You're waiting for this?

Last week I was at the local Safeway which has an electric vehicle charging station in its parking lot. On a mid-week morning there was a line of cars waiting to use the four already occupied charging ports. Are these people really sitting there for god knows how long, waiting to “fuel up”? Charging an electric vehicle is far slower than filling up a combustion vehicle with gas. The advertised maximum charging rate only occurs in spurts, and in ideal conditions.

My current stance on electric vehicles is: if you cannot charge at home, then you’re better off buying gasoline-powered. The public charging infrastructure (outside of Tesla’s own superchargers) is still not ready for primetime. I follow quite a bit of car people on twitter, and the consensus I’ve gather is that the public charging network is slow, inconsistent, and not enough. The convenience of being in and out of a gas station in under 10 minutes is still a massive advantage.

I’m genuinely surprised that people are even willing to wait that long for a charging spot. The amount of impatience I’ve witness on the driving road these days is high. You have drivers honking at cars with the audacity to wait for pedestrians to cross before making a turn. What do they want? To run them over? Worst is when I see such impatience on weekend mornings. You’re aggravated on a Sunday morning? I have to assume you’re simply in a hurry to go die.

Personally I do not have the facilities to charge a car in my home. Therefore an electric vehicle does not factor in my future anytime soon. My time is worth way more than spending an hour just to charge up a car.

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Waiting for Godot.

An EV should be your next car

To get around the relatively vast San Francisco State campus, we have these small electric trucks to drive around. They are similar in size to the kei cars you see in Japan: small engine, narrow size, supremely maneuverable. Especially during these COVID times, when the campus is largely empty of people, it’s very fun to zip around these things. A few years ago we got fully electric versions to replace the aging gasoline fleet. It’s with these tiny trucks where I had my first prolonged experience with EVs.

Conclusion: I think anybody with the capability to plug-in at home should buy an EV, and never look at gasoline vehicles ever again.

Our trucks at work are always charging and ready to go. The electric motor have more than enough torque to push a full load of cargo up an incline. Best of all, there’s no emissions to speak of, so when there are people mingling about on campus, we’re not choking up the place with smog. Range is not a problem: there’s enough on a charge to drive around campus multiple times over. Soon as we return to base, it goes straight to the plug.

If you have the capability to charge at home, there’s really no downside to an EV. Should on the few occasions you need to go somewhere far, you can always rent a regular gasoline-powered car. It’s the trap of thinking you need to have one singular car for all scenarios that’s giving people pause for EVs in regards to range. I get it: the current charging infrastructure is not broad enough and too cumbersome (who wants to wait over half an hour to “fuel” up?)

Which is why I caveat that only those with charging capabilities at home should buy an EV.

Just as you shouldn’t buy a pickup truck for the few times out of the year you think you’ll hit the hardware store, or a Jeep Wrangler for the few times you’ll go off-roading, don’t let the notion of a long road-trip deter you from buying a fully electric vehicle as your next car. EVs are the future, and I see everyday how awesome that future is at work.

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Half done.

Where's the EV infrastructure?

The past few weeks I’ve been writing about automotive industry quickly evolving to mass electrification. The annual Geneva Motor Show confirmed that is indeed where auto manufacturers are heading, and very rapidly. Fairly soon we’ll be seeing electric vehicles all over dealership lots, hoping to find a good home that will hopefully be fitted with an appropriate charger.

And there lies my only contention with electrification: the charging infrastructure, or lack thereof. Lots of automakers are talking up plans for electric vehicles on a massive scale, but none I can see are discussing the other side of the equation. Gasoline-powered cars have gas stations; where’s the convenient equivalent for electric power?

Some will point out “refueling” stations will be obsolete because owners can charge at home; but what if you don’t have a home? My apartment certainly does not have any sort of provisions for charging, and neither does my workplace. You can give me an electric vehicle for free today and I’d have no practical way of using it. Driving to a charging lot to then wait many hours to “fill up” a car seems like a tremendous waste of time.

Owning a home isn’t in my future, not with the historically astronomical homes prices in the San Francisco Bay Area. Basically, I won’t have the ability to charge an electric car at the place I’m living in, and if manufacturers want to sell me one, they – or someone – need to build out a charging network facsimile to the traditional petrol station. Ideally I should be able to visit a charging station, and fill up the batteries in less than 10 minutes.

Automakers are coming in hot on the supply side, but without a proper infrastructure, will the demand side be there? Up until now, most people who have purchased electric vehicles own a home, therefore capable of installing home chargers; that’s certainly the case with owners I know personally. If electrification of the automobile is indeed the future, then those of us not lucky/rich enough to own a home will need a different solution.

Perhaps this massive infusion of capital by automakers into electrification will be one huge waste of money. I don’t think we can yet know.

Then on some days you just want to pig out.