I’ll be honest, it was a bit of an impulse buy, I didn’t do a lot of research.
I was curious and I felt like the performance numbers meant that even if I hated it, then it would likely be worth the experiment.
1. Charging your battery off your wall outlet is surprisingly slow. I get less than a kWh charge over 60 minutes, which gets me a few miles depending how fast I punch it in the acceleration. If I had a long commute, I’d probably need to spend the money to upgrade my wall socket to charge faster. My wife wanted me to, but to be honest I just don’t drive enough. It hasn’t been an issue.
Gratuituous image from Grok:
2. Electric cars do feel like the future for commuting. They’re quick, they’re quiet, they’re cheaper per mile than internal combustion engines.
3. Electric cars are fun. I feel like it’s underrated how basically any electric sports car is faster than _any_ gas supercar at any real world driving. Sure if you’re on a track or in the middle of Wyoming and can go 120miles per hour, then a gas supercar is superior. But otherwise, electric is just an unfair advantage.
Again let me repeat. Electric is better performance in real world, every day driving. I was a skeptic, but I was wrong. Electric is definitely better. It’s not close.
Electric is definitely different from gas though. There’s no roar of the engine. You wouldn’t take your fussy toddler out in the electric car to get them to go to sleep.
But they absolutely fly off the line. They get your heart pounding as g forces hit you that could never happen in a gas powered car.
4. I’m far from convinced that electric cars are actually net positive for the environment. Again, I bought it because fun.
Miss me with your partisan arguments either way, I don’t care.
A good examination of the tradeoffs is interesting and complicated and acknowledges the imprecision.
5. I do find it concerning that it feels like a computer. In general I’d prefer an analog display and not a digital one for any car. A friend has an 8 year old Tesla and he says his display is already lagging.
This bugs me for lots of reasons. Planned obsolence. Intrinsic insecurity because computer. The continuous overreach of surveillance capitalism is made even worse in modern cars. The ability to brick the computer with an involuntary software update.
6. On that note, I wouldn’t buy an electric car except maybe from an established car company (since governments will likely bail them out) or Tesla. Just seems like too much probability that the company goes busto.
I do think that part of why I am far from convinced that electric cars will be good for the environment is that I doubt they last very long. Certainly not as long as a well maintained Toyota. How long does the software get supported? What happens when libraries stop being supported? etc etc.
I don’t think electric cars will end up being some anti-consumerism thing like many environmental advocates seem to think. In fact, I imagine it will be the opposite, almost more like a phone that you’re forced to upgrade every few years.
I like technology and am a tech optimist but I’m also not blind to the fact that the world is tradeoffs.
7. I learned that you aren’t supposed to charge the battery past 80% to optimize for battery life. In general apparently the tighter you keep your range around 50%, the better for battery life. Plus slower charging is also better for the battery.
8. I wouldn’t go all electric with a family. Our family car is a 4runner, and those are just incredible vehicles, like almost everything Toyota makes.
An electric car feels like a nice complement to that. But it’s hard for me to imagine having an electric car as a family car if you have a few kids. Or even without kids, I suppose, road trips are never going to be the same with an electric car. Where you live and how often you take roadtrips and how organized you are about finding chargers may change this calculus.
If it isn’t clear, I love my electric car. But in a two car family, I wouldn’t have both be electric. For us anyway, but I think probably for you as well (though circumstances obviously vary widely).
But I definitely think one of your two cars will be electric in the future.
Addenda: I knew I forgot something, and I remember it the moment I got in my car today.
Recharge/recuperation/regeneration/whatever your manufacture calls it.
When you take your foot off the pedal, it naturally recharges the battery and slows the car down. It saves your brakes, it’s easier on the car, and it saves electricity.
My car lets me turn this mode on or off, and I basically always leave it on because it’s just a superior way to drive.