No one driving a diesel pickup truck will be convinced an EV is better for them until they decide otherwise. I’m not going to advocate otherwise. I watched my brother tow a trailer of construction debris to the dump that weighed 4710 lbs in his Tesla Model Y (weight max rating 3500 lbs). A diesel pickup would have been so much nicer. As a road car, they might pair up nicely. He’s done the Portland to Vegas round trip twice and the car has had no issues, including last year with me during the storm of the century when Tahoe, where we were going to stay that night but cancelled right at the 395 turnoff, got 6 feet (that’s feet) of snow dumped during that storm. It was some of the nastiest weather in the west and we drove through the middle of it, parts of the roads were near solid ice: car did fine, charged fine. We lived. No issues.
If you live in the us in an apartment and have an EV, good luck. I’m sure it will suck trying to get charging. So don’t buy one or if you have one and are moving, move to an apartment that has charging inside of it.
My son has the Chevy Bolt he bought used (which might be the best way to buy one). He routinely drives the boise to portland route in it, 450 miles and so charging is mandatory. Charging for the bolt has always sucked but is getting better since Elon has allowed other Mfgs to charge in the Tesla “North American Charging Standard” stations. The Boardman Oregon station Tesla chargers are now operational for him. He can use the old non-Tesla ones which are still right there, which for whatever strange reason cost more and take longer when they are working and not broken down like is the case, or he now has a better charger, the Tesla, to chose.
They do not turn on the heat to that car so they can get the distance. It’s F**ing winter and damned cold, but they do it anyway because the car is so cheap to operate. They have a second car, a Suburu outback. No one forces them to take the EV and keep the heat off, but they do it because they want to save money and they’re young. So they bought some sort of a battery powered electric blanket to get better range. They could stop and charge more, but they don’t want to give up the time. The Bolt charges at 50KWH max whereas a Tesla Y charges at 250Kwh max. That’s for reference, you won’t get that for either car, but you will always get a substantially faster charge in a Tesla.
When my wife plugs her tesla into our second home at the coast in the 110V plug in, she gets 6 miles of range per hour. An overnight charge will not get you 50 miles of range. Tillamook PUD charges 8cents per KWH at our house, which is insanely cheap. If she needs more range, there is a Tesla supercharger in Tillamook which is 10 miles away and will charge a couple hundred miles range in @13-20 min. The cost is .34/cents per KWH there middle of the day. Strange as Boardman is only .13cents kwh. Charging prices can rise or fall during the day based on load, and that’s not something you get at a gas station. So plan ahead. We could put a level 2 Tesla charger in the coast home for @$1200 installed, but we’re too cheap and don’t really need it.
Reference: https://www.autopilotreview.com/how-long-charge-a-tesla/
EV’s are kick ass fun to drive. As a new technology, they are working out the bugs. During Obamas last term in office, the .gov tossed over $10 billion in grants for battery improvement. A lot of that, as is the case in any large project, was wasted. However, hopefully we will see a return at some point.
Some of the former shortages and chokepoints are disappearing. Example, in case you are not aware, Exxon/Mobile has leased a good part of Arkansas, where one of the largest lithium deposits in the world was found. They expect it to be producing by 2027 and putting out enough Lithium 3 years later by 2030 for 1 million cars. I suspect those will be real numbers. https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/news/news-releases/2023/1113_exxonmobil-drilling-first-lithium-well-in-arkansas
Oh, and Brad, those guard rails which will fail if an ev hits it due to excessive weight, what do they do when a semi-truck runs into it? Also, brother has 23000 miles on his Y and still has plenty of tread left, just an FYI.
