Will an EV Fit Our Driving Lifestyle?

We find that in discussions with acquaintances about the subject of EV ownership that the most common reservation about ownership of the current crop of EVs offering ranges of 75 to 80 miles is, "Yes, but what if I suddenly decide to . . ."  In nearly every case, these comments have been made by individuals who have absolutely rigid daily schedules with invariable driving routes, and are the least impulsive of characters.

I, on the other hand, am known to set off on a mission with little to no notice.

And yet, after seven and a half months of EV ownership, we have yet to jump in one of our gasoline-powered vehicles because a trip exceeds the range of our Focus Electric.

To be fair, we're trying harder than most to make the EV work. To that end, we're sometimes defining our itinerary by the requirements of recharging on the road. If we were driving a hydrocarbon-fueled car, some of those trips would have been different, and a few would have taken significantly less time due to fueling (charging). We're treating this EV ownership as a learning adventure, and so it's interesting and fulfilling to go through these new experiences. But we're actually doing more exploring than we would have before owning the EV; driving more often, and further from home than we typically would, just to see how bad it is.

And you know? It's not bad at all.

Sure, once our round trip exceeds 70 miles, it takes some extra thinking (which I find fun, but many wouldn't). When it's a LOT further - approaching two full battery charges, we look for excuses to spend the hours charging doing something useful or fun in proximity to the charging site. Did we do this before owning an EV? No. But the point is that rather than Cramping Our Style, our EV has encouraged us to explore its limits. We haven't called AAA to tow us to a charging site. And we've never gotten caught out so that we end up sitting in our car waiting for enough charge to get to our next waypoint.

So what's the takeaway?

When we were deciding whether an EV would fit our lifestyle, I discovered that we'd only driven our daily driver about 5,000 miles during the previous 12 months. As it stands right now, we're on track to put about 8,000 miles on the Focus Electric every 12 months. That's how enthusiastically we've been using it.

Living in Los Angeles, round-trip distances to points of interest can certainly challenge even two full charges (160 miles) of our Focus Electric. And yet we've never resorted to another form of intra-city transport since getting an EV. 

As I've written previously, the current state of public charging infrastructure is such that it's unlikely to be truly useful to most people. But I think the 80 mile typical range of a single, daily EV charge suits the majority of drivers. For anyone with a predictable itinerary under 60 miles per day (many sources claim the average daily U.S. commute is 32 miles, and I'm allowing for impromptu side trips), the cost of operation and ease of use make an EV a perfectly serviceable second car (we actually think of our EV as our primary vehicle, and our small motorhome as a secondary vehicle for even short- and medium-distance adventures).