Ever since I wrote a blog post last year about our experience owning an electric vehicle as our only vehicle, a lot of people have asked me questions about buying an electric car. This short post is an attempt to distill the most useful messages from my previous post into a single FAQ page.
Yes! (Probably.)
The most important factor in deciding whether an electric car is right for you is, ironically, your parking situation. You should have no problems getting an electric car if any of the following applies to you:
The reason parking is so important is because you want to work charging into your regular routine. If you live in a city where the only parking is street parking both at home and at work, you may find the process of charging cumbersome.
If you have a way to easily charge your car as part of your regular daily or weekly routine, then you should have no trouble making an electric vehicle a part of your life.
Unlike gas stations, charging stations are not very well advertised. Most non-EV owners vastly underestimate how much charging infrastructure already exists. For example, Electrify America has charging stations no more than 70 miles apart on almost every interstate highway. If you are considering buying an EV but have concerns about charging on trips, try downloading the ChargePoint app and looking for stations along the route you are concerned about. You will probably discover that there were a lot of charging stations along your route that you never saw signage for and thus never knew about. I have done this exercise with several friends and often found tens of charging stations along routes they thought had no chargers at all.
Yes. The combustion that is done in a power plant is significantly more efficient than the combustion done inside your car because the lost heat from combustion can be recaptured more effectively in power plants. Think of it in terms of two options. Option 1 is to take a gallon of gas and convert it into kinetic energy with 20% efficiency inside your car’s combustion engine. Option 2 is to take a gallon of gas and convert it to stored electrical energy with 40% efficiency inside a power plant then turn that stored electrical energy into kinetic energy with 90% efficiency inside your car’s electric engine. Even though option 2 involves an extra step, it is still more efficient than option 1.
Yes. There have been a lot of high-profile stories of grid failures in the past few years. These were almost all due to short-term spikes in demand caused by extreme heat or cold. Our grid is bad at handling rare, sharp spikes. Electric vehicles exert a slow and consistent demand on the grid.
There are three types of charging, conveniently named level 1 (“trickle”), level 2, and level 3 (“fast”). The capacity of your battery is measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh). As of 2022, most new cars have batteries with a capacity between 62 kWh and 82 kWh and drive between 3 and 4 miles per kWh of charge.
Level 1 and 2 charging is completely universal: all cars use the same standard. For level 3 charging, every new EV except for Teslas uses the same standard, called CCS.
Finding the right EV for you is a personal decision that depends on your lifestyle. My only two general recommendations are to get a car with a battery capacity of at least 60 kWh and that uses the CCS standard for L3 charging (as opposed to the older CHAdeMO standard). This is particularly important if you are buying a used car. As of 2022, almost all new EVs fit these criteria. If you want specific make/model recommendations, you can reach out to me and I will give you my latest opinions.
To charge your car at home, you have a few options:
The benefits of charging stations are their convenience (no need to get the cord out of your car every time you charge) and their smart charging features (they can be programmed to charge when grid prices are lower). Strictly speaking, you do not need one at home to Level 2 charge your car. As of 2022, many states, power companies, and even car manufacturers are giving amazing discounts on charging stations which make them nearly free. We are happy with ours and feel the price was worth the added convenience.
A 240V wall outlet is the same kind of outlet most dryers use. You can call an electrician and have them do the full installation of the charging station for you or you can save money by having them install just the outlet and then plug the charging station into it yourself.
You can see my previous post for more detailed recommendations, but the short version is this: