I’ve been driving my 100% electric car for two years now. Basic stats:
Mechanical problems: zero
Oil changes: zero
Trips to gasoline stations: zero
Times stuck / out of charge: zero
Times I needed to recharge away from home: two (details below)
Times per year where I resort to driving a gasoline car: about 8. (Going out of town, carrying more than 3 passengers, or transporting a wheelchair)
This year I’ll report on how the EV experience changes my world view. If you read my other diaries, you know I’ll start evangelizing at some point. You’ve been warned.
Communism!
I measured the power consumption, recharging on my slow-charge 120V plugin. It draws 800W (a little less than a hair dryer on “low”). This means I use about 16kWH for a full charge, worth about 70 miles. So, roughly 4.35 miles per kWH.
I have a decent size solar PV array on the roof, and it generates about 7MWH in a year.
That’s 30,625 miles.
That’s right.
One house can power 30k free vehicle miles in a year.
Here we are in a climate crisis, burning fossil fuels, bleeding money into gas pumps, when we could put solar on 1/3 of our houses, drive for free, convert ugly gas stations into parkland, leave the tar sands underground, and incidentally give the oil companies a nice kick in the head.
But we haven’t done it yet.We haven’t done it yet because it isn’t individually profitable, it isn’t corporate profitable, it requires coordinated action on a massive scale, and it would be fought and sabotaged by oil companies.
I can’t stand the stupid. I can’t stand ignoring a solvable problem. (My outlook has been shaped by my day job: I develop software that enables people to do better manufacturing. When we see a way the software can solve a problem better, we change the software. When the users apply it, their operations change for the better. I take pleasure in the beauty of a problem made clear, a solution discovered and then implemented, and the benefits enjoyed by all).
What does it take to free drivers from their dependency on oil companies? What does it take to push solar arrays onto millions of roofs? (Not just residential: factories, office buildings, and warehouses have huge beautiful sun-soaking roofs just waiting to be put to use). It takes a massive effort by the whole nation. The collective pursuit of the public good, by the only organization that can ever represent the public good -- an elected government. It takes a national effort to install solar generators on private property, to ignore the oil companies’ lust for profit (or, better, to nationalize them, but that’s another debate), and to push millions of drivers acquire a technologically better car (how about a $10k subsidy, paid for by a $10k tax on every gasoline car? That’s another debate). It takes Central Planning.
So there it is. My electric car has turned me into a Communist.
Paranoia! Or, Electric Car Basic Facts
From Pynchon’s famous Proverbs for Paranoids:
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers.
I enjoy when curious strangers start a conversation with me about my electric car. They genuinely don’t know the basic facts, and it’s fun to astonish them with new knowledge. But I notice a pattern: people invariably start with the wrong questions
For example,
Q. What’s the range of your car?
A. That’s the wrong question.
Evaluating the range is not a matter of “the biggest one wins” (80 miles is good! But 90 is better! I’ll buy the car that gets 95 miles!). The range is either
enough or
not enough, and that depends on your lifestyle, such as the length of your commute, and when and why you drive. If your commute + errands adds up to 82 miles, then any car with 90 miles or better is
good enough, any car under that is
not enough.
So, what’s the range of my car? The answer is, it’s Good Enough.
Q. How long does it take to charge?
A. That’s the wrong question.
The question behind the question is,
Q. Can I drive it from Maine to California and back? (how much time would I spend recharging en route)
No. EVs are not good to drive cross-country. They’re not even good for your road trips to Houston and Dallas. Get over those expectations. (Yes, Tesla owners can drive cross-country. Whatever). Your EV is useful for: commuting, driving to school, errands, and a night on the town. In other words, 95% of your auto usage. (For the other 5%, choose from a number of viable strategies: a spare gasoline car, a rental, train/plane, buy a Volt instead of a Leaf, etc)
So, how long does it take to charge? The answer is,
it doesn’t matter. You recharge it while you sleep. Who cares if it’s fully charged by 2am, or not until 5am?
Q. What’s the time to go from zero to sixty?
A. That’s the wrong question.
Again, people are in the habit of thinking “the bigger (or smaller) number wins”. 8 seconds is good! But 7s is better! And, as Consumer Reports pointed out, my Mitsubishi EV takes a pathetic 14 seconds. (I don’t know the stats for Leafs, Volts, and Energi models -- all of which are bigger and tougher than my car).
I decided to verify CR’s measurement. I found a nice flat stretch of empty highway, brought the car to a full stop, clicked my stopwatch, and slammed on the speed.
Result 1: Yes, they’re right. It took 14 seconds.
Result 2: During every one of those 14 seconds, I was aware that I am not driving in a reasonable and safe manner. I’m driving too fast and too aggressively. If I behave like this in traffic, I will cause a crash.
So, what’s the time to go from zero to sixty? The answer is,
it doesn’t matter. The acceleration of my car -- or any car on the market, probably -- is more than you need for any driving situation. If you’ve been choosing cars based on this statistic, you’ve been making multi-thousand-dollar decisions on criteria that don’t matter. Oops.
(Unless you bought a Tesla to experience the sheer carnival-ride terror of going 0 to 60 in 3.7 seconds. That’s gotta be freaky).
So, what are the right questions?
Q. Can it hold highway speed?
A. Yes
That’s an important functional requirement. I need to commute by highway; can I do it?
The question behind the question is “It’s a battery-operated toy.. does it really work?”. My car is the wimpiest and smallest of the EVs and it cruises happily at 80. Battery-operated toys are not what they used to be.
Q. Will Lithium-ion batteries wear out under long-term rugged use?
A. No
Toyota did us a great service by introducing the Prius seventeen years ago. They sold their millionth unit in 2008. So they provided the definitive answer.
A. Ask a million Prius drivers who have been driving six or more years.
Q. What’s the required maintenance?
A. Each year you should replace the cabin air filter (the one that keeps road dust from coming in the heating/cooling vents).
You do not have to: change the oil, get a tune-up, flush the radiator, check the transmission fluid, change the fuel and air filters, adjust the ignition timing. You will never have to: replace the alternator, replace the muffler, replace the starter motor, replace the belts and hoses, get a ring job, get a valve job, replace the head gasket, replace the catalytic converter, get a new clutch . . . do you see a pattern?
The electric motor is insanely simple, and has been a solved technology for something like 90 years. It doesn’t have all those subtly coordinated moving parts. It doesn’t have to manage fiery explosions. It doesn’t generate vibration, heat, and noise that have to be suppressed and that punish and destroy all the moving parts. No complexity, no parts, no maintenance.
Q. Will I miss going to gas stations?
A. It depends. Do you enjoy interrupting your drive to get out of the car and stand in a smelly dirty place draining fifty or sixty bucks out of your wallet?
Full disclosure: I do own a gasoline car for backup purposes, and I have been to gas stations this year, several times.
Q. If everybody bought an electric car, would that hopelessly overburden the grid? and aren’t you burning coal every time you recharge anyway?
A. No to both, with some complexity.
Per my solar measurements above, we could easily add power capacity to handle all the electric cars. Failing that, remember that most recharging is at night when electric power demand is low. Since the car draws MUCH less current than the monster air conditioner you ran all afternoon and turned off at night, your night-time recharge can’t possibly stress the grid as much as you’re already doing in the day.
As to the coal: if you’re in a coal-electric area, then -- yes, using electricity creates carbon pollution. However, massive power plant generators are so much more efficient than gasoline car engines, that the EV produces much less carbon per mile compared to internal combustion. I also read -- but didn’t quite understand -- an article claiming that generators have to be kept running at night even if there’s no demand, even to the point that they’re generating and throwing away electricity; if I understood that correctly, it means sometimes when you charge at night you’re salvaging “throw-away” energy and thus have zero carbon impact.
Road Rage!
I gradually noticed this change in how I feel about driving.
When I drive electric, I don’t get road rage.
Not that I was super ragey to start with, like honking the horn and making gestures and screaming at people; but in heavy traffic I would definitely get irritated; the 99th consecutive red light would have me rolling my eyes in despair at my cruel fate, and when the interstate highway traffic averaged 5mph I’d be pretty grouchy by the time I finally made it home.
This doesn’t happen in the electric car.
I don’t know why. I can’t promise you the same results. I think I get less ragey because:
- When stopped, the car is quiet and free of the rumbly vibration of an idling engine. (Electric cars don’t have to idle. When stopped, they’re not drawing power, turning the engine over, anything. Just stopped. Prius owners have experienced this).
- When stopped, you’re not using up fuel. You don’t have to have fuel-tank anxiety (OMG I only have a gallon left, and I’m burning it up sitting on the highway doing nothing at all!). When you’re driving 5 or 10mph, you’re not wasting fuel: the electric motor is just as efficient at 5mph as it is at 40.
- When you start up, you don’t have the roaring and delay as the engine struggles to engage, or the lurchy gear-changing effect as you get up to 20 and 40. EVs don’t change gears. They don’t make any extra effort to start from zero. They just deliver smooth power at any speed. Everything is smooth. Who needs road rage? The world is smoooooooooooooooth.
- In start/stop traffic, when you have to slow down for the thousandth time in a row, you’re not wasting energy. You’re capturing that kinetic energy (mass of car x car’s velocity squared) and using it to recharge the battery. (Did I mention I hate waste? It’s related to the day job).
Probably also I’m less ragey because of that sneaky feeling of my-car-is-niftier-than-all-of-yalls. But don’t tell anybody that part, mmkay? Thanks.
OMG Not enough range?
As promised: details on the two times I needed to recharge away from home:
Case 1: Yes, I really found myself with not enough charge to get home.
To do this, I had to make three (3) mistakes.
- I forgot to plug in the night before, so I started the day with only half a “tank”
- I agreed at the last minute to add an extra errand (dropping my kid off at a friend’s house west of town) to my itinerary.After those, I still had enough range, except that
- I absent-mindedly drove right past the highway exit I wanted; doubling back cost me five miles of charge-greedy 80 mph travel.
The consequence of my series of planning errors? I had to stop at a city park, plug in, and play frisbee for an hour before continuing.
Case 2: I did it on purpose
The local Nissan dealer had emailed me announcing their installation of the first 450V FastCharge station in Austin. I’ll have to try this, I said. So, choosing a time when I had only half a “tank” left, I took the family out to dinner way up on the opposite end of town, and then went to the Nissan dealer to try the FastCharge.
It worked. Thanks, Nissan!