ZOOM ZOOM: My (rental) electric car adventure

The guy at the Las Vegas airport car rental desk was friendlier than most. Once he eyeballed my license to see that I owned a home locally, I was tacitly admitted to Sin City's exclusive insider’s club on wheels: He called me by my first name and explained how he’d made a killing in the market after buying property two decades ago. 

He said they were short of cars but, sliding back the paperwork, suggested that maybe there was something he could do for me. 

“Pick any car from aisle A,” he said. “We‘ve even got some pretty cool new electric cars, if that’s your bag.”

Electric cars were not my bag, not yet. While many friends swear by them, I’ve grown used to my umbilical-chord connection to the gas pump as I make my way across the American West. There are some mighty far distances to travel out here, and when you need it, well, there’s usually a gas station not too far away. 

For a man on the move, waylaying for four hours in a place like Beatty or Barstow to recharge my electric car battery still doesn’t seem like the best way to negotiate a busy life. I'm an Upstate New York rube who didn’t try sushi until he was almost 40, a Cro-Magnon who views the wheel itself as a relatively modern invention. So I’ll stick with fossil fuels at least until the batteries can last as long as a full tank of gas. 

I walked down aisle A as people grabbed the last remaining cars. 

And then I saw it. 

The color was a cartoonish light gray, a Crayola-crayon concoction popular with so many cars today. At first, it looked like a mini Dodge Charger; muscled, lethal, fully-loaded. But I couldn’t make out any brand name, just a couple of vague-looking logos on the back and front hood.

OK, this thing was no Dodge Charger, but neither was it one of those precious politically-correct Teslas that have kidnapped the American road like “Baby on Board” bumper stickers. 

What was this thing?

I opened the door and slid inside. Or tried to. This thing was built for a driver much smaller than someone with a six-foot-three frame. But I managed; neck craned, shoulders dipped just so, I shoehorned myself into the driver’s seat. 

By this time, I was already curious about this car, and there weren’t that many others left in the aisle.

I hit the brake and the dashboard lights came on. In place of the gas gauge was an icon that measured the battery power: 97%. This baby was ready to rumble, or as was the case, ease noiselessly out of park. I felt like a prowler.

Five minutes later, even before I left the airport grounds, I encountered a brief four-lane straightway, the kind that for eons has egged young male drivers to test their own limits, as well as those of their car’s speed and power.

Throw caution to the wind, to see what she’s got. 

I glanced into my rearview mirror and then punched the accelerator. What happened next was both unnerving and breathlessly exhilarating. Since there was no combustion chain necessary to power the engine, the response was instantaneous.

The car responded with the ferocity of an attack dog. It shot forward with such force that it literally snapped my neck back on its swivel. I could feel my brain splash against the back wall of my skull with a sickening thud.

Suddenly, I was Captain James Kirk on the deck of the Starship Enterprise, gripping the arms of my commander’s chair after just having told Mr. Zulu to engage warp speed. I was a young Jason Bourne negotiating the chaos of some European capital, foreign killers on my tail.

But here’s the thing: This sheer power was entirely muted. There was no engine roar, no clatter of internal parts. This thing was as soundless as an assassin, a high-powered weapon equipped with an evidence-stingy silencer. 

I gripped the wheel, and blinked: This was a carnival ride unlike any I had ever experienced. A new devil had come to Georgia to deliver technology’s latest version of the Hot Rod Lincoln.

Zoom. Zoom.

The cars I’ve driven in life have never been fast. They had other telltale traits. 

My 1972 Dodge Tradesman van, with ET mag wheels and blue shag carpeting, had play in the steering wheel, metal bumpers, and an engine that rattled after the ignition was turned off. My white 1977 Pontiac Lemans died a lonely death on a Kansas highway from a warped header.

And the engine power of my 1990 Honda Accord was so anemic that when I put pedal to metal, the car didn’t go any faster; it just made a lot more noise.

It’s the same thing with my 2022 Subaru Outback. Such anemic power influences the way I drive. Somebody cuts me off in traffic? Go ahead, go your own way. With this 177 horsepower engine, I couldn’t catch up with you if I wanted to.

There’s a certain amount of Zen acceptance to all this. Even though I might feel frisky some days, without a gun in your holster, without that power beneath the hood, I can’t mix it up with all those other highway outlaws.

But this car was different. 

As it turned out, I had rented a Polestar 2 with less than a few hundred miles on the clock, the newest addition to the design-driven galaxy of electric vehicles that threatens to give Elon Musk a run for his money.

And the best part? A galloping 500-horsepower engine that was ready to break out of the corral, going from zero to 60 in less than five seconds flat. I began to gun the engine off from every line, every intersection. I made eye contact with other drivers, as though saying, “Oh, you think so, huh?”

If anyone so much as glanced at me the wrong way, I eyed them back like a sniper.

I offered joy rides to friends, always with the caveat, “Want me to make your neck snap back on a swivel?”

Then I took my 85-year-old friend Marilyn for a spin. 

She set me straight.

*

Marilyn lived out an epic chapter of Las Vegas history. Her husband Mel was a daredevil, a former NASCAR driver and helicopter stuntman who liked to take chances.

And Marilyn is no slouch herself. She was among the nation's first female chopper pilots and has a set of cool gray eyes that just stares down feats of chance.

She’s also barely five feet tall and could only just peer over the dashboard of my Polestar. I asked if she wanted to experience the atomic force of electrically-delivered road speed. 

She looked doubtful, but when I stomped the pedal, her head snapped back like she was back with Mel inside his Corvette convertible, barreling down those lonely desert roads so many years ago.

She looked over at me.

“That was fun!”

Then her common sense hit the brakes on all that joy riding.

Marilyn drove a Cadillac these days, a car with no shortage of power. She reasoned that cars like this one would prove to be the kiss of death for rule breakers like us.

“Think of all those speeding tickets you’d get,” she said. “Or worse.”

And of course Marilyn was right. A day later, I delivered my Polestar back to the airport, after a few more jet-age accelerations. Truth be told, I had a headache after all that accelerating, all that neck snapping.

I handed the keys to the attendant and slouched back into the industrial age of internal combustion, and didn’t look back. Not once.