It’s not really a secret that I would prefer to protect our natural environment rather than destroy it. The world that surrounds us is full of wonder and beauty and mankind will always be more successful if we try to work with Mother Nature as opposed to working against it. So, it’s probably quite predictable that I am a fan of electrification instead of fossil fuels.
At my previous property I’ve had solar panels for half a decade, and I hope to be able to incorporate them in my new house someday (want to upgrade to a battery system as well which is another expense). I’d like to get rid of most of the natural gas usage in our house including moving to an induction range instead of a gas one. And finally, I’ve been wanting to switch over to an electric car for quite a while. This past week we finally made that shift, at least for one of our vehicles.
Before I tell the tale of what/how/why we got the car we did, I’ll briefly address the elephant in the room around battery technology and its reliance on rare minerals. I fully understand the problematic aspect of this side of electrification, and I’m not a fan of it. However, the electrification industry is also making breakthroughs all the time that continue to improve battery technology in ways that make it both more efficient and powerful, but also less dependent on a diminishing resource. The core underpinnings of much of the battery research going on is grounded in removing or reducing this dependence as much as we can. This is in addition to continuing to provide opportunities for recycling existing battery tech into new cells.
Ok, now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about how we ended up trading in our Subaru Forester for something new and exciting.
We’ve been talking about an EV for a few years, but the timing has never really worked out well. The American EV market is a bit behind the rest of the world and so the vehicles that appeal to me haven’t been available here, or are way too expensive. However, it’s been a few years since we’ve started looking and that means that there is now a burgeoning used market for EVs. That means much more accessibility for folks like myself. They’re still not super cheap, but they’re within the realm of possibility.
In the past few weeks we’ve seen a massive spike in the cost of gas due to the idiocy of the current administration, and when things tipped over $4.50/gallon here in Minnesota, my wife basically said “I think we need to go shopping for an EV”. Given that she’s not a fan of the process of test driving a whole bunch of different vehicles, and looking at multitudes of options, I took the first step by checking out a couple of popular models on my own.
First up I tried the VW ID.4. I’m a fan of VW and I’ve wished we had more of their lineup here in America, but that’s a rant for a different time. The first thing I noticed when I sat in the ID.4 was that the driver’s screen was small and compact. It was actually mounted on the steering column (which ended up being a different problem, more on that later), and the main infotainment screen was off to the right and wasn’t as large as other EV’s I’ve seen. I really liked this more subtle approach to the number of screens that you need today. Overall, a pretty tasteful design, despite far too much reliance on capacitive touch buttons.
The sales person showed me how to put it in gear and away we went. I turned onto the main road and pushed down on the accelerator… and yep… if you’ve ridden in an EV you know what happened next. A squeal of delight mixed with shock escaped my throat as the car shot forward with instantaneous torque. Everything you’ve read or seen about how fast EVs respond is true. Damn that is a ton of fun!
After testing the ID.4 we switched over to an Ionic 5 from Hyundai. One of the first things I noticed was that there were way more screens in the Ionic, and the screen in front of the driver was so large that you couldn’t even see all of it through the steering wheel. It felt really busy and overwhelming and I was immediately not a fan. We took it out for a test drive and it was a decently fun car, but nothing like the ID.4. In the end I walked out of the dealer knowing that the Ionic wasn’t for us.
My wife has always been a fan of small hatchbacks. One of her favorite vehicles of all time is the Honda Fit. We owned one for a bit and she absolutely adored that car and loved everything about it. As she was doing some online research on her own she came across the Chevy Bolt, which instantly intrigued her. On Thursday I had driven into work and so we decided I would pick her up in downtown Minneapolis and we’d check out a Bolt that was for sale in Bloomington. However, when I called the dealer ahead of time it had just been sold. Luckily there was another one that had just been listed that same day up in Brooklyn Park which was on our way home so we decided to check that one out.
As soon as the salesperson pulled the car around for us to test I could tell that Lisa was in love with it. It’s a small hatchback with a cute profile and fun lines and had a certain level of similarity to the Honda Fit. We climbed inside and took off on our test drive and she had a ton of fun with it. It’s not as powerful of an engine as the ID.4, but it still has some really impressive power to it (plus the immediate responsiveness). I also took a turn driving it and found it to be perfectly fine and was very reminiscent of her old Fit in many ways. A perfectly fine EV with a 260-mile range.
This dealer also had an ID.4 in stock and so I had Lisa test that as well. This is where we encountered an interesting problem. Because the driver console is attached to the steering column it’s much closer to you than a traditional dashboard. Because we’re both getting a bit older Lisa immediately struggled with how close the screen was to her and how difficult it was to read without reading glasses. We did discover that we could push the whole steering column back a bit, but it still wasn’t really a comfortable drive for her.
That sealed the deal and we put the Bolt on hold for the night while we cleaned out our Subaru for the trade-in. We finalized the deal on Friday with only a little bit of cash out of pocket and now we’re proud owners of a vehicle that we don’t think twice about driving around town. It no longer feels like we’re being wasteful when we want to drive somewhere, and the idea of paying $0.05/kW through the overnight charging program at Xcel (our electrical utility) means we can fill the batteries of the Bolt for less than $5.
If I had one qualm about the Bolt is that it is a very slow charging vehicle at livel 3 fast chargers (maxing out around 50kW/h). That means that road trips will be a little more challenging in this EV vs. others that can take a much faster charge. For now though we still have our ICE minivan and will probably rely on that for the longer trips. I don’t think the charging infrastructure is the main issue anymore, as I’m seeing chargers everywhere, and tons of videos from folks who road trip EVs all the time. It’s simply that it takes so long to charge the Bolt that might keep it more local in town.
The timing of this worked out great because we just had a bunch of electrical work done at our house and we now have a level 2 charger sitting on our wall waiting for Xcel to install the new meter (hopefully any day now). If at some point we also get solar panels and a battery system that could reduce our charging cost to zero for most of the warmer months of the year. That’s a future goal though, and for now we’re just happy to have joined the EV world. Hopefully soon we’ll have a good option to replace our other vehicle and then we can kiss gas pumps goodbye forever.
