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RANGE ANXIETY
My friend’s life with an electric car
I got a phone call from a friend whose electric car had run out of juice a mere ¼ mile from his home. As I drove up behind him I could sense his irritation with a car that couldn’t just be ‘filled up’ when it ‘ran out of gas.’
Shortly after I arrived on the scene a wrecker drove up, parked in front of him, and the mechanic dragged a long power cord out to my friend’s car. The man had a huge generator on the truck that produced the necessary electricity for my friend’s car. After about 20 minutes of charge the mechanic unplugged the car, took his $75 fee [well deserved. He was there when needed] and informed my friend that he had about enough juice in his batteries to get home and plug in his car.
I followed my friend home where he parked and plugged in his car. He looked at me and said, “The thingy on the dash said I was good for another 5 or 6 miles. I believed it. Here I am.” We both learned a lesson from this experience. That is that if you have an electric car you should be plugging it in at every opportunity, not just when it’s almost out of power.
Today’s electric car batteries are Lithium cells. A Lithium cell does not develop a ‘memory’ so you can just keep on topping it off without losing long range performance. These cars are also equipped with charge limiters making it impossible to overcharge or damage your battery.
I own an ‘energi’ designed car. My car sports a 2.2L twin turbo engine alongside the car’s huge electric motor. I get about 20 miles to a charge, but feel comfortable having a gasoline engine for backup.
Is my car a hybrid? No, not really. In my car I can select either gasoline engine, electric motor, or a highly efficient hybrid mode. These choices have saved me a bundle. I recently gassed up my car’s 15 Gallon tank with premium unleaded gasoline [my car requires premium because the gas can sit in the tank for a long, long time.] and I topped it of with only 1.7 gallons of Premium at $4 a gallon.
This was the first gas I had put in the car in 4 and a half months! Okay, I drive almost exclusively in the ‘electric’ mode and save a grundle as electricity in my part of the company, being hydro, is dirt cheap. Every once in a while I’ll run the gas engine, and if I forget to the car will run the engine for me to ‘keep things wet’ inside.
Range anxiety: Do I have range anxiety? No, I don’t. On occasion I will run my battery dead and the car have seamlessly switched to hybrid mode. I am comfortable driving my car across the country because of the gasoline engine. I am equally comfortable driving my car around town and on errands because of the electric motor.
In short: My friend has definite ‘Range Anxiety’ as do most electric car owners. For those who own an electric car, chances are it’s a ‘2nd car’ and not your primary means of transportation. Yes, my buddy’s car will go nearly 120 miles on a charge, [on a good day] but I don’t recommend any cross-country trips in it. This is especially true in winter when car batteries are sluggish at best.
I’m Max, and that’s the way I see it!
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