Eletric driving

After a couple of weeks (actually it feels only like a couple of weeks while in reality it is more like one and a half), having gone fully electric, I’m ready for my first résumé: it’s different.

The concept of driving changes somewhat when you lay hand on an electric car. It isn’t better nor worse than common cars, but it is certainly different (as so many things in life).

I think what happened is, that this basically is a trade of some benefits against others. Things we grew accustomed to, like range, five-minute re-fill of gasoline, unconscious usage of the electrics; that all is something we hardly want to miss. Thinking about it: those to mean a lot, but we rarely take advantage of them. The radio is probably the most used part of it.

Distances longer than 100km a day I rarely drive. I fill up the gas tank in between when I have to, because I don’t plan ahead. How much of the fuel each and every part of the car spends on what function - nobody knows, because you cannot see it right away. You would have to drive a full tank empty with one setting and do it over again with another if you wanted to find out. So nobody really cares. As long as we can put in some gasoline and oil, everything is just fine. Out of sight, out of mind.

Therefore I still wonder why I have thrown this calm state of mind and all those benefits out for a kind of experiment, that - first of all - only makes sense in a financial way. An electric car costs me roughly the same amount of money the old fuel driven devil would cost me, assuming fixing, fuel and taxes of about four.

Why not driving a new car then and (hopefully) spare the worries about broken mechanics, oil and the money being blasted out of the exhaustion pipe? That was the question I had to ask myself.

To be honest, the environment-saving factor is just a nice thing to have. Probably almost nobody would switch over to electric, if it would be more expensive or wouldn’t come with significant benefits. If somebody wants to prove this statement wrong: please do so.

There aren’t any significant benefits in general. There can be, depending on your life situation. But there are small benefits, trade-offs that you get. Some come with the technology, some are given by the local authorities. While the tech certainly is very appealing to Nerds (male and female, as it seems), the driving itself seems to inherit a kind of beauty itself. Driving becomes more foresighted and slower. Not because you can’t keep up (an electric car will almost certainly let every other car behind at the traffic lights), but because as more economic it is driven, as longer range the car has. What seems to be common sense, becomes reality when you drive. This leads to a more relaxed situation on the streets.

No worries about the fuel prices any more either.

How much other benefits are being used, is up to the driver. Special parking and driving regulations make it easier to go electric. There’s still no protection against the parking ticket, though (as I had to find out).

Without the same range as a fuel driven car, an electric one isn’t a full replacement in it’s own. But as long as range is not the problem, they can step in and close a gap, that might even be better filled in a city environment. The big change will be mostly in the head when it is about to come down to leave the old, (t)rusted, personal, oil supported way of transportation and switch over to something else. Some will gain, some will lose a bit freedom. But almost certainly everybody will get something new. Even if it’s only the experience of having driven an electric car for a while.