I admit that I am a Neanderthal. I have made a moderate attempt to keep up but I drive a 2001 p/u and my wife’s Camry is 4 years old.
Today our son and I were running errands in his new Tesla. Very quick when needed and connected
beyond anything I’ll ever want. He was running a bit low on charge so we hit a charging station for a few minutes. He told me there were super charging stations on the way home to top it off. From the driver’s seat it appears that it can connect to virtually anything on line. It is capable of doing things I’ve never dreamed of.
We bought him a Commador 64 when he was 12 and he’s never looked back. He’s 50.
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I think electric vehicles and the infrastructure have come a long way. It is nice to hear your experience, even if it is just a short one as a passenger. I am almost certain our next vehicle will be electric.
I would like a hybrid, but not an EV.
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My wife and I recently did a long (gasoline powered) trip north and made a first-time stop at a Buc Ees; the new enormous mega gas stations. I’m thinking they’ll soon be converted to enormous charging stations.
Cousins had to go up to Des Moines to pick up their truck and car hauler trailer. They rented a EV it took them five hours to make the three hour trip. Seems there was a line and delay at the “winter” condition charging station. Long line and slow charge. They loaded rental car on trailer and took it back to original rental company.
Friends have a VW. EV and have no problems making local trips. VW offered 2 year of free charging at charging stations. Florida weather helps.
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The charge station we went to at a hotel had a half dozen stations and the one we picked was very slow. Per my son much slower than normal. He stopped at a quick charge one on the way home and it was as advertised.
If I can’t go in the parking garages or the ferry (or evacuate in wildfires) I’ll pass for now. We were caught in a crazy California fire a few years ago and directed off the highway out in the sticks, bumper to bumper, south of Shasta. Terrifying if you couldn’t charge. It was so dry that day and we barely made it though. (Moral of the story: don’t get lost in audiobooks during fire season….)
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The son of a neighbor in our rural corner of CO, which itself is in a larger rural area with three other states, bought an electric car. He needed to go to a town that’s only a two-hr drive away. He had to stop along the way to charge it, then stop again on the return trip.
It’s a bad choice for large parts of the USA. We will not be buying one, though a hybrid is probably in our future. We do conserve fuel by not driving as much as we did when younger, or by other ways.
An example is we just took a road trip to southern CA. We rented a smallish “crossover/SUV” for the task. We didn’t need a truck’s abilities or storage for the entirely paved highway route, but we could still bring bulky things such as my kayak paddle and related gear, cycling gear, and boxes and coolers. I was able to actually buy some needed kitchen plates and bowls (unique, high quality) and take them home without worrying about airline brutality to them. Where we stayed, we walked every day to darned near everything, minimizing driving other than the round trip between CO and CA. IOW, we substituted that for a horrible pair of two-leg flights, brought what we needed to do the things we wanted, and didn’t worry about cancellations or overbooked flights or being sardined among who knows what.
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I walk or e-bike for groceries in our village but having been hit head on by two drunk drivers, I’m driving a monster car on the highway.
Maybe all those years flying medevac on to SoCal freeways left their mark on my mind but I’m driving big.
Bodies do not fare well at highway speeds in small cars.
We keep our house about 50 degrees so that should help.
So many drugged out of their mind people on America’s highways. I put my foot down on that Ducati also.
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Yep. I won’t consider any kind of microcar despite thinking they are a great size for urban driving, not to mention visually appealing.
Decided years ago not to pursue riding a motorcycle for similar reasons.
If drunk, drugged, distracted, senile drivers were not a consideration I’d be in favor of getting a microcar for errands, even in our rural area. It would have to be ICE, though. Relying on The
Big Grid for even more things does not sit well!
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I like how the big trucks have to stay on the right over here, that would help get me into a small car also. Otherwise I need good acceleration to avoid being killed.
It’s about 3-4 k just to get a DL over here and we have different road accident risks in America with every new arrival issued an easy license. I don’t think they even impound uninsured cars in LA anymore.
It’s not rational for me to want to be in a small car with the state of highway lawlessness.
I am a proponent of hydrogen. I think EV’s are a waste of money. There is a big push to hydrogen going on. Larges trucks are being built using hydrogen. Toyota is building cars powered with hydrogen… What happens when your ev batteries need changing. 20 K to do it! And the solid waste being left after the Lithium is wasted. Sorry, hydrogen is the way to go.
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I see lots of Teslas on my commute. It seems like they’ve displaced German and Japanese luxury sedans as the commuter cars of choice for the professional-managerial class around here. They aren’t sufficient as an only vehicle, but most households are multi-vehicle anyway. My employer installed 10 charging stations in our parking garage, so if I had an EV I could theoretically commute on free electricity.
Everything about the concept seems great except the battery cost & longevity. I think EVs are getting junked earlier than ICE vehicles because they have negative value once their battery capacity is lost. The good thing is that lithium batteries can be recycled. The bad thing is that we don’t do enough of it, so battery replacement cost is still too high.
" Hertz plans to sell 20,000 electric vehicles (EVs) as it winds down its push to convert a sizable portion of its rental fleet to EVs, the company Thursday said in a regulatory filing, citing the high repair costs required to maintain the vehicles."
Not to mention the high recall rate.
'nuff said, as far as I’m concerned.