[Elkhunter]

With our Oregon state government doing it's darnedest to force folks into purchasing an electric vehicle, I sat down and contemplated what it would mean for us.

As an example, we are traveling from Oregon to Montana, approximately 1000 miles, a trip which takes us approximately 16 hours driving time currently, a day and a half when figuring in restaurant, motel and pee stops. Now, let's use the numbers from the Chevy Bolt, basically 200 mile range, 2 hour recharging time, and .5 hours looking for the charging station, boiling down to roughly 6.5 hours per 200 miles conservatively. Take that 1000 miles and divide it by 200 mile range and that equals 5 legs. Now multiply those five legs by 6.5 hours and we get 32.5 hours driving time. When again adding in motel, restaurant, and pee stops we essentially went from a day and a half trip to now taking over three days. That simply is not practical.

Another example, with our Jetta it takes approximately a gallon of fuel to drive me the 60 miles per day to and from work. Let's just round that to $3.00 per day. Figuring a given average cost of $0.08 per mile for the Bolt, this calculates out to approximately $4.80 per day.

Shall we consider the purchase price of a new electric vehicle to being approximately double of a gasoline equivalent, or how about a towing vehicle? Naw, let's save that for a future discussion.

So, unless one plans on only using an electric car for short trips zipping about town, it just does not make any economical sense, at least for us?

Bill

We did the same calcs. For us to go from one of our houses to the other currently take us about 3.5 days (roughly 1,800 miles). In an electric car would boost it to 9 days each way when adjusting for the long strips of nothingness in some locations. Just not feasible.

Once we retire it may make sense to get one…or at least a hybrid due to fewer miles driven. Its just thinking about the amount of times to charge the thing, the already weak power grid, the 1,300 pound battery (and all the coal burning equipment to mine and manufacture that) and there is noting green about them.

Then there is the post accident fire potential. Normal vehicle fire is 1,500 deg F. EV fire 4,500 deg F and it more easily reignites 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥