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You know what separates the real car enthusiasts from the posers? It’s not the horsepower figures they memorize or the lap times they quote. It’s how they react when their brand-new electric SUV starts throwing mysterious warnings named after crustaceans. Most people would panic, call the dealer, and demand a refund. Jim Kerste? He named the glitch Larry Lobster and kept driving through 1,700 miles of mountain terrain like it was just another passenger along for the ride.
Kerste’s recent adventure in his 2025 Jeep Wagoneer S EV Launch Edition reads like a field manual for the modern electric road warrior:
“First road trip in my 25 Launch Edition is in the books. Just over 1700 miles, quite a bit of it in the mountains. The only complaint is a certain unwanted rider named Larry Lobster. He showed up probably a dozen times. To make him. leave we had to shut it off, get out, (not me and my wife) shut the door, and wait until the lights on the dash went out. Start it back up, and no lobster.
One time, he came back fairly quickly, so I ignored it, and it drove perfectly normally for about a 2-hour drive. One thing I noticed is that normally, when you get a warning light, you hear a chime. This lobster would show up with no chime. Max regeneration works fantastically in the mountains. You can forget your brake pedal. The car rides like a dream. She needs a bath tomorrow; she’s got tons of Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina bugs all over her.”
Kerste didn’t let some software hiccup ruin his mountain adventure. The Larry Lobster warning became a quirky travel companion rather than a deal-breaker. That’s the kind of pragmatic attitude that separates actual drivers from keyboard warriors who’ve never taken their cars beyond the mall parking lot. The fact that this warning showed up without the usual chime suggests Jeep’s software engineers have a sense of humor, or at least a fondness for silent seafood-themed alerts.
Why Electric Vehicle Drivers Love Mountain Descents
- Mountain descents become energy recovery sessions where brake pedals become optional equipment and gravity becomes your friend.
- Modern EVs develop quirky personalities that require patience, humor, and occasionally ritualistic reset procedures involving multiple door operations.
- Mountain charging infrastructure is adequate for confident travel, but won’t coddle you with gas station convenience every five miles.
- Real troubleshooting wisdom comes from other owners who’ve actually driven their cars, not from corporate documentation written by people who’ve never left the office.
The ritual Kerste developed to banish Larry Lobster tells you everything about modern car ownership. Both occupants had to exit the vehicle, shut the doors, wait for the dashboard lights to die, then restart the whole show. It’s like performing an automotive exorcism, except instead of holy water, you need patience and a willingness to look slightly ridiculous at rest stops. But here’s the thing: it worked. And when Larry showed up again during one stretch, Kerste just ignored him and drove for two hours without incident. Sometimes the best solution to a computer problem is to treat it like the attention-seeking child it really is.
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Cherie Vajdik’s concern about mountain charging infrastructure touches on the real anxiety that keeps people from buying electric vehicles. “Did you have plenty of places to charge in the mountains?” she asked, voicing what every potential EV buyer wonders when they picture themselves stranded on some remote mountain pass with a dead battery and no cell service. Kerste’s response was refreshingly honest: not plenty, but enough to get around with confidence. That’s the reality of electric vehicle ownership in 2025. You’re not going to find a charging station on every corner, but you’re also not going to die of exposure because you ran out of electrons.
What Kerste discovered during his charging stops proves that electric vehicle travel has an unexpected benefit: it forces you to slow down and actually see the country. His route through Murphy, Franklin, Highlands, and Cashiers in western North Carolina wasn’t planned as a scenic tour. It was dictated by the charging infrastructure. But sometimes the best discoveries happen when you’re not looking for them. These small mountain towns that most people blow past at 80 mph became part of his adventure because his car needed to stop and drink electrons. That’s not a bug in the electric vehicle experience; it’s a feature. One that other Wagoneer S EV owners have discovered transforms routine road trips into genuine exploration.
Michael Fata’s observation about getting “fewer lobsters in eco” mode sparked the kind of troubleshooting discussion that makes the EV community special. Here’s a group of people who’ve collectively figured out that drive modes might influence mysterious warning frequencies. Kerste’s response that he used eco exclusively just deepened the Larry Lobster mystery. This is how real-world automotive knowledge gets built: one weird experience at a time, shared among people who actually drive their cars instead of just reading about them online.
What Did They Think About The Driving Experience
But let’s talk about what really matters here: the driving experience. Kerste’s description of maximum regeneration in the mountains captures something that gas car drivers will never understand. “You can forget your brake pedal,” he wrote, and that’s not hyperbole. It’s a fundamental shift in how you interact with the machine. Descending a mountain in an electric vehicle with proper regeneration feels like cheating physics. You’re not burning brake pads and wasting energy as heat. You’re harvesting gravity and feeding it back to the battery. It’s the closest thing to perpetual motion that physics allows, and it makes every mountain descent feel like a small victory against entropy. Studies show you can recover 30-50% of the energy used climbing when you come back down, which means mountains become less of an energy penalty and more of an energy bank account.
The fact that Larry Lobster appeared without the usual warning chime tells us something about Jeep’s software priorities. Either they classified this particular alert as non-critical, or someone in Auburn Hills has a twisted sense of humor about silent seafood warnings. The specific reset ritual required to clear it suggests that modern vehicles have become more like computers than machines. You don’t fix them with wrenches anymore; you perform digital séances and hope the software spirits cooperate.
Kerste’s description of the Wagoneer S EV riding “like a dream” while accumulating “tons of Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina bugs” paints the perfect picture of a successful road trip. The bugs are proof of miles covered and adventures had. They’re automotive merit badges that show this wasn’t some sanitized test drive around the block. This was real driving through real terrain with real insects providing real evidence of the journey’s scope.
Electric Vehicle Personality Traits
- Every electric vehicle has personality traits that you can fight or accept; acceptance leads to better stories and less stress.
- Charging requirements force exploration of places you’d normally ignore, turning necessary stops into unexpected adventures.
- Mountain terrain reveals electric vehicle capabilities that spreadsheets can’t capture and test drives can’t demonstrate.
- Your relationship with automotive technology depends more on your mindset than the manufacturer’s perfection.
The broader lesson from Kerste’s adventure isn’t about electric vehicles or mountain driving or even mysterious lobster warnings. It’s about the attitude you bring to automotive ownership. You can let every glitch and quirk ruin your experience, or you can embrace the weirdness and keep driving. Kerste chose the latter, and his 1,700-mile mountain adventure became a story worth telling instead of a warranty claim worth filing. That’s the difference between being a car owner and being a driver. Other Wagoneer S EV owners have learned similar lessons, like the driver who conquered 1,100 miles from St. Louis to Madison and discovered that hotel charging made the journey easier than expected.
The electric vehicle revolution isn’t just about replacing gasoline with electrons. It’s about changing how we think about automotive relationships. Kerste’s willingness to coexist with Larry Lobster while celebrating the regenerative braking magic shows what that new relationship looks like. It’s more complex than the old days of gas and go, but it’s also more interesting. And in a world where most cars have become appliances, interesting matters more than perfect. The technology continues evolving, with manufacturers learning from real-world experiences like Kerste’s to improve both hardware and software systems for challenging mountain terrain that tests every aspect of electric vehicle capability.
What weird warning lights or software quirks have you learned to live with in your EV? Have you discovered any unexpected benefits of electric vehicle mountain driving that surprised you?
Let us know in the comment section.
Image Sources: Jeep Media Center
Noah Washington is an automotive journalist based in Atlanta, Georgia. He enjoys covering the latest news in the automotive industry and conducting reviews on the latest cars. He has been in the automotive industry since 15 years old and has been featured in prominent automotive news sites. You can reach him on X and LinkedIn for tips and to follow his automotive coverage.
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Source: torquenews.com
