Hertz Donut

My wife drives our MY13 Leaf all round town, all day, and covers about 60-70 miles a day. At night we plug it in and it's ready to go when we get up the following morning, just like a mobile phone; If she has plans to travel further she just tops it up a bit to allow for it.

At first we suffered range anxiety, but then we discovered something interesting. Since she knew there was a limited distance-to-empty and a long "refueling" period she'd plan out her trips to avoid traveling back and forth over the same area for no reason. This meant she actually ended up with more time in the day, so not only are we saving some $20 a day in fuel, she's also got back over an hour a day in travel time. Coupled with the near-silence (you can even hear bees buzzing as you drive past them) it's a very enjoyable commute. You can even have a little fun with it since the COG is so low and it sits quite flat around corners.

Sure it's not a rocket ship over 30mph or so, but for around-town commuting there's very little reason (other than the purchase cost) to not run an EV.

TommyDeVito

It's actually more convenient to me than gasoline fill ups. Before I go to bed, or when I pull in my garage, takes about 3-4 seconds to plug in and charge with L2 in my garage. Getting gas is more of a nuisance, and takes longer. I have to stand there a few minutes until my gas car is full, and use a dirty handle. EV, pull in garage, 3 seconds to plug it in. Then I don't F with it again until I leave the next morning.

Same experience. Range anxiety lasted about a month back in 2014, and that's because I didn't have a $500 L2 charger installed. Took 4 weeks for me to get one installed, and that was that. I see no sense in not driving an EV for boring mundane driving such as the work commute, getting groceries, driving to the gym, shopping, etc. When I want to haul the mail, and corner in my local twisties I take the gas car. For dumb driving in traffic with idiots on their smartphones it's irrelevant. And yes the leaf corners relatively flat and 100% torque from 0 Mph is nice as a city car or commuter. I drive mine like a bat out of hell and it's still going with zero maintenance costs outside an in cabin air filter.

sam_spider

Not everyone has a boring commute, nor works in a city. I enjoy my commute on the twisty backroads. Those who work in a city, and pretty much never leave, sure an EV is perfect, but that isn't everyone.

Hertz Donut

That's exactly my feeling too, but a large number of city commuters switching to EVs would have a spin-off effect on ICE drivers, in the form of a lower demand for oil, putting downward pressure on prices. Even if the oil cartels respond by restricting supply to keep prices up it's still a benefit, because less oil being used = more oil reserves to supply ICEVs for longer.

I'd never argue for an immediate 100% EV fleet, but on a societal level there are great benefits all round.

TommyDeVito

I never said that everyone is the same either. I live in a suburb of a major city. So many drives are stupid. Drive to work, gym, groceries, get your haircut, stuff like that you aren't hitting sweepers and hanging the rear end out. I have twisties 20 miles or half an hour away that I ride/drive regularly. But that's on the weekend only so I have a weekend car and motorcycles for that purpose. So a DD for me is something that is efficient, and that I don't mind parking in places (I'd never park my weekend car in the places I do my DD). It's also a zero fuel cost car for me as I have a solar array on my house. I'm not a stand in front of the bulldozer trying to take down trees person. It's strictly financial. Instead of moving out to the sticks where I'd like to live, I live in a burb close to my employment. I loathe commuting. Bumper to bumper traffic stop and go, I see no point of driving some awesome car in that crap. AT work there are Vettes, Camaro 1LE's, a whole host of nice cars and I just laugh. Myself I wouldn't rack the miles up on such cars sitting in traffic. Waste of time/money to me. I'd be in something extremely fuel efficient. Tool to match the job.

I'd never recommend an EV as an only car. They are good at certain tasks, like commuting and mundane driving tasks. If I had a twisty route commute like you say you do, and I didn't have to worry about a bunch of traffic or smartphone surfing drivers, I'd be on one of my bikes geared up, everyday to work. But I'm not, and neither are millions of people. My DD is actually fun to drive, corners well for what it is, and doesn't cost me anything to fuel. And work just added seven L2 chargers so 50% of the time I charge it there out of convenience because it's parked there 8 hours a day. And like Hertz said, EV drivers are taking demand off from oil, so that benefits all us gearheads. Long term it will keep fuel costs down. I'm just tired of reading the pissing on EV's by gearheads because I am one of them and I'm hear to tell you they have a whole lot of benefits. I just wouldn't spend 60k on one. I have 5 vehicles in my garage and the EV is the donkey of the fleet. Commuting, boring driving that wouldn't even be fun in a McLaren or a Ducati, I see no point in that. I chose the right tool in the tool box for the job at hand. YMMV.

JonBoy

A friend of mine took me out for a spin in his Model 3 yesterday. He has the "Standard" version, so not the most powerful or quickest but still plenty quick. Acceleration was excellent. It FEELS quick and it's drama-free - no wheelspin, nothing - just pure motion. It felt about as quick as my Z4 M Coupe, in a straight line, with more low-end acceleration but not as much on the top end. The torque is addictive.

Interior was clean and simple. I didn't like it, personally - very bland and boring and that one big screen just looked weird. Integrating it would cost them a bunch more money, though, so just "sticking it on the dash" kind of makes sense. That said, fit and finish were good - I didn't see any glaring issues. He has the white interior, which is quite sharp, but he also doesn't have any kids so keeping it clean is less difficult.

I mentioned that my big issue with buying an EV is that we do a lot of road trips with the family, in both our vehicles. As a test, we mapped a trip back to where I used to live, which would normally be 10.5 hours of driving. For him to make it "safely", he had to stay below the posted limit for the first portion of the trip and make three 1 hr 15 min stops to recharge along the way (3 hrs 45 mins total charging time). That's a 36% increase in driving time! That's a long trip and it included a lot of high-speed mountain driving in colder weather, which limits the ability for recharge and depletes the batteries fairly quickly (cruise control = no real chance to regen), so it's "worse" than most people would experience on flatter, warmer drives. We live in Canada, though, so those things aren't really guaranteed for at least four months out of the year....

In the long-range model, he could make it with just two stops and have a bit more ability to drive at or over the speed limit. Still, that'd be 2.5 hours of charging time on an already long day of driving. I can't say I'd want to do it. He said, "Just get a rental car for long trips", which is fine except a car of similar amenities and power is about $75-$80 a day

If you stay inside of 500 miles, you can make it there with just one stop to charge, which could easily coincide with a break for a meal, etc, and be a lot less intrusive. We typically stop for about 30 minutes for meals and fuel so as long as we can charge up where we eat, it'd be only 30 minutes longer via an EV.

My drive to work is 5 miles each way so an EV would be an awesome commuter vehicle (no worries about warming up the ICE, wear and tear with cold starts/stops, etc) but unfortunately, as we use both our vehicles for long trips (regularly), it just doesn't make sense yet.

TommyDeVito