Things never said by roadgeeks

[1995hoo]

On another forum I visit, there was a thread last night about etiquette for going into the store at a gas station to buy food or soda–do you leave the car at the pump or do you move the car to a parking space first. Someone made a joke about driving past in his Tesla and waving at the people buying gas (he doesn't actually own a Tesla). This led to a discussion about Teslas.

It will be readily apparent if you read all this which guy is the non-roadgeek! This was one of these kinds of situations: 

One guy from Texas said the following (original formatting and lack of punctuation preserved):

Very nice vehicle, but 225 miles per charge doesn't work for me

That will get me to Beaumont & back or

LaGrange and back or

Galveston and back or

Livingston and back, BUT NOT

Austin, Dallas, or anywhere Texas plays football.

Besides, I haven't seen a Tesla SUV or pickup yet

To which I replied as follows:

Exactly. I think a Tesla as they now exist is a fine commuter car, but the problem is, the average person who can afford to buy the Teslas now on the market doesn't really need to be all that concerned with commuting. If you buy a Tesla, you pretty much have to buy a second car for travel.

Here is where the guy who is clearly a non-roadgeek entered the discussion. He said as follows:

Nope - But it probably depends where you live and travel to

In Cali, any place you would travel to by car today, you can just as easily travel to with a Tesla.

A typical car only gets around 350 miles per fill up while a Tesla you are looking at 275 miles. Thus, regardless of whether you have a Tesla or a gas car you are going to need to fill-up/recharge the car on any long trip. Plus, after 4 hours of driving you are going to need to eat. As such, there is no difference in the amount of time stopped to fill-up/recharge and eat.

I don't have one, but there are a lot of people I work with that have them and they rave about them.

He also said the following in a separate reply to someone else. I'd say this is clearly someone who would never be able to comprehend the notion of a "roadgeek"!

Why would you drive anywhere that is 400-500 miles - seems nuts. At that distance, it is cheaper and faster to fly.

I disagreed, and I think my comments were pretty reasonable:

I pretty much completely disagree with that.

If I fill up before I leave and I spend the entire drive on Interstate or Interstate-grade highways (the latter referring to roads like, say, Florida's Turnpike or the Bee Line or US-48 in West Virginia–roads that don't have an Interstate shield but where you can still put it in sixth gear, go at least 65 mph, and not be bothered with red lights and the like), I'll get between 400 and 450 miles on a tank, even with the cruise control set at 70 mph in sixth gear. I don't drive an econobox, either–I drive a 2004 Acura TL that gets 20 to 22 mpg in all-city driving, but out on the Interstate I've averaged 31 mpg for a tank at an average speed of 71 mph.

For our drive to Florida, if I take I-95 the whole way (except for the I-295 bypasses around Richmond and Jacksonville), it's 860 miles. I'll have to refuel once, possibly twice. Couple one of those with a lunch stop. I certainly do not stop every four hours to eat! Maybe throw in two toilet stops, one a few hours prior to the gas stop and another a few hours later. The toilet stops are nowhere comparable to the amount of time you'd need to recharge a Tesla, assuming you can even find a place to do so. Come to think of it, the gas stops are nowhere comparable to the amount of time spent recharging either. It takes maybe 10 minutes at most to get gas. Figure 20 minutes for lunch. So that's half an hour. According to Tesla's website, a half-hour charge at a "supercharger" gives you about 170 miles of range. So you drive for two and a half hours and you have to stop again for at least another half an hour. My half-hour stop gives me another 400 to 450 miles, which at 70 mph is six to seven hours.

To me, it's simply not practical to stop for half an hour every two and a half hours on a long trip.

I saw your other comment asking why you wouldn't fly on a 400- to 500-mile trip. I think it depends on where you're going, why, and for how long. When we go to Florida, it's cheaper for the two of us if we drive as long as the trip is for one week or longer; we can also bring whatever luggage we like without dealing with the TSA (nice for my wife at Christmastime since she sometimes goes a little overboard). Or sometimes you can't fly. Later this year we have a trip planned to New Mexico and Arizona. We're flying into Albuquerque. We plan to visit southeast Utah (Valley of the Gods/Monument Valley) and the Grand Canyon en route to Phoenix, where we will visit my brother-in-law before flying home. Via the most direct routes (I seldom take the most direct routes!), that's around 740 miles. But you can't very well make that trip via any means other than driving! I also note the Tesla charging station near the Grand Canyon is for guests of a particular property only. I don't like the idea of having my lodging choices made for me based on charging station availability.

Don't get me wrong, the Teslas are really nice cars and they represent a very promising technology. But I think for people who like to drive a lot or who take long trips by car, they simply are not realistic as anything other than a vehicle for local use. I'd be quite concerned about even trying to drive one roundtrip from home to Charlottesville simply because of the risk of getting stuck in a traffic jam on I-95 or I-66 (depending on route) and depleting the charge while stuck, due to the unavailability of a charging station in Charlottesville.

To which the non-roadgeek made several different responses. I cannot imagine a roadgeek saying any of the following:

Why would anyone torture themselves like that. I guess some people watched National Lampoon's vacation and said "Hey that looks like fun."

As for costs, on average it costs you about 60 cents a mile to drive - accounting for fuel, depreciation, etc.. If you have a nice car in the class of a Tesla, such as a Mercedes E-class, BMW 6 series or Audi A7, you are probably looking at closer to a $1 per mile.

At 860 miles one-way, you are looking at a cost of $1720 to drive. A round trip ticket from DC to Orlando is going to cost you around $150 a person (based on a quick Internet search for flights).

Thus, two people driving from DC to Florida and back costs $1420 more than flying. As such, I think it would be absolutely nuts for someone with a class of car like a Tesla to make such a drive versus flying.

$150 a person? Is he out of his mind? I can never find flights for less than $400 a person roundtrip. So then he claimed:

You are coming off as very snooty in insisting your desire to spend 14 hours in a car on a godless interstate dealing with the stress of traffic, exhaust, and staring at concrete is a superior choice to someone kicking back and drinking a beer on a 2 hour flight.

That said, neither a Tesla, BMW 6-series, Mercedes E-series or other similar car are smart choices for people who like to take 1700 mile road trips.

Eventually there will be a cheap electric car with sufficient range to be an option for people who like to make 1700 mile road trips. But, that is probably 5-10 years off.

To which I replied as follows. He still hasn't responded to my point that not everyone focuses solely on cost and that some of us simply like to drive, or find exploring new roads interesting, or have other reasons for driving on a given trip.

I don't believe I said driving is superior. I said I enjoy driving.

I said a Tesla is not a practical option for most people who do anything longer than local driving. You're the one who then got a burr up his butt about the idea that because apparently in California there are a lot of charging stations, the same must be true everywhere, and you then decided to pass judgment on people who drive instead of fly by saying, and I quote here, "Why would you drive anywhere that is 400-500 miles - [sic] seems nuts."

Your statement in no way rebuts the comment that a Tesla is not practical for driving more than short distances. Seems to me you're the one who's being snooty. Just because you don't enjoy driving doesn't mean it's somehow wrong for other people to do so. I'm not sure where your little rant about "dealing with the stress of traffic, exhaust, and staring at concrete" came from, either. If that's what California is like, then you're welcome to it, but I seldom encounter much of that sort of thing when I travel. But I'm not crazy enough to try to drive to New York for Thanksgiving, either!

By the way, you didn't respond to the following paragraph from one of my earlier replies. How do you address this situation? I assume you might say you wouldn't make this trip. If so, that's fine, but based on the pictures I've seen of where we're going, I'd suggest you're missing out on something. If you could afford a private helicopter to take you around, well, I suggest in that case owning both a Tesla and a conventional-fuel car would not be an issue at all :-)

"Or sometimes you can't fly. Later this year we have a trip planned to New Mexico and Arizona. We're flying into Albuquerque. We plan to visit southeast Utah (Valley of the Gods/Monument Valley) and the Grand Canyon en route to Phoenix, where we will visit my brother-in-law before flying home. Via the most direct routes (I seldom take the most direct routes!), that's around 740 miles. But you can't very well make that trip via any means other than driving! I also note the Tesla charging station near the Grand Canyon is for guests of a particular property only. I don't like the idea of having my lodging choices made for me based on charging station availability."

The guy said "you are fooling yourself" if you don't account for depreciation and the like, to which I replied again:

As I said before, and as you continue to fail to respond to: I think what it boils down to is that it appears to me you are focusing solely on your own assessment of the cost versus your own opinion on whether you enjoy driving. That's fine if that works for you, but it's important to remember cost is not everything to all people. There may be umpteen other reasons why people choose not to fly, or not to take the train, or whatever. I've known some people who are simply flat-out afraid to drive, and I've known other people who are afraid of flying. I'm not going to tell either one they're "wrong," though in the case of the people who are afraid to fly I will feel some sympathy for how they're missing out on options like going to Europe or Hawaii or the like.

I like to drive to Florida. Your commentary about your view of the cost doesn't change that and isn't going to change it. If you enjoy living your life focusing on the absolute cheapest way to do everything, that's your prerogative, but I'm not that obsessive.

[Brandon]

^^ Who the hell accounts for depreciation?  I sure as hell don't when I drive.  There's not much point to it as I intend to keep the vehicle for many, many years, and over many, many miles.  The only costs that matter are out-of-pocket, and out-of-pocket, flying is far more expensive than driving.

[1995hoo]

^^ Who the hell accounts for depreciation?  I sure as hell don't when I drive.  There's not much point to it as I intend to keep the vehicle for many, many years, and over many, many miles.  The only costs that matter are out-of-pocket, and out-of-pocket, flying is far more expensive than driving.

Same here, but I didn't bother to argue it. What he doesn't seem to realize is that if I don't drive those 860 miles to Florida, I'm going to drive them to somewhere else. They're in the nature of a sunk cost to me because it is a cost I will incur either way.

[slorydn1]

I hate it when people like that throw the depreciation thing in my face. Newsflash: My car continues to depreciate just sitting in my garage.

I'm with ya on everything you said, 1995hoo, and not just from the roadgeek angle either. If I were to catch a plane here in New Bern to go to my brother's house in Lehigh Acres FL it would cost me at least $457 round trip (with connecting flights in both directions via Charlotte) and then the cost of renting a car for x number of days, the cost of parking my car at our local podunk airport for x number of days (etc).

Back in November 2009 when the price of gas was very similar to what it is now (actually a little higher then) and in a absolutely gas guzzling 2004 Ford F150 that trip cost me $260.32 round trip (includes the very little bit of gas I used while there). It would cost me less that now in my Mustang, especially if I opted to use 87 instead of the 93 octane I normally feed it.


Timewise, yeah, its a 1 way 12 hour trip with stops (my brother has done it in as little as 11:20 going solo- my wife's bladder doesn't match our fuel capacity, LOL). That said we sat here one time and calculated the driveway to driveway time of flying there at close to 8 hours, and it could be 9 hrs plus depending on the length of time the layover in Charlotte would be.  Yeah total flight time is less 3.5 hours but all you guys and gals who fly alot know its more than double that with all the BS one has to go through before the flight, again at the connecting airport, and God forbid your 1st flight is delayed just a few minutes you will find yourself waiting for an even LATER connecting flight.


Stress of being in traffic? Yeah, right, I'll take that over the stress of being in the cattle roundup at an airport any day of the week and twice on Sunday, LOL.

[US 41]

"You have to pay money to drive on a road!"

Said by some girl when I was telling her how to get to Miami and said it would cost about $10 to drive on the Florida Turnpike. Then she decided she didn't want to go because of the tolls. I replied"you could take US 27."

[Mapmikey]

There may be umpteen other reasons why people choose not to fly, or not to take the train, or whatever. I've known some people who are simply flat-out afraid to drive, and I've known other people who are afraid of flying. I'm not going to tell either one they're "wrong," though in the case of the people who are afraid to fly I will feel some sympathy for how they're missing out on options like going to Europe or Hawaii or the like.

I haven't been on a plane since I was 5 (1974) but I think the range of places I can't go is smaller than this...

In 2012 I went to England by boat by driving to Brooklyn.  Spent 9 days in London and used BritRail to see some other parts of England as well.  Was it more expensive and time consuming than flying? Absolutely.  Will I be doing it again?  Absolutely.  Trying to find a 2016 schedule that will allow us to go to Norway.  Hawaii has been on the table as a retirement trip...

My resistance at home comes from going to faraway places in the USA and Canada.  My wife is not a big fan of endless driving and always wants to try using trains which are not as convenient in America and have other logistical challenges for us.

I feel bad for people I know who think any drive over 2 hrs is too long and please make it stop.  Since it is either expensive or inconvenient to fly to a lot of places that would be a day's drive or less, I think they miss out on a lot of good places to visit...

Mapmikey

[kkt]

In lots of places, there's little or no public transit, so if you fly there you need to add renting a car to the cost of flying.

[hbelkins]

One of the many reasons I don't even consider flying anywhere is because if you drive, you can take whatever you want with you and you can deviate from your planned route anytime you wish for any reason you want.

As for electronic vehicles, until such time that an affordable vehicle is manufactured that can travel 400-500 miles at highway speeds and be completely refueled in about five minutes, they will never be viable.

[kkt]

One of the many reasons I don't even consider flying anywhere is because if you drive, you can take whatever you want with you and you can deviate from your planned route anytime you wish for any reason you want.

As for electronic vehicles, until such time that an affordable vehicle is manufactured that can travel 400-500 miles at highway speeds and be completely refueled in about five minutes, they will never be viable.

Electric vehicles are viable as a niche market, city cars for people who have another car for road trips, or who travel outside the city so rarely enough that renting for those times is a good option.

[formulanone]

If you live in an ultra-competitive vacation market like Ft. Lauderdale, sometimes flying is/was actually cheaper than driving...but only rarely. (Much of this was due to Southwest and Spirit embroiled in a low-fare war; yet other major carriers still played hardball.) If you weren't flying into a regional airport, and you booked perhaps a month in advance, there were some stupid-low fares, even on heavier business travel days. As much as I enjoy driving, some of those $400-500 round-trips to Seattle were tough to beat, even in the heyday of $3/gallon gas. If you had a last-minute flight to say, Little Rock...that might be equivalent of a few car payments.

When the electric car can go 500 miles on a charge at an average speed of 60mph, I'll give it a shot when the prices get down to the $30k mark. Unfortunately, that's about a decade away.

[1995hoo]

I haven't been on a plane since I was 5 (1974) but I think the range of places I can't go is smaller than this...

In 2012 I went to England by boat by driving to Brooklyn.  Spent 9 days in London and used BritRail to see some other parts of England as well.  Was it more expensive and time consuming than flying? Absolutely.  Will I be doing it again?  Absolutely.  Trying to find a 2016 schedule that will allow us to go to Norway.  Hawaii has been on the table as a retirement trip...

....

Fair point. Realistically, though, the average person out there who doesn't consider driving long distances to be an option probably won't consider a transatlantic cruise to be an option either.

[vdeane]

^^ Who the hell accounts for depreciation?  I sure as hell don't when I drive.  There's not much point to it as I intend to keep the vehicle for many, many years, and over many, many miles.  The only costs that matter are out-of-pocket, and out-of-pocket, flying is far more expensive than driving.

I presume depreciation matters to someone who demands the latest model car all the time and buys a new car and trades in the old one every couple years.  Given internet articles comparing buying new vs. used, this would seem to be the typical behavior for any American consumer that can afford it.

[1995hoo]

In lots of places, there's little or no public transit, so if you fly there you need to add renting a car to the cost of flying.

Forgot to respond to this earlier.

Public transit is often irrelevant if you take trips to multiple places, too. Our family vacations when I was a kid were usually of the sort where we'd go somewhere for two or three nights, then move on to somewhere else for the next few nights, etc., over a two-week period. (An example would be in 1986 when we went to Ottawa, North Bay, Cochrane, Moosonee and Moose Factory, Sudbury, the coast of Georgian Bay, and Toronto/Niagara Falls.) Even if you flew somewhere to start a trip like that (we didn't), you'd still do a lot of driving. Nowadays when we go to Florida during the summer, we do a loop visiting relatives in multiple places, so there again we'd be renting a car. (For Thanksgiving or Christmas we visit only one relative and so we COULD borrow her SUV, but we never want to fight the airport crowds around those holidays.)

I never flew anywhere for a vacation (not counting Christmas in 1973 when I was six months old) until a trip to Cozumel in 2001. I'm sure growing up taking vacations in the car, typically a 1982 Honda Accord, helped influence my willingness to take long car trips as an adult, and I'm sure my dad's desire to get off the Interstate (or similar) when feasible influenced my tendency to do the same, though I'm more interested in the roads per se than he is/was (he'll get off the Interstate for scenery/change of pace, I'll do it just because it's a different route than I've used before or one I'm less likely to get to use again).

I'm sure some of the non-roadgeeks find that sort of trip inconceivable. I know a lot of people think of a vacation as meaning you go to one place, spend the whole trip at the same place, and then go home–such as "going to the beach" and staying at one motel, going out to the same strip of sand each day, and then going to dinner. We sometimes do that for ski trips, but otherwise I've very seldom taken that sort of vacation, either as an adult or as a kid.

[jeffandnicole]

Depreciation

I imagine the first guy that said "new cars depreciate $1,000 when you drive it off the lot" was a used car salesman. Yes, if you drive the car off the lot then decide you don want it, you probably aren't going to get your full money back (except for dealerships that specifically offer such a deal). But then again, if you drive a used vehicle off the lot and decide you don't want it, you're probably not going to get a full refund either.

Once someone starts arguing depreciation, it's usually best to walk away. The arguments will only get more absurd from there.

Convenience Store Purchases

If I'm getting something quick, and there's pumps open, I'll run in while fueling up. If I'm going to be doing something that takes time, I'll pull into a parking spot.  It's a bit different in Jersey due to the full service as we generally don't get out of our cars to pump gas, but when I have done it no one has ever said anything. Usually they leave the gas receipt for me on the door handle as well.

[J N Winkler]

I never flew anywhere for a vacation (not counting Christmas in 1973 when I was six months old) until a trip to Cozumel in 2001. I'm sure growing up taking vacations in the car, typically a 1982 Honda Accord, helped influence my willingness to take long car trips as an adult, and I'm sure my dad's desire to get off the Interstate (or similar) when feasible influenced my tendency to do the same, though I'm more interested in the roads per se than he is/was (he'll get off the Interstate for scenery/change of pace, I'll do it just because it's a different route than I've used before or one I'm less likely to get to use again).

It strikes me that your interlocutor on the other forum, if he is not being a troll, has rather limited experience of vacation formats if he is setting up knocking back a beer on an airplane as an alternative to the supposed horror of driving 400 miles (which I know from experience is a bit of a trial on rural California freeways during weekend trip days).

As for flying versus driving, there are contexts where one has a clear advantage over the other and others where the two are competitive.  My personal preference is to drive in the US and Canada, but I tend to fly in Europe, because flight availability and access to rail-based transit lend themselves better to citybreak trips or InterRail-style vacations on my typical travel budget.  In the US I tend to feel that flying makes the most sense when conserving vacation time justifies the added cost of plane tickets and car rental.

I'm sure some of the non-roadgeeks find that sort of trip inconceivable. I know a lot of people think of a vacation as meaning you go to one place, spend the whole trip at the same place, and then go home–such as "going to the beach" and staying at one motel, going out to the same strip of sand each day, and then going to dinner. We sometimes do that for ski trips, but otherwise I've very seldom taken that sort of vacation, either as an adult or as a kid.

It can be fun to stay in one place, but I wouldn't do that at the beach or at a ski resort.  I enjoyed the nearly one month I spent in Vienna in the summer of 2010, where I bought myself a year pass to the Kunsthistorisches Museum and proceeded to wring my money's worth out of it several times over while doing a lot of urban exploration, a day trip to Bratislava, and a few days in Budapest.

Once someone starts arguing depreciation, it's usually best to walk away. The arguments will only get more absurd from there.

As Roadman's travel budget thread shows, debates that are implicitly about marginal versus average cost pricing (such as whether to consider wear and tear when taking your own car on a roadtrip, versus renting) tend to generate more heat than light.  This problem is not confined to depreciation by any means.

In regard to convenience store purchases, I usually won't bother to move my car as long as (1) I plan to be in the shop only a very brief period of time (typically to purchase coffee or to visit the restroom), and (2) at least one pump is vacant and available for a new drive-up.  However, I will move my car if I plan to be at the station for an extended period of time, even if I am in the convenience store for only a small fraction of that time.  Once, when filling up in California, I moved my car to a parking space, and then walked the window washing squeegee back and forth about ten times before taking the camera and walking all over the nearby interchange for some sign shots.  It was a busy station and my windshield was so thickly encrusted with bug dirt that I preferred to be weird than to block a pump.

[1995hoo]

.... In the US I tend to feel that flying makes the most sense when conserving vacation time justifies the added cost of plane tickets and car rental.

....

Our planned trip to New Mexico and Arizona that I mentioned in one or two of the quotations in my earlier post is a fine example of that, IMO: It would take three or four days at each end for us to drive between Northern Virginia and that area, which is time we simply do not have available to us. But if we're going to Quebec to go skiing for a week, it's a single day's drive at either end. I have no problem allowing a full day for the drive like that as long as the trip is for at least a week. I'm not as keen on spending an entire day driving for, say, a weekend trip, but that's based simply on my sense of the value of the time involved–and also on the value of my wife's vacation time. At the end of the year she's allowed to roll over a certain amount and they pay her for any remaining unused time. So there's a potential financial aspect to taking the faster option of flying in certain cases!

[TEG24601]

"INSERT DOT NAME HERE" does an excellent job, and follows all of the MUTCD guidelines.


MUTCD Sucks.


CalTrans has the best way of doing things.

[Brandon]

"INSERT DOT NAME HERE" does an excellent job, and follows all of the MUTCD guidelines.


MUTCD Sucks.


CalTrans has the best way of doing things.

CalTrans actually has some really good ideas, but constraining themselves to a maximum guide sign height really hurts them.

Things never said by a roadgeek:

"Oklahoma has some great looking signs, especially that one for Craig County."

[jeffandnicole]

.... In the US I tend to feel that flying makes the most sense when conserving vacation time justifies the added cost of plane tickets and car rental.

....

Our planned trip to New Mexico and Arizona that I mentioned in one or two of the quotations in my earlier post is a fine example of that, IMO: It would take three or four days at each end for us to drive between Northern Virginia and that area, which is time we simply do not have available to us. But if we're going to Quebec to go skiing for a week, it's a single day's drive at either end. I have no problem allowing a full day for the drive like that as long as the trip is for at least a week. I'm not as keen on spending an entire day driving for, say, a weekend trip, but that's based simply on my sense of the value of the time involved–and also on the value of my wife's vacation time. At the end of the year she's allowed to roll over a certain amount and they pay her for any remaining unused time. So there's a potential financial aspect to taking the faster option of flying in certain cases!

If I can get someone in approximately a day's drive, I'll drive.  I will keep an eye on airline flights though, and if I can get a decent fare, I'll consider flying, depending on our travel needs.

One of these days I'll drive out west to Vegas.  Including coming up later this spring, I've flown out there about 8 times, although in all but a few I've rented a car and did some considerable driving while out there.  For just a trip to Vegas, I haven't been able to justify another week or 10 days time off just to drive there and back.

[hbelkins]

MUTCD Sucks.

Actually, I say this quite often. I think the document is too rigid and inflexible in many instances, does not allow states to make their own determinations on how to mark or sign highways, etc. Long-timers know that I have a few issues with the MUTCD.

[Chris19001]

"Why would I know anything about a guy named Bud Shuster"
"I hate looking out the window on a car trip"
"What does this green colored road mean on the atlas?"
"I watched CHiPs for the fine acting"  (perhaps not said by anyone, ever)

[jeffandnicole]

"Why would I know anything about a guy named Bud Shuster"

My roadgeek dream is to be on Jeoperdy, with the final answer being: "I-99 was named in honor of this person."

Nevermind the fact that I will not know the question to every other answer in either round. 

[formulanone]

MUTCD Sucks.

Actually, I say this quite often. I think the document is too rigid and inflexible in many instances, does not allow states to make their own determinations on how to mark or sign highways, etc.

It's not so much "it sucks", but that it is a set of guidelines, whereas we have some folks here that assume it's essentially Article VIII of the United States Constitution. Otherwise, it should be open to some interpretation for useful, concise, and consistent regional differences.

[TEG24601]

MUTCD Sucks.

Actually, I say this quite often. I think the document is too rigid and inflexible in many instances, does not allow states to make their own determinations on how to mark or sign highways, etc.

It's not so much "it sucks", but that it is a set of guidelines, whereas we have some folks here that assume it's essentially Article VIII of the United States Constitution. Otherwise, it should be open to some interpretation for useful, concise, and consistent regional differences.

Sorry that was my point.  It is a great guide, but not the rule of law.

[PHLBOS]

It would cost me less that now in my Mustang, especially if I opted to use 87 instead of the 93 octane I normally feed it.

Side bar: most of today's cars have higher engine compression ratios than their 20-to-30 year old predecessors.  As a result, many of today's vehicles not only run better with the higher octane gasolines; but they usually get better mileage with the higher-grade fuel on top of it, thereby compensating for the price difference at the pump (especially on longer drives).

One needs to remember that 87 octane unleaded came into the market (early 1980s) when the average engine compression ratio on new cars was 7-to-1 or 8-to-1 (and their overall performances reflected such).  Most if not all of today's new gasoline-powered vehicles have a compression ratio of 9-to-1 and higher.

In short, 87 octane gasoline is realistically obsolete in today's market.  While knock engine knock sensors can hide knocks; they can't hide performance and fuel economy.

My 2007 Mustang with the 4.0L V6 has a 9.7-to-1 compression ratio.  According to my brother, who knows more about cars than I do, 90 octane would be the ideal fuel for my car.  Since such isn't readily available (and the 89 mid-grade being disproportionately-priced in most instances); I just mix the 87 & 93 grades (at different times) when refueling.

I do similar with my '97 Crown Vic (which has the 4.6L V8 and a 9-to-1 compression ratio) as well.