By Monona W, Third Act SoCal Communications Team member
As a retired writing teacher of older adults, I used to give my students a prompt: what is your relationship to change? Do you fear it or embrace it? I’m now one year into driving an EV and I’m finding it’s been a good test of that prompt. I’m an active seventy-year-old with two millennial daughters who I want to keep up with. Hardly a luddite, I try and keep up with technology as best I can. (Granted, I seek my daughters’ help when I need to.) I was a bit surprised at how nervous and anxious the switch to an EV made me…at first.
As with all new cars now, the first challenge was the iPad-like screen that dominates the dashboard. There have been many times when I longed for the simple no frills dashboard of my old Subaru.
My biggest challenge was getting used to charging. The first time I went to a charging station I struggled to get the charger in and then out. I had to enlist the help of a fellow charger. I think my nervousness at the charging station made a relatively simple lock-and-load operation harder than it needed to be. I’m happy to report, I’ve now charged the car many times by myself. I don’t have charging ability at my condo in Santa Monica, so I have explored a number of charging stations around my neighborhood. I was grateful when I discovered a twenty bay station just ten minutes from my home. I have found that I actually enjoy the 30 or 40 minutes it takes to charge the car. I make phone calls and catch up with friends or read or play Wordle and Spelling Bee on my phone.
Range anxiety is a real thing, but like a lot of anxiety, when you look at it closely, it has no real basis. Things generally turn out okay. Aside from driving back and forth from Joshua Tree fairly often— a 150 mile trip that the car easily handles with its 286 mile range at 85% charge, I’ve only taken the car on one long trip– from LA to San Francisco. We found a charging station in Atascadero and discovered what a nice little town it is. It added about an hour to the trip – the extra travel time is something you have to plan on with long trips. Like so much in life, it’s the attitude you bring to it. I have found the EV slows me down in a way that is altogether pleasant, if I allow myself not to be in a rush, and be in the moment. I love that I am driving a green car and am not putting toxic fumes into the air. It’s hard to conceive of going back to a gasoline powered car.
There are definitely cost savings to driving an EV. It typically costs me $20-$30 to charge the car, compared to the $50 or $60 dollars at the pump (or even more now that gas prices have gone up.) At 10,000 miles, I took the car in for its first service. There was no charge.
As for my relationship to change, what I discovered is that I both fear and embrace change. I fear our warming planet, and all the news of fires, floods, droughts and mega storms. I fear for the future for our children. Out of that fear, I am driven to embrace new technologies that will help restore balance to the destructiveness of fossil fuels. Driving an EV is a choice I am happy I made.