Electric driving

Our recent trip to southern Utah confirmed that driving long-distance with an electric car isn’t as difficult or bad as we might have feared. It’s true that in the second year we’ve owned such a vehicle it’s only the only such trip we’ve taken, and the less one does something different, the less they’ll learn about it and get familiarized and tranquilized with the process. 

It’s also true that winter isn’t the best season to hit the road with an EV. It’s cold and the battery doesn’t keep the charge as well, and the snow tires are way more stickier on the road than regular, summer tires, not to mention the need to heat the cabin and add two adult passengers and going from a very low altitude, up to 7,000 feet! 

We stayed 5 days at our desert destination and recharged the car with the 110 V outlet in the garage, a forever lasting process but that gave us enough “juice” to roam around town and go visit nearby Zion National Park.

On the freeway, there are enough Tesla superchargers to take the worry out of the driving and the car computer is always there to tell the driver to stop at such and such charger location to recharge the battery, so it’s fair to say that the process is truly worry-free and works perfectly well. 

The short time taken to recharge is masked by all elements of a normal “pit stop”: toilets, cup of coffee or snack and a brisk wall to get blood circulating again. In fact, all the apprehension is woefully unwarranted and a product of our brains that don’t want to change, but I’ll add an even more reassuring element in tomorrow’s blog!