After a year with an electric car...
Okay! it has not been a year yet but still i have picked up some valuable information about switching to an electric car.
First of all, not all cars ar for everyone, with that said, I must say that I will never buy a petrol car again. Owning an electric car has been awesome for me. I have bought a used Nisan Leaf 2014 with the smaller battery pack, only 23kwh! That battery gives me 15 miles in summer, and maybe 10 in winter. I live 2 miles outside town so my daily routine, going to work, going home, going shopping or training, getting the kids to their trainings has never been a problem with that range! I would say the electric car solves 99% of all my travels as they used to be with my old petrol car. BUT, I actually use it more than I did with the old one and I will tell you why. With a cost of 0 to 1 Euro to go to town(compared with 4-6 with my old one), there is no longer any problem in going to grocery-stores that are further away, the cost are the same, or going to town.. It feels like everything within 5 miles radius has moved to my front porch!
I have tried driving it in 17 minus, no problem(shorter range of course), in snowstorm, no problem, in rain and wind, no problems.
There are things i cant do with my electric car thou, I cant go for really long trips, i cant pull a trailer behind it. So how do I solve that? I use my wives 4wd disel car ;) Okay, thats kind of cheating, but I could actually have rented a car for those trips too without problem. I roughly calculated that I have saved 1200 Euro in gasoline only by switching car, that gives me leverage to rent any type of car I could need for the moment. a 4wd, a bus, a truck, a whatever! that gives me a new kind of freedom.
And how about you?
Have you considered buying an electric car? why would you do something like that? why not?
Let me hear your pros and cons from your perspective. And if you have any questions I might be able to answer them
hi Zakarias we have en vw up and just love it. Have had it for 3 years. Yes it has short reach but as a second car it is great.
Waiting for the Tesla 3 to reach the market:-)
ahh. Lovely. Would be nice to have a Tesla.. One day... :)
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Hi Zakarias, in my country the transition from combustion is at a very low rate, which i think is because of a wait and see approach and lack of charging stations I guess, but questions are how long can you travel on full charge, and what else do you switch on while driving, do you travel alone everyday and what is your weight and when this electric car is parked what is on standby power alarm etc.
Well, as I said, every car is not for everyone. My daily rutine is between 4 and 8 miles. the car runns 15 at best. So, for me the everyday chalange is not a problem. If i want to go for a longer ride, I have to plan carefully, or rent another car! its as easy as that really:)
Having an electric car changes somethings in your driving patterns, but most of the changes are good ones.
I would guess that it will run out of power on standby sooner or later, but I have never left it for more than 3 days and it has never been a problem for me. If you are calculating with a 50% loss in extreme cold wether you are still on the safeside of making it home.
From the title I thought it was going to be another article someone copied from someone off the internet somewhere, but after reading I was surprised that you have given your own account thank you for that! Such a good thing to read. I wish for the day when I can drive an electric car around, I drive small distances like you so an electric car would make so much sense.
Nice to hear that Gyro. My thought was to deliver a "real story", with my own thoughts about owning an electric car. Before I bought my electic I had so many doubts in my mind, and my old petrol friends said no and told me all bout how bad it would be...
But I read all I could, tested the different cars on the market and selected the one that did fit me the most.
This winter, I wrote an angry note on FB about having a carbreakdown, a breakpad that had frozen and i had to have the engine running, a pipe connected to the exhaust pipe and a plastic sheet covering the howl car! It was -19 outside and people was ranting like hell about how you could not have an electric car, and "i told you so" and stuff like that..
The problem is, it was my Disel car that had frozen ;) my electric car does not have an exhaust pipe naturally ;)
Really thank you!, I like your attitude, when people start to wake up and see what a benefit to the world electric cars are it will be such a better place. More and more manufacturers are realising we need electric cars and moving over so its getting better with more development going into them.
Good luck with it, wish you all the best.