Driving a Gas Car After 6 Years Electric Is Weird

I haven’t pumped gas in six years. Then Abby rented a GMC Savana at LAX and I spent 24 hours relearning how to drive a gas car from scratch.

We were just back from an overseas trip — eight checked bags, four carry-ons, assorted backpacks. The new rental facility at LAX is a few miles from the terminals, massive, already gearing up for the Olympics and World Cup. They handed us a 20-seat passenger van. We loaded everything onto the seats, and I got behind the wheel for the first time in a long time behind something that runs on gasoline.

Six Years of EV Muscle Memory Is a Trap

The whole drive back I was running a mental checklist on a loop: Turn off the car when you get out. Turn off the car. Lane change — cancel the blinker, there’s no auto-cancel. Red light — it’s still running, you don’t need to do anything.

That last one sounds obvious until you’ve spent six years exclusively in EVs — multiple of them, rotating through the fleet — where all of that is just handled. The muscle memory doesn’t transfer. It just disappears. And you don’t realize how deep it went until you’re actively coaching yourself through a merge on the 10.

We got In-N-Out on the way home — almost 1am, still open. That’s non-negotiable after an international flight.

Gas Car Gauges Are a Different Language

The following day I took the van out to fill up before returning it. Sat in the driver’s seat and just stared at the dashboard.

Oil temperature, 12-volt battery level, fuel gauge, tachometer — and somewhere in there is the indicator telling me the parking brake is on. I didn’t see it at In-N-Out the night before, put the foot brake on, and then spent a moment figuring out how to release it. The foot-activated parking brake. In 2026.

If anyone has been complaining that EV dashboards are too simplified, come spend five minutes in this van.

$27 at Costco for 5 Gallons

Took it to Costco because of course. The gas tank is on the left side of a very long vehicle, which means picking the right pump lane matters — same problem as EV charging cables, just with a shorter hose. Got there at 5:13pm. There was a line.

Final tally: 4.946 gallons at $5.459/gallon. Total: $27. California gas has been hovering around $5.40+ per gallon for most of early 2026, so Costco was about as good as it gets.

For comparison, $27 would charge the Cybertruck from near-empty at home on off-peak rates — that’s a 123 kWh battery. Here I’m getting not quite 5 gallons. The math is just different.

Also had to verify it wasn’t diesel before pumping. With electricity there’s one type. That’s it.

How Much Did the EVs Drain While We Were Gone?

Eight days parked at home, Sentry Mode off, Gear Guard off, no cabin protection running. Here’s where each one landed:

• Cybertruck: 62% → 59% (parked outside)
• Model Y Juniper: 60% → 58%
• Rivian R1S: 54% → 51%

About 3% loss over 8 days on all three. With passive features disabled, that’s exactly what you’d hope for. Nothing alarming.

Why Didn’t I Just Park the Cybertruck at LAX?

The honest answer: if something happens to the car while it’s parked at the airport, it ruins the trip. A Sentry Mode alert, someone messing with the tires, a notification I can’t do anything about from across the Pacific — I’m not built for that. We work hard for these vacations. I’m not spending one checking my phone every hour because the Cybertruck is sitting in a parking structure.

The van was just over $200 for 24 hours including insurance. Hauling all that luggage from the terminal to the rental lot on a shuttle bus at midnight was its own adventure, but I wasn’t stressed about the cars the entire trip. That’s worth the rental fee.

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Six years of full EV ownership rewires your instincts more than you think. One day in a gas car makes that obvious. It wasn’t frustrating — it was genuinely interesting to notice where the gaps were. The blinker thing especially. I went through a similar reset going back to the Audi A5 years ago, before I was fully committed to electric — the gap then was smaller. This time it was a lot more obvious.

One more thing: I teased a secret project at the end of the video that I’m still working through. Still early. When there’s something concrete to share, it’ll be here first.