The electric vehicles (EVs) available today are the perfect second vehicle. If you know how to recharge your cell phone, you know how to recharge your EV. If you know how to drive a gasoline powered car, you know how to drive an EV.
One thing that Americans love is their automobile. We have been fascinated with cars since they came out. Today this love affair with our cars has created a demand for foreign sources of energy to run them. I believe the future of cars is electric cars. That future is starting right now.
There are a growing number of electric cars available on the market today from the Tesla Roadster to the Nissan Leaf. A lot of people are curious about them. The biggest fear is a single charge limit. The auto makers are playing off this fear to keep their gasoline cars in the market and on the streets. With a second car there is no need to fear current range limits.
Part of what we love about our cars is the road trip and since you can't drive halfway across the nation without recharging an electric car, many people stop looking at them. This isn't the whole story. For a single car household, an electric car won't work today. However most families have two cars. With dual income households becoming the norm, more of these households have two vehicles. For these families the electric car makes a lot of sense.
When you want to take the family to Walt Disney World, the Grand Canyon, or Wally World, you take the gasoline powered car or minivan. The rest of the year you can drive the electric car to and from work, grocery store, soccer practice, and McDonalds.
Most of the electric cars today are getting 100-130 miles on a charge. In city driving this is two to three hours. Try this out. Build a playlist for your phone or iPod that is three hours long. Each time you get in the car listen to this playlist. (In iTunes, you can create a Smart Playlist in about 5 minutes that will rotate the contents of this playlist so you aren't listening to the same songs day after day. More on this in another post.) Each time you get in the car, start playing this playlist. Do this for a week or two of regular activities. If you never get to the end of the playlist, you can expect that an electric car will work for you.
What most of us are missing is that we recharge an electric car each night while we sleep. Every morning we have a full tank to use for the day. Even if we drain the tank to nearly empty, we can fill up in our own garage. We don't have to make a special stop at a gas station to refuel. We all have the ability to refuel our electric cars in our houses today, with no special equipment.
Along these same lines, your first car, the car for the road trips, should be a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) or a hybrid vehicle. The PHEV will be the electric vehicle for most of the year. Only when you're on that long road trip will you start to use the gasoline engine and can refuel in a couple minutes at a gas station off the side of the Interstate.
You don't have to use the gasoline powered car for all trips. Many weekend destinations are within 100 miles of your home today. If you're taking a trip out of town for the weekend, do some research and make a couple phone calls. There is likely an outlet at your destination where you can charge. As soon as you get to the destination, plug in. You just drove two hours to get there, so you'll want to spend some time enjoying it. While you're enjoying the destination, your car is refueling for the return trip.
Here is the business secret in this post. If you're part of a motel or other travel destination, having free charging stations for guests or patrons is going to give you a competitive edge in attracting business away from your competitors. The group of EV and PHEV drivers today is small, but it is growing. Being EV friendly now will build a reputation for you. The Internet is allowing EV drivers to share information quicker and easier than ever before. If you don't believe me, check out www.PlugShare.com. Your neighbor may already be listed and getting business you didn't even know was available.
If you haven't quite made up your mind and are wondering if you can really recharge an electric vehicle in a day trip on a Saturday, consider that modern battery chargers don't charge linearly. What I mean is that if a full charge takes 10 hours, after 5 hours you're going to have more than 50% charge. You'll have something closer to 85% charge. Think about filling a large glass with water from the faucet. When you start, you turn the faucet on to its maximum flow. As the glass fills, you start decreasing the flow. When the glass is almost full, you have the faucet back to a small stream to make sure you don't overflow the glass. Battery chargers today work the same way. It is easiest, if not exactly correct, to think of it as an 80-20 split. In the first 20% of the charge time, the charger will fill the battery to 80% capacity. After this it slows down and takes its time.
Like the glass of water, the charger will not allow the battery to be over charged. This is where damage to the battery and loss of recharge cycles comes from. It's reasonable to expect that even during a one hour sit down family meal at a restaurant, you're going to get a significant recharge on your electric vehicle.
I hope after reading this, the next time you're in the market for a car, you consider the electric vehicles as well. It will reduce the impact of fluctuating gas prices from foreign sources on your monthly budget. They are also fun to drive.
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