By: Bruce Westlake and Pete Westlake (Two crusty old EV brothers)

Electric Vehicle charging is not quite the same as combustion engine fueling. Some good experiences, and some bad, but always different. We, as consumers, need to recognize the difference and change our habits/behaviors to embrace the change. We try to solve our problems using old tools. Just look at the saddle seat for a bike; it was named and designed after its predecessor, the horse saddle. New designs that highlight comfort and usability have only really happened recently. While the concept of fueling an EV is the same as fueling an internal combustion vehicle, the process and the tricks of the trade are much different.

First let’s talk about some of the pluses and minuses and get that out of the way.

The Good
There are loads of good things that show up when you transition to an electric vehicle.

• I now have a gas station wherever there is an electric plug, even if there isn’t one, I can generate electricity using renewables like solar, and still fuel my car. Try that with a gas tank.
• My EV is full each and every morning, the electricity fills up my car from dusk to dawn.
• Almost every plug-in vehicle has a home charger and the chargers in the wild are only needed for long trips. Home chargers are usually not counted when you hear about the total number of charging locations even though they supply 90% of charging. If you add in home chargers, there are way more than one charger per plug-in vehicle. There are almost zero home gas stations.
• I can completely avoid going to a gas station. Of course, “I will miss those over cooked hot dogs at the convenience store” said nobody ever.
• People tend to think of charging their plug-in in terms of filling their gas tank when the reality is you charge your plug-in for the next day or a couple of hours, not the next week.
• For most people, adding 50 miles of range, which can be added overnight through level 1 (110 V outlet) is sufficient for your daily commute.

The Bad

• There are not as many high-speed charging stations out there, especially if you cannot use Tesla superchargers. This situation is about to change as deals have been brokered between Tesla and many automotive manufacturers.
• You typically should not use the first 10% or the last 20% of battery charge unless you need it. However, for longer trips, this may be an exception.
• Charging in extreme temperatures can be a challenge if you don’t know how. Smaller battery vehicles use the same percentage of the battery to heat and cool compared to an EV with a large battery, so a car with a small battery uses a much larger percentage of range to keep the car at the right temperature.

And the Ugly

• With the exception of Tesla superchargers, the supercharging stations are not yet reliably
  available. The cool news though is that this is about to change with everyone adopting the Tesla (NACS) standard.
• Compared to Tesla superchargers that fueled only Tesla vehicles until recently, the reliability of high-speed or fast chargers can be uneven This is due, in part at least, to the need for non-Tesla chargers to be capable of serving all the other EV brands. The cool news though is that this is poised to change as automakers adopt the Tesla (NACS) charging standard, and new requirements from the federal government are being put in place to support increased reliability for publicly-funded EV charging.

Stories from the Wild

To drive home many of these points, here are a few anecdotes from the experiences of two crusty old EV brothers with a combined experience of 34 years of driving EVs.

A Trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (Bruce Crusty)

We are in our eighth year living without a gas car. Living in the Ann Arbor area gave us a lot of options when traveling and charging our EVs. As the expansion of Tesla Superchargers progressed, remote areas of the country were the last to get installations. Michigan’s upper peninsula was one of the last of the last. A trip to the UP came to mind when talking to a salesman who said he would love to drive an EV if only for the fuel savings he would get driving 40,000 miles a year, but he said he lived in the center of a ‘charger desert’ in the UP. I thought about it for a couple of minutes and realized that the center of a ‘charger desert’ is the perfect place to own an EV. Traveling in any direction got you to a supercharger in less than 200 miles even without any superchargers in the UP. Every morning your vehicle has a 300-mile charge on your home charger so you can travel anywhere. One of the first questions I get is where are the Superchargers near me? I am much more familiar with the 6 or 7 Superchargers about 200 miles from home in any direction because those are the ones I use.

Back to our trip a couple of years later when there were several options for Superchargers in the UP. Planning a trip to this near wilderness is one of the places on earth where planning is important. The Superchargers were in large cities around the coast of the Upper Peninsula, but we wanted to travel to a place called Pictured Rocks right in the middle of the state’s northern coast of Lake Superior. We planned to charge up in Mackinaw and then travel across the Mackinaw Bridge to Pictured Rocks, a trip of 120 miles – each way! A full charge on our car is 285 miles and we often lose some range driving on highways. This was too close to our comfort zone, so we planned to leave our car at a level 2 charger which could be booked to use while taking the Pictured Rocks boat tour. However, we arrived with almost 60% battery because the weather was mild as it often is up north, and we had traveled on secondary roads to Pictured Rocks staying under 65 miles/hour. Our car told us we would have 15% left if we returned the same way. With that much cushion, we decided not to charge and just push on. The car
was correct in the estimate, and we didn’t have to do anything different on our drive. We returned to the Mackinaw Supercharger where we had lunch while charging and had dinner at a different restaurant. The car was fully charged in less than 40 minutes or 10 minutes faster than we could eat.

As we have driven more EV miles, we have become much more comfortable with using all the battery e.g. driving till the range is in the single digits. Most EVs will warn the driver if the vehicle is in danger of not reaching a charger and in extreme instances inhibit the speed and acceleration if the battery is low. In my 15 years of being around EVs and EV drivers, I have yet to meet the first person who accidentally got stranded by the side of the road. It just doesn’t happen! EVs will typically travel several miles even after they are at 0% charge. No one recommends this, but it can happen in an emergency. Tesla EVs have just started using programming that shows fewer free charge ports on all Tesla driver’s navigation heading for a particular Supercharger. This redirects other cars on the road to chargers that have more open spaces and allows the Supercharges to fill up evenly giving everyone the fastest charge
available.

A Trip to the Upper Peninsula of Florida (Pete Crusty)

We decided to meet our daughter, her husband, and the grandchildren in Orange Beach, Alabama. We decided to fly to Tallahassee and avoid five of the seven to eight hours of driving and traffic. All went well until our flight was canceled and would have to wait till the following day for the next flight. Not to be deterred we said – the heck with it, let’s load up the Tesla and we will drive it. In our rush to pack, I
forgot:

• My extension cord
• My level 1 charging attachment
• My J1772 – Tesla adapter

Not to fear – there should be enough Tesla superchargers to make up the difference. By the time we got to Pensacola it was 1 am (we left late), and I wasn’t interested in doing a top-off, we just booted it to the hotel and would deal with it in the morning. The next morning, I looked for the nearest supercharger and it was a half hour back towards Tallahassee. Well, that was not happening, we had grandkids to see! I looked at what was ahead of us, and there were 3 destination chargers close by our condo. No problem, we will arrive with 5 miles to spare!

We arrived at the first charger – not working, dang it. Well, two more to go, second charger, full with no indication of how long that person was going to be there. Now I am beginning to worry, so we head to the last destination charger (remember I had no adapter so I could not use anything but Tesla destination chargers). We arrived with 0 on the dashboard (see below), plugged in, and whew, it worked. Within 5 minutes we got a message that the
power was unstable and it
downgraded the charge speed from 
25 to 1 mile an hour. We left the car
to charge for a couple of hours while
we had our daughter come to rescue
us. Once we had enough of a charge I
picked up the car and went to the
next supercharger, which was 20
minutes away. But it is times like this
that makes it hard to convince
someone that driving EV is good.

Had I had my adapter, any Level 2
charger would have worked for us. If
only I had my level 1 charger and
extension cord, I could have plugged into a condo outdoor plug. Or if only I had plugged in to top off before we bedded down for the night, this story would be moot.

A Cold Day of Charging (the Northern Crusty – Bruce)

Most everyone interested in EVs has heard a horror story of long lines at chargers when the weather turns cold. The story behind these issues includes understanding some background information about EVs. Most modern EVs are based on some form of lithium battery much like you have in your smartphone, but unlike a smartphone, this is an expensive battery that requires some handling parameters to make it last as long as possible. The most important thing to know is lithium batteries last longer and maintain their ability to charge if they are charged at an optimal temperature of 32-113 deg F. Car batteries are exposed to the harshest of environments sitting just above blacktop in Phoenix or zooming along the lakeshore in the windy city – Chicago at below zero temperatures. The battery has to perform the same in both environments. Almost all manufacturers actively heat and cool the battery
compartment to maintain a good operating temperature, but that optimum temperature changes when the battery is charged because the batteries develop their own heat during charging. Most EVs try to set up a charging environment in the battery compartment before and during charging that will keep the batteries at the best temperature to charge. Since the cars cannot read our minds, they have to rely on inputs to know when to start conditioning the battery. They get that information from the GPS destination we enter into the controls of our cars. Sometimes, there isn’t enough time to condition the battery and the car will use the first period of time plugged into the fast charger just warming or cooling the battery with no indication of any battery charging going on. In extreme climates, this conditioning
could take over a half hour. In cities where there are some people depending on fast chargers for all their electricity, the chargers can get more customers than they can handle causing long lines. All EV owners can help alleviate this issue by preheating their battery as soon as possible by indicating they are intending to go to a fast charger to charge.

While we are on the subject of heating and cooling, it is important to point out that heating the cabin of a vehicle uses more energy than cooling, sometimes by as much as a three to one ratio. Also, it takes close to the same amount of energy to heat or cool a vehicle cabin which means that a vehicle with a small battery (BEV, PHEV, or HEV) will lose a larger percentage of range than a vehicle with a large battery. People concerned about reduced range due to heating or cooling can extend their range by preheating or cooling while they are plugged in at home.

My Charging Setup at Home with Two All-battery EVs (Southern Crusty – Pete)

We have transitioned to both cars with battery-only drivetrains. We have been that way since before the pandemic, without problems. For our last house move, we bought a fixer-upper and have been under construction for 2 years. During that time, my garage has been unusable. Guess where my Level 2 charger is? You guessed it, in my garage. What will we ever do? Well, my construction workers think I have electric trees along with my electric cars. We plug both of our cars into outdoor plugs. I hang my J1772 plug in the crepe myrtle, hence the smart comment, do you have electric trees too? My wife travels 20 minutes each way and I travel 25-30 minutes daily. We are both able to replenish our battery using Level 1 charging on my outdoor outlets. We use different outdoor plugs because two cars on one circuit are a bit more than a single outlet can handle.

On vacations we plan our stops at lunch breaks, where we can charge, relieve, and buy food. If it is an overnight trip, I pick my hotel based on proximity to chargers, or hotels that have chargers. When I arrive at my daughter’s house, I plug into their outlet, it is so satisfying having my daughter buy my fuel for a change!

If I need to have a car with a longer range, or more seats, or a truck bed – I rent it, I am saving about 60% of the cost of fuel, and I can afford to rent for a couple of weeks, and I pay virtually nothing for maintenance. For the rest of the United States, with an average of 1.88 cars per household, convert your commuter car and save. Keep your vacation car if you must and convert that when you are comfortable to do so. Go electric and save, it’s not hard, just take the plunge and you will not turn back.