I don’t understand why in 2023 everything seems to be politicized. Take for example electric cars vs. internal combustion engine cars (I.C.E.). When I bought my Tesla Model Y about two years ago, I didn’t think about saving the Earth, or climate change, or trying to make I.C.E. cars extinct. I just wanted a car that would not idle away my entire gasoline budget while driving my 3 hour commute on I5. If any of you have ever been to the West Coast and been stuck in I5 traffic you will understand. It had nothing to do with “Left vs. Right”, “Loving or Hating Elon”, or any of that craziness that it has become today.
There also seems to be a lot of misconceptions about electric vehicles, what their capabilities and shortcomings are, and their best use case. Of course I am going to speak anecdotally, because I will be speaking on my experiences and my thoughts as an electric car owner. Let’s take for example charging your vehicle, there was a recent article stating that it was going to take you four days to charge your car. So let’s talk about that, as it is one of the ways to refuel your electric vehicle. Drivers with short commutes, like 20-50 miles a day, can easily charge overnight on your standard 110 electrical outlet. If you are going to have longer commutes, I suggest installing a level 2 charger or at least a 240 volt outlet. I do not suggest buying an electric car and then using the supercharger infrastructure, because I don’t feel that they are time or cost effective. In the article about the Electric Hummer, they plugged into a 110 volt outlet and that is like trickle charging the vehicle, it’ll take forever on a drained battery. Now if they had used a level 2 charger, then the vehicle would have charged to full overnight. That is how it was intended to work.
There are also drawbacks to installing a level 2 charger, if you buy the equipment, plus pay an electrician to install, add a circuit, and run wiring, you could look at an associated cost of $1,000.00 or more. To install a 240 volt outlet in my garage cost me about $600.00, I needed that to be able to fully charge my Tesla overnight for my daily 3 hour commute, about 130 miles a day. On my specific route there were no Tesla superchargers or any other fast charging option, so I had to charge at home overnight. Let’s also talk about range, because this ties into my commute and why I needed to charge overnight. My Model Y is rated at 316 miles of range if you charge your battery to 100%, here’s the rub, batteries are not meant to be charged to 100% every night, so it is recommended to charge max 90%, most people usually charge up to 80%. So what does that mean? Well, you don’t start out with the max range of 316, you are looking more at 284 miles of range or less.
This brings me to the next thing a person wanting to go electric, every electric vehicle manufacturer either underestimates or overestimates the range of their vehicle. Here are some things you may want to be aware of, weather, terrain, speed, AC, and heat all affect your overall range. So you will lose range in the winter time due to it just being cold. There are things you can do to mitigate the range loss, but they require the car to be plugged in. This does not bode well for people who live in apartments or don’t have a place to plug in overnight.
By now you are saying, this electric car business is not all it’s cracked up to be, and to that I say, it depends on your circumstances. For me, it saved money, no idling away my gas on I5, no oil changes, no stopping at the gas stations. I also had a house with a garage and was able to install a 240 volt outlet. Tesla covers pretty much everything under its 5 year warranty and all my visits cost me absolutely nothing. Today my commute is significantly shorter, and I can actually trickle charge my car overnight on a 110 volt standard outlet. My total cost for charging is usually about $30.00 a month and compared to the $160.00 a month to fuel our other car, it’s a significant savings.
I hope that this quick post was helpful in some way, till next time, God bless!
