Nice! Next step: Make it all public transport.
I just got back from an overnight trip.
Avoiding highways to get the best mileage I could (ended up with +50 miles for technique in spite of terrain being hilly/curvy and using air conditioning /flex) it was a 3-hour drive both ways. I charged my car at home before leaving, which was cheap, and when I got to my destination, I charged at the city hall charger, which was free. Most chargers around me that are maintained by town/city governments are set to be free, which makes planning trips pretty easy for cost savings.
Total cost for the transit portion of the trip, including the post-trip home recharge: under $5.
The same trip in the ICE vehicle we had available would have been about 10 gallons, or around $50.
So yeah, I’m pretty happy with the cost savings. Plus it’s dead quiet, which is highly pleasing on long trips, makes the whole thing surprisingly less shit. (I dislike driving, generally, but driving an electric is actually pretty nice)
They also smell nicer.
No gross gasoline and oil smell
One other benefit for road tripping - at least it’s one I find to be a benefit, is the DCFC charging wait (for trips that can’t be made on a single charge).
Growing up my family went on a lot of road trips and the emphasis was always on reducing time at stops. No time to relax, no time to use the restroom, no time to eat.
Charging gives an actual estimate on when you’re road ready again, giving you real time where there is no thought in the back of your mind “I’m delaying our arrival”.
Sure you can get cars with faster DCFC and we’re getting to the point where charge time and refilling a tank are more or less the same. But I can enjoy the wait while it lasts.
Yeah, I also really enjoy planning around the wait time.
On another trip, we stopped somewhere for a charge on a level 2, cuz I’m not a huge fan of fast charge prices if I can avoid them (plus not great for the battery, by my understanding) and I’m never really in a hurry to get places. So instead of rush rush to get back on the road, we walked 20 min to a nice lakeside bar and grill, sat outside on the deck, and took an hour or so for lunch. Then another 20 min back to the car for about 2 hours worth of charge (40 or so additional miles for $2, not a ton, but enough to get where we were going so we could drop it longer at another level 2 charger).
I actively enjoy how it slows your travel down to a more relaxing pace. Between needing to drive slower to increase range, and needing to wait for a charge, it really encourages experiencing the trip. It encourages getting out to stretch your legs. It encourages time to sit and enjoy food, and have a conversation. It encourages stopping in small towns because “hey this town has a free/cheap charger! Let’s see if theres any good food!”
I’m in a part of the midwest that doesn’t have a whole lot of EV infrastructure, so I go out of my way for stuff more. I’d prefer we had more chargers, but I’m totally fine with getting a bit off the standard path, taking back roads to small towns, and avoiding highways entirely. Its good for exploration!
EVs don’t have direct emissions. Thank goodness a study showed that. They also tend to be cheaper to drive over time, once purchased, electricity costs are usually a lot lower than a tank fill up thanks to the difference in cost and the efficiency of EVs. Now we have a study from MIT showing what everyone has been saying all this time is true.
Now what?
The government should push hard on regulation to provide an infrastructure support for EVs, such as charging areas everywhere, including apartment dwellings and common retail areas. Make them solar assisted. They should run regular buy back programs to incentivize trading in older ICE cars. Any public service using vehicles should be transitioned to EVs - buses, mail, trash collection. Anything that does a lot of local stop and start movement, which is where EVs excel at their efficiency and emissions reduction vs. ICE. And while we’re using the government to improve EV conversion, how about also improve public transport (which should be all EV) to reduce the car count on the road even more.
Like everything else, we should have been doing this decades ago, as this isn’t news to anyone. Hopefully this still has enough of a positive spin for this forum.
Unfortunately there is a large contingent of people who would literally rather die than have their out-group have something nice like public transit. (It’s conservative whites)
I started reading “dying of whiteness” and it’s infuriating
About a week ago, I picked my kid up from college about 90 miles away. While doing small talk with other parents, one said “you must be really brave to drive an EV that far”.
Among the many misconceptions here, there was a supercharger in town and others along both possible routes
I would have responded with “your kid is clearly the first in the family to attend college”
EV are super hard on tires. And tires are a huge source of microplastics.
Clearly the only manageable solution moving forward is our need of robotic horses.
Heavy EVs with ridiculous battery packs are hard on tires. Smaller EVs with reasonable packs are not.
Less vehicles is certainly a goal, and maybe some of them back on rails like they were before the auto industry drove them away from most urban areas. Also a US centric problem, but less sprawl and need for distance traveling, more common needs locally within foot and bike traffic would help too. It’s all connected and contributing to the issues at hand. If we designed cities from the ground up, we could make them so much better, but cities don’t grow that way over time, nor can they be changed that easily.
These seems like a much better approach than the government doing nothing other than enacting a future ban that will eventually be scrapped when a new crop of politicians gets elected and everyone notices we don’t have the infrastructure in place to actually make this work.
We would need some sort of actual movement into public transport first. The original cash for clunkers was awful for the used car market in such a way that it affected the poorer population. It used to be easy to grab a decently used but neglected car for cheap and spend enough to keep it out of the junkyard for a few years more. I remember being able to grab a 20 year old used truck that was quite beat for $800 all day.
The cash for clunkers removed that cheap tier of used vehicle and forced people to buy new which exacerbated the new car purchase price. It’s only ever climbed quickly ever since as manufacturers took that as “people don’t want cheap cars, only luxury” and now options are fairly garbage.
And Covid did a number on prices too that hasn’t recovered. I purchased a new Golf in 2015 (right before dieselgate) for $16k as it was a base model with a standard trans. You can’t get that anymore.
Cash for Clunkers didn’t really have the negative effects that people purport it to have had. Only 677K vehicles were scrapped out of 246 million in the nation (less than 0.3%). I do agree it was more of a benefit to wealthier people due to the fact that you needed to buy a new car to use it, but what really hurt the poor was the recession happening at the time which drove up the cost of used vehicles since fewer people were buying new.
A caveat that is often forgotten - inflation. It’s an economic nostalgia. We have prices set in our head that is deemed reasonable, and use that to compare against today’s costs. My parents bought a used car in 1975 for $200 that needed repairs to run. Sounds like a bargain, but that’s around $1200 or so now. A lot to pay for something that may or make not be fixable.
But that’s not even the real problem. It’s the ability to keep up with costs of expenses when your income isn’t keeping pace.
It’s also whats offered. Like you said, you can’t buy base models anymore, they have to have all the frills. Imagine being able to buy a base truck to just haul stuff in. Maybe still possible for companies who buy large amounts wholesale, but not consumers. I’d like to have my grandfather’s POS manual Datsun these days. It just ran.
Unfortunately US drivers are all afflicted with a terrible genetic condition that causes your penis to fall off if you ever try to drive one. Awful shame really.
My cajones definitely got larger once I got an EV. Trying to cut me off at an entrance ramp, Ford F-150? Let me show you what acceleration actually looks like.
…and that’s in “eco” mode 😁
What if it’s an F150 Lightning?
@trapezohedron @Voroxpete your drawers got larger?
Yawn
Perfect lol
