We bought a second EV last week. This one is a PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid EV) — a 2018 Chevy Volt. Unlike our little run-about, this car will go the distance, thanks to its drive-train-connected ICE (Internal Combustion Engine), and when running in that mode, it still uses the EV battery for efficiency. On its first week with us, I’ve already driven it almost 700 miles, with an average fuel efficiency of around 45 MPG. In town, it does 75 MPG — or no gallons at all, if the trip is short enough to be battery-only (a range of about 55 miles.)
This car is to be a work vehicle — a tax-write off for the business (assuming we can figure out how to file that properly.) We bought it on a Saturday, and on Monday, it went on its first road trip. The day started for me in the city, so I left home fully charged and easily made it there on battery. The meeting location had a row of chargers, so I plugged in and went inside. When the meeting was done, the car was fully charged again, and ready to head to Harrisburg, PA.
I used the battery in town, or on smaller highways, and kept it in “Hold” for the Turnpikes — instructing the car to preserve the battery and use the ICE. That left enough electric juice in reserve to whir quietly to the event hotel about 6 hours later. Despite being 5 years old, and already having 75k miles on it, the Volt performed like a champ. And while its no Tesla, its reasonably well-equipped with modern features. It really felt like I was driving in the future.
Until I got there — then reality set in. The hotel had a single two-port charger for 665 rooms… and only one of the ports worked. Someone had already been parked there for 16 hours, and was nowhere to be found. Another guy with a Tesla was waiting for the spot, and had secured a room where he could see it from his window. He offered to text me when/if he successfully charged, so I could slide in next. I called the service provider, but they said the hotel had opted to take the charger “off network” and service it themselves. The hotel, of course, disclaimed all responsibility, effectively shrugging their shoulders at the growing line of EV-owners with empty batteries. Admittedly, the line only grew to about 6 cars during my stay — but most of them did not have back-up gasoline engines, so they really needed the charge.
A little text-based community of EV-owners was hurriedly created to share the single charger, and by the end of the conference I did manage to get charged up — as did a Ford F-150 Lightning that I handed off to next. I planned my route home to re-charge the battery at a highway rest stop that offered chargers, but those chargers were broken too. A call to that service provider was no more helpful, so I topped up on gas instead.
The round trip totaled 646 miles. I did 140 of them on the battery, and the rest on two full tanks of gas. In dollars that was about $77 for gas, and almost nothing for the electricity. I did pass 4 Tesla Super Charging Stations, so if I’d sprung for a $45,000 EV, I would have been fine running on battery for the whole trip. We paid less than that for both our EVs combined, and while we probably could have pulled off a Tesla purchase, I don’t think that sticker price would be particularly good stewardship at this point in life.
The conference I attended this week had an agenda heavily skewed towards green technology, and the the clean energy revolution. Our hosts had pledged $37 million to converting their headquarters to diverse and cleaner energy sources. The NPR radio talk show I listened to enroute spoke forebodingly about the looming climate crisis. “We have to do something to prevent our planet from melting!” says everyone.
Unfortunately, the “something” we’re willing to do to save the planet doesn’t include providing the average driver any kind of functioning and affordable alternative to exploding fossil fuels down the highway. Maybe we’ll get to a greener future before we flood/cook/melt ourselves out of safe places to live — but it sure seems like we’ve got a long way left to go…
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