Do Not Fear the Electric Vehicle
By: Lannie Rose
Tags: Ev, Electric Car, Charging, Electric Vehicles

Do Not Fear the Electric Vehicle

The EVs are coming! You cannot avoid them! You (yes you!) will own an electric vehicle (EV) soon!

Already there are government mandates that outlaw selling Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles after a certain date, not so very far in the future. For example, 2035 in California and 2030 in the Netherlands. Mandates aside, all the major car companies plan to stop designing any new ICE vehicles within the next few years.* I know you love your ICE vehicles. They’re all you know. What will you do if there isn’t a gas station on the next corner to refuel your vehicle? Will never changing the oil give you anxiety attacks? Is shifting gears your thing? Does a rumbling engine comfort your soul? All going away. Buh-bye! Sorry.

As I responded to comments on a recent EV Medium article, I realized that I have become something of an EV expert, from a consumer point of view. I was on the waiting list for the very first Nissan LEAFs to arrive in California in June 2011, and have driven one ever since. Driven two, actually. I’ve been alert for all EV news over the years to feed my confirmation bias. I’ve got a good sense of what is going on in the EV world and where it is headed. I’d like to share my knowledge with you, oh ICE devotee, and calm your fears of the EV future.

EVs are NOT just like ICE vehicles, but electric. ICE vehicles, like horse buggies, are a thing of the past. (Or soon to be.) An EV is different animal, and a different experience.

With an EV, the vehicle begins to disappear. I don’t have to think about it. It just gets me where I want to go. No refueling stops. No oil to change. No annual service. Just transportation. And maybe have it washed once every year or two.

Yes, I have to plug in the charger each time I get home. Well, not every time, just the last trip of the day. And not every day, since most days I use only a small percent of the battery capacity. But I like to keep it charged up mostly full most of the time in case an emergency long trip should arise. One time my sweetie got into a traffic accident and I had barely enough charge in my EV to get to her—it was a charging wake-up call. But that was my first EV, when its battery range was down to about 80 miles. An EV you buy today probably has a 200+ mile battery. As to plugging in, my situation is that I don’t have a garage. I live in the mountains and park my EV on the road, next to the charger mounted on a post at the end of my walkway. If I had a garage, I would install one of these wireless chargers https://www.pluglesspower.com https://witricity.com, and never have to plug in my EV again.

Do I miss stopping at gas stations for a fill-up? Hell no! In fact, that was one of my favorite EV benefits from the start. I hated having to “stop for gas,” often at the most inconvenient times. I hated having to pump my own gas. Thank goodness for pay-at-the-pump, because having to make those trips inside to pay was just irritating. Getting gasoline stink on my hands, priceless! Now I leave home every morning with a full tank. I never need to find a public charging station, except on long trips. But my current EV has only a 110 mile range. The EV you buy tomorrow will have a 200+ mile range. And GM says its EVs will have a 450 mile range in a few years. You will never need to “stop for gas” again. Even on long trips, you will not need to stop for gas. You will stop at a rest stop for a potty break and to stretch your legs … and top off your EV battery. You will stop for food … and top off your EV battery. You will stop at a motel for the night .. and top off your EV battery. You will stay overnight with a friend, and borrow their EV charger (or a regular AC plug, if they are barabians). Gas stations will disappear, and be replaced by gawd-awful min-marts or some such.

Oh, but you live in an apartment in the big city. They don’t provide a parking space for you, much less a charging station. Well, you are the luckiest of all! Because you never have to charge an EV. When you need to go somewhere, your self-driving robo-Uber arrives with enough charge to get you to your destination, guaranteed.

When the EVs take over, chances are you will buy yours online like you buy a Tesla today. Dealerships will go away. So where will you get your EV serviced? Answer: You won’t! I got my first EV serviced at regular intervals because that was how I was raised. Besides, it was still a new technology, so Nissan wanted to keep an eye on it, and I wanted them to as well. But you know what? They never actually did anything except check the battery capacity. And they washed my car. That was nice. When I traded my first LEAF in for my second one (because they gave a me a great deal rather than replacing the depleted battery in my first LEAF), I took it in for its first free regular service appointment, and that was that. I just don’t bother having it serviced anymore. I keep an eye on the tires, and I suppose at some point I’ll need to take the vehicle to a tire store for a rotation or new tires, but otherwise, the car just goes. No service really needed. No oil changes. I just occasionally check the water level in the radiator. (It has a cooling system because charging can overheat batteries.)

And do not discount the pleasure of smug satisfaction over driving a vehicle that is not (directly) polluting the environment or contributing to global warming. Not polluting the environment or contributing to global warming is a good thing on its own merit, I guess, but the smug satisfaction is the real reward! Of course, the electricity that charges your EV may come from a fossil fuel power plant today, but it will be a wind or solar or other sustainable power source in the near future, if we are to have a future where we are still capable of building automobiles. My own EV already runs on water—because a large percentage of California’s power comes from damns. (And geothermal.) As a matter of fact, the electricity that charges your EV may well come from solar panels on your own roof, or even in your backyard.