Technology

Let me get this out of the way - this is my experience, other people may have very different needs and uses. I’m not saying my needs are your needs, or that your needs are invalid. I have a driveway and we were able to install a charger at our house. I don’t tow trailers full of lumber uphill all day. YMMV.

Getting an EV really opened my eyes to how many wrong assumptions I had about how much I drive and what the pain points would be. I worried a lot that range would be an issue - we got a Bolt, which has a nominal 259 mile range (on the low side these days), it’s fast charging isn’t super fast, and we live in New England, and park outside, so the battery was cold for the first several months we had the car, but we figured we’d adapt. As it turns out, so far there really haven’t been any pain points, and adaptation has been minimal.

In the winter on very cold days, when we’re running the heater, our realistic range is about 160 miles on a charge. But it turns out, I don’t drive anywhere near that far on a typical day. It’s more like 30-40 miles a day, sometimes a hundred, which is fine. The charger tops up the car in an hour or two, and could charge it all the way from empty overnight easily. Range is a funny thing - the thought of going to a gas station every 150 miles is offputting, but in reality, it’s the opposite - every morning I have maximum range, and NEVER have to go to the gas station, or a fast charger, which is a benefit I hadn’t considered. Now in the summer the range is substantially over 300 miles, and AC uses WAY less power than the heater, so it’s even less of an issue. In fact, I only charge the car to 80% every day to maximize battery life now because it’s fine (I do charge all the way prior to long trips).

It also turns out we take fewer long trips than I thought (4 in the 7 months we’ve had the car, 2 in the dead of winter). There was a train that went somewhere near one of the 4 locations, at exorbitant cost. The first, 2 weeks after we got the car, was a little stressful as I learned how to find and use fast chargers, but it really wasn’t a big deal. Especially when I figured out how to warm up the battery first, and not to bother filling up, just charging in the fast part of the curve, and parking at level 2 chargers when possible. On our overnight trips, to place with no level 2 chargers, even the super slow 110v charging was enough to keep us from having to worry about charge.

So the downsides turned out to not really matter (to me), and the plus sides (full range every morning, essentially silent, no smell, and by far the best performance of any car I’ve ever had) are pretty sweet.

That said, if I got second car, I’d consider a plugin hybrid - that does seem to take care of most of the 2% cases. The knock on them is that they have pretty low electric range (like 30 miles or so) but it turns out that would be fine the vast majority of the time. I’d just have to remember to get the engine to start once in a while.