GOING ELECTRIC

 

photo from SpaceX

WHERE I STARTED FROM

 

In the past I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation about cars that lasted longer than five minutes.  But recently, and surprisingly, I’ve had a number of conversations about cars.  A friend who lived in California some years ago told me once she remembered how people at cocktail parties in the Northeast often start up conversations with a line like, “So, what do you do?” At parties in LA she’d be asked, “So what are you driving?” 

 

What I’m driving now is a brand new (nearly two months old) EV/electric vehicle.  I am obviously not an early adopter as many of us have been driving EVs for some years now.  The Tesla, after all, came on the market with the Roadster in 2008* although Tesla didn’t hit it big until the S model came along in 2012.  Still, that was more than ten years ago.  Some members of my family are now on their second Teslas.  One early adopter family member in SF may have gone through three of them.  But that’s California for you.

The empty dash with a beautiful screen

 

For a long time I was afraid to drive an EV.  In my car, a VW Alltrack, a larger version of a VW Golf, the small screen for iPhone use, GPS, texting, music, was a distraction from my looking at the road, even though I could do many things by voice.  If I had to fiddle with something and put a finger somewhere on the screen to do it, sure enough I’d be nudging the center line.  In a Tesla there’s a screen, a gorgeous screen, and nothing else.  I would have to do everything by doing something on the screen.  Sometimes I would have to physically make a selection.  I was afraid I’d go off the road while I was busy choosing.  I heard about the good things with EVs too, of course, like the different kind of braking, the instant power, and so on.  It scared me, though. While I knew my next car would be an electric car, I also thought that a few years would pass before that happened and in the meanwhile EVs would be even better, have longer ranges, and there’d be more charging stations (although I had no conception of how many there already were or what they were like).

 

So–ignorance.  Who keeps up, really, with what’s new with a product if it’s not something you don’t spend any time thinking about in the first place?  If it’s something you just take for granted. Until you find yourself, as I did, at a dealership waiting for a car checkup that turns out to be step one in fixing an obscure (but crucial!) hydraulic problem that could cost up to $2,000 but isn’t immediately problematic.  Of course it was immediately problematic.  Did I really want to pay that much and still have an 8 year old gas-eating, oil-change-needing and other mystery-fluids-eating car? 

 

Did they happen to have any EVs around, I wondered?  Of course they did!

 

WHAT DROVE ME

A test drive.  There was no way I was going to admit this was going to be scary. I’m glad I didn’t, because it wasn’t.  True, I had no idea what the instrumentation in front of me was showing me, and info about all the many options was flooding my brain. It was obvious long ago that once something is handled by computer, designers might just as well add every conceivable function simply because they can.  

Anyway, I bought it.  The screen doesn't do everything; some functions are closer at hand, and not totally reimagined.  A little learning is needed.  Big deal.

 

It's the incentives for going EV that clinched it.  A federal incentive offered $7,500 for new EVs costing under $80,000 and assembled in the U.S.  That includes Teslas, VWs, Rivians (vans and trucks), a Nissan, Chevys, a Cadillac, a Honda, Audis and an Acura. In addition, the state of Vermont offered $2,500 and Green Mountain Power an additional $2,500 and a free home charger (Installation is on you.)  I figured the federal incentive could disappear after the election.  Who knows how long any of them will last.**

WHAT DRIVING!

First I had to drive the car.  And charge it.  Home chargers don’t appear magically, they need to be installed. ($1,500 in my case.)  Meanwhile I found I could charge the car next door where my daughter’s family has a charger they use for a Tesla, and that worked.  I’ll leave out the learning period when I couldn't get the car’s charger port cover (once known as the gas tank lid) open–panic!– because I didn’t appreciate how smart the car was because it didn’t know it was me and knew that whoever this was, they were doing it wrong.  

 

My very first longer-than-grocery-store trip was to pick up a granddaughter in Lebanon, NH.  It was time to try highway driving modes, auto drive and auto-assist. Oooh, it felt like floating.  I actually felt my car was helping me driving better.  I especially loved the mountain roads because of this thing called regenerative braking which I’d never heard of before. No, I had actually,  but I’d paid no attention.  What it is, is taking your foot off the accelerator (gas pedal called “the throttle” by the car dealer which actually sounds more like something on a Model T) so the car immediately slows, and then you can take downhills and curves in a far smoother way without the need for braking. That was a wow.

 

Next was my first time using a public charging site.  Which I would use on my first drive to Boston. I’d gotten some confidence in the process listening to an NPR story about two reporters who took a road trip with an EV from Boston to Washington DC and back using major highways in one direction and minor roads on the return.  They described the charging stops­–fewer off major roads­, no surprise, but not none. Fast chargers took no more than about 20 minutes.  With my new car came a freebie: two years of free charging at Electrify America stations.  (None in Vermont.)

Electrify America fast charger. No idea what cars need the charger on the right.

With my starting charge I could have made it all the way without recharging.  But I was too new to what "range" reallly meant. (Officially, my range when 100% charged is 263; when I charged it to 100% for my trip it read 300-something. What to believe?)   I stopped in Lebanon, NH at Electrify America (which I will call EA).   There were a couple of open slots at the EA site in the remotest corner of a shopping center anchored by a Walmart. I pulled into one, not realizing that some slots were designed for cars with charging ports in the front and others for ports in the back, so when I backed in, which I thought you were supposed to do, the charger wire (hose? cable?) didn't reach.  At this moment the skies opened and buckets of rain began to fall.  Had I not noticed that charging stations had no roofs or covers of any kind?  Back in the car,water everywhere, turn around, try again.  How do I start charging––using my phone or my car screen?  To my surprise the EA's screen recognized me. Evidently some sort of recognition happened between my EA app and my EV.  For the 20 minutes it would take to charge up I could visit the Walmart.  Why not.

I arrived. With more driving to do the next day I left the car for an overnight charge from a downtown Newburyport, MA, slow charger as my daughter's house had a dedicated Tesla charger.  This slot was definitely a back in type.  From the moment I backed in another deluge began. Buckets of rain again.  At least this was my second time, only this time I had to pay.

On the way home a few days later I did an EA stop in Seabrook, NH.  This time I knew what I  was doing, and it wasn't raining either.  The EA site was in the most remote area of the shopping center anchored by a–you guessed it–Walmart.  Only one other car was being charged and I noticed it was the same as mine.  I struck up a conversation with the driver, who said she'd had her car for a couple of years now, totallly loved it.  She had three years of free EA charging  Her first EV had been a Nissan Leaf that never had as long a range after its first year, very disappointing, she said.  This car, though, was great.  Although she said it had "freaked out" the first cold winter day.  But it turned out to be fine.  I didn't think to ask what she meant by "freaked out." ( Maybe I'll find out. )  Mostly we talked about how we'd never go back to (ugh) gas cars.

There I was, talking about cars. And for much longer than five minutes. 

 *In 2018 Musk sent a red Roadster convertible with a human dummy driver (“Starman”) into space.  That seemed cool at the time (I thought so, anyway), but its coolness has faded with the increasing narcissism and weirdness of the guy who sent it up there.  It is, by the way, orbiting around the sun and although the orbit should be stable for several million years (!) according to NASA, it will probably be destroyed eventually by radiation and micrometeoroid impacts.

**No sooner said...Vermont has pulled back from this incentive program as of October 8th, probably because it got too popular (read, costly).