Why You Can Absolutely Live With An EV!

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To them, it was as if I successfully embarked on this dangerous Herculean journey and lived to tell the tale.

Last week, I drove my Tesla Model 3 Mid-Range from Los Angeles, California to Phoenix, Arizona in order to attend my sister’s wedding. As is customary in any wedding event, when you start small talk with family and friends, the conversation always trends to how you got there and how long you were staying. Whenever I would mention that I drove an electric car from California into Arizona, the other person’s eyes would widen with curiosity and the response would always be “You drove your Tesla? How did you make it here? You must have made so many stops!”

To them, it was as if I successfully embarked on this dangerous Herculean journey and lived to tell the tale. After the first couple explanations about how it was basically the same journey as an ICE car, I quickly decided that I would need to make a video to address this subject when I got home. The majority of people who have range anxiety or reservations about the viability of EVs as cars are honestly the people who don’t have EVs and are projecting their unknown fears. When I make it sound like it’s no big deal, they think I must be understating the challenges. So who has more viable knowledge on the subject? A guy who currently only drives and owns EVs, or the non-EV driver who has heard it’s impossible to drive a battery powered car outside of town from the internet? 

So here are some myths and “facts” that non-EV drivers tell me all the time about why I apparently aren’t able to do the things I’m actually doing with my EVs.

Double Trouble

One of the most commonly asked things about my electric cars is why I would willingly choose to double the time it would take to make the trip with a Tesla when a gas fueled car can get me there much faster. Part of this stems from a preconceived idea many non-EV drivers have that charging stations are located in either a dark alley somewhere or a ditch way off of the freeway that you would have to navigate a maze to get to. Those chargers will take hours to fill up and you’ll be stranded if they don’t work.   

Yes, there are lots of things that need to improve with EV charging in North America, but it has grown at such a rapid pace that people don’t seem to realize just how viable the network is now. However, I personally do feel overwhelmingly more comfortable taking a Tesla over my Polestar 2 on a road trip. The reality is that at least with Tesla and the Supercharging network, you’ll actually end up in the same place as an ICE counterpart in roughly the same window of time. In our 375 mile trip, Google estimated that it would take roughly 6+ hours (no stops) to get there in a regular car. I don’t recommend not stopping to refuel gasoline in an ICE car while driving in the desert even if you car can theoretically make the journey in one shot. Our EV trip calculator had us at about 7+ hours including stop times. Lida and I caravanned with my parents who made the trip with their dogs in a 2021 Mercedes GLS SUV. 

Google Map

Estimated trip time without any stops

Supercharger Map

Estimated trip time including charging time

At this point in my Model 3’s life, the originally rated 264 mile battery has degraded to about 228 miles on a 100% charge. That roughly equals 20 miles for every 10% of the battery. What I noticed for this specific trip was that my trip computer segmented the Supercharging layout for about 2+ hours of driving. That makes perfect sense for this particular map from LA to Phoenix as the desert has quite a few dead spots with nothing in sight for both EV and ICE drivers. On the way there, our first stop was at Cabazon where we stopped to charge (albeit quite early) with about 50% of the battery drained. In hindsight, I would have skipped Cabazon and went a few stops down the line before stopping. However, after about an hour and a half of driving in traffic, the dogs and my parents could use a breather and the Cabazon Outlet was a good place for them to get that. 

In about 15 minutes, the car was more than ready to go, but it took longer for us to trek back from the restrooms in the linear layout of the outlets while also waiting for the dogs to do their business than it did to get the car to a charge that would make it to the next stop.

37 Superchargers at Quartzside

Back on the endless desert road for another 2+ hours, Lida and I actually had to stop one Supercharger earlier than we had hoped. Ironically, it was because our bladders were full and not that our full battery had drained to a critical point. We plugged and ran to the toilet and hit the road in 5 minutes with an extra 30 miles added on. I had called my parents and told them to keep going to the original stop we had planned to meet at before Lida and I made our side trip. By the time we got to the Quartzsite Supercharger, 30 minutes later, the Mercedes had just begun refueling at a gas station. We had lunch at Carl’s Jr. while the dogs had another potty break and within 30 minutes we had a near full charge for the last leg of the trip into Phoenix.  

Stopping every 2 and a half hours to stretch and to urinate was something we all needed to do. Sure, the GLS (and the Tesla for that matter) could have continued on a bit more, but it’s just rough to sit and stare out the window at attention for hours on end without stretching. Try sitting in a chair and watching Sypnotix videos (lucky you!) for 2 and a half hours straight with one hand extended forward in the air, never once getting up or using the restroom during that time. That’s basically a simulation of what a road trip is like. It’s definitely not healthy for the human body.

Stumbled into a fancy outdoor mall while Supercharging

Inconvenient Charging Locations

Lida and I actually got to the Airbnb before my parents did because they ended up trying to fill up on the outskirts of Phoenix as it was cheaper than in the inner city. My Dad was constantly worried about the Tesla running out of electricity and having to go out of the way to find a charger, but driving an ICE car (especially right now) has made those same concerned drivers flocking to inconvenient locations out of the their path just to save a few dollars at a cheaper station. Whenever you’re on a trip in the desert, it doesn’t matter what kind of fuel your car uses, it still requires gauging your meter to make sure you refill before you run into a dead zone. We’ve all seen cars that run out of gas with no gas station in sight. It’s all about responsibly planning your trip. Just because a car runs on gas, doesn’t mean you can run it down to near empty and expect a gas station to magically appear.

I can’t speak on behalf of all the EV charging locations in the world, but at least with the dozens and dozens of various Superchargers my Model 3 has come across, almost all of them have been located in safe and populated areas. My Father-In-Law constantly has a fear of us using the Superchargers (especially at night). With the news reports that he sees about Teslas being vandalized or drivers being robbed at gunpoint, it’s easy to forget that statistically speaking, many more drivers get robbed at gas stations than at EV chargers (since there are way more gas stations). 

During the wedding week, we were down to about 20% of battery as the night was winding down on a busy prep day and we really needed to hit a Supercharger after dinner to be ready for the actual wedding day. Instead of heading to the location we had been using near the Airbnb, we had to hit up the closest one to the restaurant. As we parked into the lot, we noticed bright lights and beautifully designed stores across the street. It turns out we landed in a place called the Scottsdale Quarters which neither Lida nor I have visited before in all the times we’ve spent visiting my sister there over the years. That’s one aspect of Supercharging that I’ve missed. Pre-Covid, driving a Tesla to new areas and using the Superchargers would often lead us to places that we would have never explored because they just weren’t in our game plan. There’s a fine line between out of the way and enjoyable discovery. Tesla, specifically, has done a terrific job strategically placing the chargers in convenient and desirable areas.

Range Anxiety

Range anxiety is a real mental issue. However, it just isn’t a big one for most EV drivers. As with the double trouble situation, it seems range anxiety really just occupies the thinking space of people who don’t even have electric vehicles.

The way I try to explain it to the dozens of people who ask me monthly about how I cope with driving an EV is to tell them to look at it as if this were 2012. Smartphones were becoming a thing, yet many of the older generation of people were extremely reluctant to part with their flip phones and Blackberrys. It took me half of a year to convince my parents to finally upgrade their ancient tech to a Galaxy S and Note. Many of the reservations they had sound eerily similar to why my Dad currently doesn’t want to buy an EV (even though he talks about doing it every now and then).  

Concerns About Switching to Smartphones

“Charging is so inconvenient. Why do I need to charge everyday when my phone right now can last a week?”

Yes, we charge our phones everyday now, but it has become a normal part of life that people don’t complain about anymore because the benefits of a smartphone significantly outweigh the inconvenience of not having all-week battery life. This is exactly how many people feel about charging an EV in comparison with getting gas with their ICE cars. In everyday commutes, many of us don’t even consider how much charge we have left when driving because when we get home, the car will be ready to go the next morning anyway. There isn’t a need to go out of our way to fill up our car. The car’s just ready to go. It’s a different lifestyle and mindset that ICE drivers have a hard time processing without actually experiencing it. My Dad definitely doesn’t mention how inconvenient it is charging his phone every night anymore.

“Why do I need all this stuff on my phone? I can check my emails and go on the internet on my computer when I get home.”

Yes, we don’t technically need all the bells and whistles we get on a Tesla, but when is having flexibility a bad thing? Email everywhere and anywhere has revolutionized how the world works. The same can be applied to Teslas. No one technically needs Dog Mode or Sentry Mode, but if you’ve used it in your daily routine, you’ll never be able to go back to a car that doesn’t have it without feeling like you’ve reverted back to the stone age. Technology is created to add convenience into our lives. It shouldn’t be looked at as a negative thing.

And my favorite one is:

“I don’t like not having physical buttons. It’s so inconvenient having to press everything on just a screen!”

So many people had to adjust to what we now call swiping instead of having a physical numpad and arrow keys to work with on a phone. Apparently EVs are notoriously linked to big touchscreens and less physical buttons, so that’s another reason why some buyers can’t ever consider driving one. Even a lot of car reviewers constantly view this as a negative aspect of EVs. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I can readjust back to using a physical numpad or a non-smartphone as my daily driver ever again. Humans adjust and things we thought were tedious before end up surprising us with methods of madness we didn’t know we needed prior. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I find having all the controls on one big screen, perfectly acceptable to the driving experience. 

3 years with the Model 3 and now an EV only household

You WILL thrive

We aren’t just surviving despite driving an EV, we’re actually thriving.

The point is, a lot of fears and resistance to change is based on the notion that new is bad. I saw the same types of concerns when the world switched from dumb phones to smartphones. For those of us who have already made the switch in the electric vehicle realm, many of those fears have already been left behind.

We aren’t just surviving despite driving an EV, we’re actually thriving.

Yes, there will be times as an EV driver where the fear of not making it to a charging station will cross your mind, but that should also be the case for an ICE driver with gasoline. It’s called being responsible and not letting your car die. You’re anticipating and preparing to safely get to where you need to go. Why is this a bad thing?

In my college days, I saw so many of my friends neglect warning signs of the dreaded empty fuel gauge and wait until the absolute last minute to find a gas station to fill up on trips. Some of them didn’t make it. Walking to the nearest gas station is such a walk of shame. Yes, the infrastructure isn’t as developed as gas stations. How could it possibly be when gas stations have a 100+ year head start? At least with Tesla, I can earnestly say that for most routes to populated metropolitan areas, it’s already a viable infrastructure. If you’re waiting for it to be as mapped out as gas stations, then you’ll need to wait another 109 years. The previous generations didn’t wait for our fossil fuel infrastructure to get to where it is today before joining in. They grew with it. Getting to a destination, fueling up a car, whether it be with electricity or gasoline, requires sensible management and that’s on the driver, not the type of car.

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