Get an Electric Car for More Freedom! – CleanTechnica

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This is going to be a short one. But it’s a good one. FREEDOM is a popular buzzword in the United States, as you may have noticed. Many people want to be free to do basically anything and everything … but then don’t want other people to be free to do what they want. It’s complicated, and sometimes confusing. Overall, though, the US and democracy as a whole are based in large part on the ideal of freedom. Cars are a symbol of freedom in many minds, and people are often keen on maximizing their freedom via their car. Interestingly, what I think many people don’t get is that electric vehicles are freedom-mobiles more than gas-powered vehicles are.

The idea for this article was stimulated by a comment from William Fitch. William wrote: “The partial irony is that a gas powered vehicle is NEVER PERSONAL because you have to go somewhere else and buy a material that can not be had by yourself, for every mile you drive. There is so much less security in that VS at home just plugging in, and if lucky, to your own solar array.”

William didn’t use the word “freedom” in there, but the comment gets to that point. With gas-powered cars, we are totally dependent on oil companies and gas stations. We don’t really have consumer choice — our fuel comes from oil cartels, who all work together to manage the market. From Saudi Arabia to Texas, we are pouring our money into the hands of oil billionaires day and night. How much of the money you spend in a year or a decade or your whole life just goes to oil companies and oil dictatorships? And there’s no option to buy good, locally grown, organic oil from a friendly oil driller and oil refiner who isn’t destroying our planet. Wherever we go, we are burning gasoline and will need to refill our tank (unless we bike, walk, or ride the subway or something).

With an electric car, as William points out, there is much more freedom in where the electricity comes from. And there’s also a much more decentralized network of sources creating and supplying that electricity. Of course, as William points out, even individuals can create their own electricity (via solar power systems).

I had this article prepped to write for a few days, and then I was editing this article today, and Remeredzai backed up the point again! He wrote about how the high cost of fuel and maintenance was basically robbing him and making it harder to save up the money for a new EV after his was totaled. Here’s part of that story: “The first vehicle I used during this period was a diesel van. I used to buy $20 worth of diesel every day for my daily commute, which was a pain coming from just plugging in overnight, and the electricity over the years averaged at just 10 cents per kWh — so for a 24 kWh Nissan LEAF that’s just $2.40 a night! So, an almost 10× jump in fuel cost per day! The current electricity tariff here is about $0.26/kWh, which works out to $6.24, still a whole $13.76 cheaper per day! Because it was an old van, I was constantly topping up engine oils and coolant — things I had not done in 5 years. More pain!”

We get locked into the high costs of fuel and maintenance, and we thus end up spending much more money on our transportation than if we had an electric car — and those higher costs limit our freedom to spend money on other things, year after year after year.

That was the end of the article, but then I remembered the charging and range issues that so many people get hung up on, thinking these will limit their freedom (their freedom of movement and their free time). It’s hard to change, and it’s hard to break lifestyle habits we’ve had for decades. Most people who haven’t bought an electric car yet are concerned about charging times and worried charging takes too long. As many of us EV owners like to say, though, charging actually takes up a lot less time than fueling up a gas car. If you have a place to plug in at home or even just at work, it takes a few seconds a week to plug in and unplug once the battery is at 40% or so. With a gas car, you have to find a gas station, pull off the road, pull up to the pump, pump the gas, pay, and get back on the road. It’s much easier and quicker to pull into your garage or a parking space at work, plug in, and walk away.

As far as range goes, with modern electric cars, you get hundreds of miles of range on a full charge. That’s far, far more than an average person drives. If you drove 200 miles a day, that would mean you drive 73,000 miles a year. The average driver drives fewer than 15,000 miles a year. If you drove 100 miles a day (far more than the average), that would be 36,500 miles a year. Every new EV on the market has more than 200 miles of range, and many have 300+ miles of range. Don’t worry — you will be free to drive anywhere you want in an electric car. And, actually, even if you went deep into the boonies, chances are high that there’s electricity and there’s somewhere to plug in the car.

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