What it’s like to drive an electric vehicle
Driving an electric car isn’t all savings and clean air. Finding the right structure for your drive is key, and so is knowing your network of charging stations. Marketplace Weekend is looking into the details of what it’s like to own an electric vehicle — and how the infrastructure for chargers could improve as the market for EVs grows.
Angelo Logan drives his electric car to work. Below he shares his electric car lifestyle:
On January 1, 2016, I bought a Volkswagen Golf 100 percent battery electric vehicle. When I first bought the electric vehicle I thought that it was going to be seamless and no problem at all. But I learned very quickly that you have to be very conscientious about where you’re going and how far you’re going and where there are charging stations whether or not you’re going to have that distance that you need to go in your battery.
A lot of people call this range anxiety. And I’ve got to tell you, that anxiety is real. The first month or so that I drove it I actually got stranded because I depleted my battery and had nowhere to charge and I had to call the tow truck. I drive 60 miles to and from work and my range is 80. So that means I have 20 miles to really play with. I think about what meetings I might go to offsite, if I’m going to go somewhere after work, if I’m going to go to dinner or go to lunch…whether or not there’s going to be charging stations available at work, or whether it’s going to be charging stations at all at places that I might recreate afterwards for dinner or for drinks.
But as I unplug the vehicle and I drive off to work I’m thinking about whether I can use or should use my air conditioning because that depletes the charge as well. With all the anxiety, I come home and I plug in my vehicle, I have to make sure that light is blinking to make sure it’s charging overnight. I know that I’m going to be able to sleep well that evening because I’m doing my part to reduce air pollution by driving.
To listen to our full coverage of the electric vehicle market, including interviews with Michigan Radio auto industry reporter Tracy Samilton and UCLA professor Ethan Elkind, tune in using the player above.
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