Driving in America

Coming to the end of our California road trip I thought I would reminisce about our experiences driving in the USA

Differences from the UK

Starting with the obvious, you drive on the other side of the road. Only once did I try and get in the passenger side door of the car but you still look silly

You can turn right on a red light (unless the signs tell you not to). This is one of the differences that are the harder ones to get your head around. Red means stop… Unless you’re turning right and there’s no obstruction. A few times I ended up sitting at the lights trying to work out if I could go or not but thankfully there were no cases of people honking at me to keep going

The car

When the hire company offered me the choice of the booked “mid sized suv” or the dodge challenger muscle car there was no real decision to be made. It may not be economical, it may not handle corners all that well but if it’s one of those things you’ll never own then why not have it for the experience.

The fact that the car has a 0-60 clock to see how aggressively you want to pull away from the lights says it all.

The cruise control took a bit of getting used to, the model we had didn’t have the smarts of adaptive cruise control so, you still have to watch the cars in front of you but the car will do most of the leg work for you. Having driven a friend’s Volvo which has most convenience features but full self driving I thought I would prefer to “drive” it properly. In fact as soon as we were on the freeway or interstate roads the cruise control was set to the speed limit and then sat back and kept the car in lane.

Outside of the cities the interstates and freeways are vast with more than enough space for the cars. The maintenance however is on the poorer side of mixed with lots of patched up concrete that made for an uncomfortable ride compared to UK A Roads and Motorways.

Electric vehicles

Driving through California the volume of electric vehicles was noticeable compared to what we saw in New York and Tesla is the predominant and noticeable brand on the road. The Californians have embraced the EV culture and think this is a mixture of the first Tesla factory in Fremont but also the fact that it’s as ubiquitous in silicon valley start-ups as using Google Workplace on their Apple devices.

One of our taxi rides was in a Model X and there is something special about the gul wing doors that make being a passenger a novel experience but some of the attention to detail on the finishing touches around the panels was noticeable compared to more established premium car brands. The driver said he had had the car for five years and you would hope these were teething issues of the early production runs but people still talk of issues today.

The EV popularity hasn’t swayed me that with the correct home charging infrastructure and improvements in charging networks it will be a practical alternative to ICE and likely my next car purchase. Whether I were to pick a Tesla or opt for a more traditional manufacturer like Audi or Mercedes is still to be seen. The techy in me likes the idea of the Tesla but with appropriate range and more likely better build quality I’ll likely pick the Audi Q4 or similar.

Final thoughts

As I come into land in Texas and we look to get our second hire car I would hope that we get another option and that the Texan roads are better than the Californian ones. Gas prices I am told will be cheaper and people drive everywhere.

666 miles on the odometer and counting let’s see what the second hire car is. Jen has insisted that if there is an option for a pickup truck then I must go for it.