I just returned from a half-day road trip. We tanked up twice and, both times, we headed for the building attached to the gas tanks. There, we had clean restrooms (complete with toilet paper) and, if we so desired, access to a bit of food and drink, too. Not great food and drink but, when you’re tired, hungry, and thirsty, good enough. All those things are lacking when you’re hanging out for an hour at a roadside charging station for your EV, and EV drivers are not happy. Heh.

Autoblog reprinted the original Business Insider story, along with one of the greatest online article captions ever: “EV owners are fed up with charging stations that lack a single amenity — I had to pee in a bush.” The story was a hoot:

During a recent trip in an electric car, I stopped to top up at a charging station. Recharging went smoothly — and that's not always the case in these early, glitchy days. Then I realized I needed to use the restroom.

But there was a problem. The shopping plaza nearby was closed for the night. At 10 p.m., a totally reasonable road-tripping hour in my view, there was nowhere within walking distance to stop in and use a bathroom — much less grab a bag of chips and a coffee. As far as I could tell, the place was a ghost town.

So I hopped over a guardrail, waded into some bushes, and, well, you know the rest. Snacks would have to wait.

[snip]

According to JD Power, a research firm that keeps close tabs on consumer sentiment around EVs, drivers are consistently unhappy with the availability of things to do while charging their cars. Getting a solid charge typically requires about 30 minutes, much longer than the wait to pump a full tank of gas.

"I can't tell you how many responses we get from EV owners who are saying, 'It'd be really nice to have an awning for when it's raining,'" Brent Gruber, executive director of the firm's EV practice, told Insider. "Or a place to sit down and relax, or even simple things like garbage cans to be able to clean out my car while I'm charging."

Owners also complain about charging stalls being too far from places to grab food or shop, Gruber said. Moreover, plugs are often relegated to some dimly lit back corner of a parking lot, meaning they can be unsettling to access at night.

The problem of charging has always been the obvious problem with EVs. Filling a gas tank takes five minutes. Filling an EV takes from 30 minutes to an hour. That time issue goes beyond finding a convenient bathroom. Imagine if you’re far from your children or elderly parents and an emergency arises. You also have no charge. If you had a gas-powered car, five minutes at the gas station would see you heading out to get them. Five minutes of EV charging, though, will give you just enough charge to leave you stranded on the roadside. You’re stuck. Likewise, if you have a long road trip, you can add one to two hours per day to your drive.

The fact is that EV cars have many more downsides than upsides. The downsides are that their real costs are prohibitive (which is why poor taxpayers have long subsidized rich people who are happy to buy them), they require oodles of electricity, they’re slow to charge, the batteries require African slave labor (often owned by Chinese companies) to build, other minerals come directly from China, and the batteries are so heavy the cars are tearing up roads.

The upsides are that EVs accelerate really fast (which is oh, so useful in rush hour traffic when you’re going 35 miles an hour), they have lots of fun little electric doohickies to play with while you drive, and they allow you to pretend that you’re not using fossil fuel to power them because you don’t see the fossil fuel behind the sleek looking chargers.

EV cars are leftist toys.

If they were developing through the free market, aside from the slave labor, torn-up roads, slow charging times, dependency on the Chinese, etc., maybe they’d be fine. After all, cars and planes had growing pains, too. The problem is that the government is jamming them down our throats. We are being forced to give up comfort, convenience, and our hard-earned money for these ridiculous cars. So, if someone has to pee on the side of the road, miss out on a snack, or sit all alone in a scary, dark parking lot at night…well, fine.

Image: Charging your electric car by frimufilms.