The 4 A.M. Charge

The service area lights were orange and tired. I parked behind a white SUV with its hazard lights blinking. A man in a blue jacket stood next to a silver sedan, holding a charging cable like a leash. His car showed 1 percent. Two teenagers pushed from behind. The car rolled forward one slow meter at a time. The charging station was fifty meters away. The queue of EVs stretched past the gas station and around the restroom building. A woman in a red coat leaned against her car and ate sunflower seeds. She had been waiting three hours. She said it without anger, the way you say the weather.

I had planned this trip for two weeks. I drove a Xiaomi SU7 Pro. The CLTC range was 902 kilometers. On the highway, at 130 kilometers per hour, with the air conditioning on and two suitcases in the back, the car went just over 600 kilometers. That number was the reason I bought it. It did not make me free. It made the anxiety quieter.

My wife and I left Beijing at 4 a.m. on September 30. The sky was black. The road was empty for the first hour. Then the trucks appeared. Then the cars. By 7 a.m., the highway was a parking lot with engines. We watched the battery drop. The navigation said the next service area had four chargers. Two were fast. One was broken. The fourth was shared with a coffee machine and a vending machine. I did not trust it.

At 30 percent, I started looking. The app showed a line at the next service area. Eight cars waiting. I clicked the exit list. A State Grid station sat three kilometers off the highway, behind a shopping mall. It had six chargers. Two were free. I took the exit.

The mall was closed. The parking lot was empty except for a night guard on a stool. He watched me plug in. The charger hummed. My wife walked to a convenience store and came back with two bottles of water and a bag of chestnuts. We sat in the car and ate. The battery went from 28 percent to 82 percent in twenty-eight minutes. No one else came. The guard said, "Smart. Everyone stays on the highway. They wait four hours. You wait zero."

We drove back onto the highway. The traffic was still heavy. But the car had power. We reached my hometown in Shandong at 4 p.m. The trip took twelve hours. A gasoline car might have done it in eight. But I was not stranded. I was not pushing. I was not at 1 percent.

The next day, my cousin asked me about the trip. He drove a gasoline SUV. He said EVs were a joke for holidays. I told him about the man with the silver sedan. I told him about the woman with the sunflower seeds. I told him about the mall parking lot and the night guard. He nodded. Then he said, "So it is a planning problem." I said, "It is a planning problem and a holiday problem. The highway is the same for everyone. The difference is how fast you can leave it."

On the way back, we left at 5 a.m. on October 6. We avoided the last day. We charged once at a small county station. The charger was old. It took forty minutes. The bathroom was clean. The woman at the counter sold tea eggs. My wife bought two. We ate them in the car. The battery reached 90 percent. We drove home.

I still drive the EV. I still like it. It is quiet. It is cheap. It is comfortable. But I do not pretend it is a gasoline car. On National Day, the highway is a test. The test is not about range. It is about time. Range is a number. Time is a cost. The people who understand that leave early, get off the highway, and charge to 80 percent. The people who do not end up pushing their cars to the charger.