have already been groundbreaking advances in portable device batteries.

Eventually everyone will look back and say, "those were the days...", but if you ask me right now whether I'd want to rent one again, well... not really, no thanks.