Welcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.
By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.
What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.
It’s been about 21 months since I bought an electric car. That means 21 months since I last went into a gas station and filled my car with gasoline. Most of the time I charge my car when it’s needed, which is about once a week, using a charging station I have installed in my garage. In the 21 months since I bought the electric car, I’ve only charged it five times at public charging stations. I love my electric car.
I read an interesting article yesterday about electric vehicles. It seems that the share of Americans who say they’re “very unlikely” to consider an EV for their next vehicle purchase has been growing in each of the first three months of this year. Apparently, persistent worries about EV charging infrastructure (or lack thereof) and vehicle pricing have dampened enthusiasm. Other concerns include range anxiety (most gas cars can go farther on a full tank of gas than most EVs can go on a full charge), time required to charge an EV, and power outage and grid concerns. The market share of EVs of all new-vehicle sales dropped to 7.3% in March, down from a record high of 8.5% in February.
And that leads me to today’s provocative question.
Do you currently own an electric vehicle? If not, are you considering purchasing an EV for you next vehicle? What are your reasons for either considering or not considering buying an EV?
If you choose to participate in Fandango’s Provocative Question, you may respond with a comment or write your own post in response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.
This, That, and the Other 
I might think it’s a great idea to have an EV but it’s way out of our budget. And not readily available here in Pakistan.
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No. Do not own one and do not desire one. I like a more hands on approach to driving and enjoy the adventure of it. I’m a bit old fashioned I guess.
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Other than the fact that you can’t get a manual transmission with an electric vehicle (there are no traditional gears to shift), the driving experience in an EV is identical to a gas powered car. EVs are not self-driving. And the good news is that you never have to change the oil.
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I don’t mind getting the oil changed and the auto mechanic down the street is thankful for the business. I understand the appeal. I just don’t feel the same way. 🙂
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Whatever floats your boat.
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No. Range. They’re not there yet. I don’t want the anxiety of being 20 miles from a destination and worrying whether I’ll make it or not. Sure, that’s possible with a regular car, but less likely.
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Yes, I understand. Even here in California, where EVs are quite popular, there aren’t enough public charging stations, especially outside of larger cities and towns.
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Well I don’t drive so the question is irrelevant for me but although I’ve started to see public EV charging stations in larger towns they are still not widespread and I think that for Australians the same issues, lack of charging facilities, range and expense are still big issues. However, they are getting talked about more. We went to a car show a couple of months ago and met a man who was showing a Tesla, first one we’d ever seen. Nice car too. He said that there would be several more at an upcoming show. So slowly they are catching on but I think it is going to take a few more years yet.
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I like idea of them but electric vehicles don’t really have the range we need. There also aren’t that many charging stations around in my area. How long do you have to charge for? And if someone using the only one around how long do you have to wait? 45 minutes for them to charge and then the same for you? That’s pretty annoying.
Also I recently had a thought about running out of charge in the middle of nowhere. Do you have to get towed? With petrol or diesel you just add fuel to the tank but electricity, how do ones that work?
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When I charge mine at home, it takes between 3-4 hours to charge it to 90% and I usually do that overnight. At public charging stations, which are a lot faster, I can charge it to 50% within about 10-15 minutes and 80% in about 20-30 minutes. I also carry a regular charger with me in the car. It can plug into any household outlet, so if I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere, I can plug it in to just about any electrical outlet and get enough of a charge to get me to the nearest public charging station.
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My little Corolla is still going strong after 7 years, so hopefully I won’t need to buy a new car for several more. I certainly will consider an EV then, or at least a hybrid like a Prius. I don’t travel far, so that’s not an issue for me 🙂
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Maybe a hybrid as they haven’t quite enough charging places and in some places it is a long way between signs of life. Any way Henry Ford reckoned in 1940’s we would have flying cars well before now……so I’ll wait a few years and see
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We have an older car (15 years) and my husband does a periodic “what if we suddenly need to buy a car” research project. At this point we are thinking that a plug-in hybrid makes the most sense. However, due to us driving less overall and not needing to do much long haul driving anymore, combined with the technological improvements being made, the math on that is shifting toward totally electric fast.
We figure that the best thing we can do for the world right now is to keep driving our fairly efficient older car (which shows no signs of stopping) as little as we can (most weeks less than 20 miles).
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That does make sense, but given your modest driving needs, when the time arrives for you to retire your current car, an EV makes sense.
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We are pretty close. I figure that we’ll be there by the time this car dies…and even though we live in Seattle, there’s a decent chance that we can put in a carport with a solar roof and pay next to nothing for fuel.
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Mind blown.
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If we didn’t already own a fully electric car, I might consider a hybrid. But I like my gas vehicle as things are, plus it runs fine and is in good shape. I prefer options in terms of what is available to me.
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I don’t drive, so I can’t really answer this question for myself, but I do get some say in the car my spouse buys. My spouse’s current car isn’t electric and I don’t think the next one will be either, simply because it’s out of our budget. We just can’t really afford a new car as of yet. That being said, with the push away from gasoline-based cars here in the Netherlands (gas prices going up and all), maybe it will be an option sooner than I think. It isn’t that I object to it due to the range or anything.
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I think as batteries improve, as pricing normalizes, and as EV charging stations become as ubiquitous as gas/petrol stations, EVs will take off.
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No, but if I had the money I probably would try it.
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No.
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No we don’t and no we won’t unless the infrastructure is adequate to cater for long journeys. To be honest, by then we probably won’t be driving anyway and will be taking full advantage of our senior citizens bus passes.
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EVs are a “fixit” for people who have money. They will never be available for most of the world and for people who are retired or poor, the price is obscene. I know it saves you money. The irony is you already have enough money. You aren’t saving the environment because the electric grid is working overtime already. Add a few million electric cars and you are adding to a problem, not fixing it. Saves you a few bucks and that’s nice. Our dealer, down the road, is ready to put us into an EV and is sure it won’t raise our payment. But we only have another year of payments and then, it’s OUR car and we don’t have to keep paying. We are old and I don’t want to go to my grave still owing money on a car. Bad enough to have the endless mortgage, but a car too?
And finally, we need to fix the problem, not put a bandaid on it. Why can’t we just switch cars to running on alcohol? Internal combustions engines can already run on alcohol and you can make alcohol from anything, including garbage. Solve two problems at once: garbage and fuel. Voila!
BUT the car companies don’t want a solution that isn’t going to earn them more money. We are never going to solve our climate problems because we aren’t trying to solve them. We’re just looking for new ways to pay less at the pump. That isn’t a solution. I’m not even sure it’s a bandaid.
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You’re right.
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I am not alone in thinking this way. The only reason our cars ONLY run on gasoline is because that’s all the car manufacturers will allow. They are a very powerful lobby. Like big pharma and big oil and big gas. They are all big and we are little and they don’t care about us.
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