It’s hot in Wichita. Glen Frey wasn’t kidding when he sang, “The heat is on.” Can we turn it off? It’s like a steam bath on Tatooine. But no Jedi mind trick is strong enough to beat this heat. You start sweating the millisecond you leave the house. Another Kansas summer has barely just begun, and you already need a break. Time for a road trip to cooler climes, right? But look at those gas prices! Is an electric car the solution? Well, I just drove my Tesla Model 3 the 600-mile journey from Wichita to Keystone, Colorado. That drive, and my overall experience owning an electric vehicle, might help give you an answer.
A lot of folks are skeptical about the very concept of the electric car. And in an America divided down the middle between Red and Blue, some of that skepticism is ideological. But don’t worry, you don’t have to be a kale-eating, Bernie bumper sticker-sporting hippie to own an electric vehicle. Cars don’t belong to political parties and can’t vote (yet). The best place to start your decision-making process isn’t what Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow might think: it’s all about the Benjamins.
Let’s get down to those brass tacks. When I acquired my single-motor rear-wheel drive 2020 Tesla Model 3, the sticker price was in the low $40s. The 2022 version is now up to $46,990. That the cheapest Tesla they make. It sounds pricy…until you look at the cost of a pickup truck or SUV right now. While it is possible to buy a new pickup for under $40,000, it might not include seats or a steering wheel.
Of course, the cost of the car itself is not the only factor. To many people, what makes an electric vehicle desirable is the decreased cost of ownership. So let me tell you about my experience. In the almost three years I’ve owned Jeeves [when you get your Tesla, the touch screen prompts you to name the car. I named mine “Jeeves”, after the butler from the P.G. Wodehouse novels.], I’ve spent a grand total of $10 on maintenance. That’s two bottles of window washer fluid. The car has yet to require any regularly scheduled maintenance. That’s what removing the internal combustion engine from the equation gets you.
“Sure, Tim, but what about all that electric charging???”
I have a 13.2 mile commute to work, each way. A couple of days a week, I’ll drive home for lunch. That’s either a 26.4- or 52.8-mile daily commute…plus any other driving I might do around town and on the weekends. My fuel cost (in this case, fuel being electricity, instead of gas) is $30-40 per month. That’s right: PER MONTH. Every night, I plug into the preexisting 240-volt in my garage. I have no Tesla charging station at my house. Many Tesla owners have them installed, but I don’t see the necessity if you have a 240-volt plug. Even with a standard 120-volt, you can make it work.
No matter how much I drive during the day, when I wake up in the morning, Jeeves is fully charged. A full charge produces a (theoretical) 230-mile range. Driving around the city is where a Tesla shines. Because a Tesla uses regenerative braking to make electric power, city driving can be more fuel efficient in an electric vehicle: exactly the reverse of what you’d find in your gas guzzler.
But the ultimate test is the road trip.
My wife and I departed early on a Saturday morning: the best day to drive through Denver traffic. As I rolled out of my garage, I punched in the destination and let the Tesla go to work. No, wait…it didn’t actually drive itself. That’s not what I meant. I didn’t purchase the full-self driving package. I don’t trust it. Maybe in 10 years. But what the Tesla did do was determine my route and where I would charge along the way.
What makes a Tesla the best choice for a long-distance trip, when compared to other electric vehicles, is their supercharger network. Any time you punch in your destination on the car’s touch screen, the Tesla will tell you where you will stop to charge and how long each stop will take. For this 600-mile journey, that meant six stops along the way. If you were looking for a downside, you’ve found it.
You might remember I mentioned Jeeves has a 230-mile theoretical range. The word “theoretical” is operative here. If you only drive 60 to 65 miles per hour on I-70, you likely can get a 230-mile range. But if you are like me, and want to drive 80 on I-70, you are more likely to only get 150 real miles out of that theoretical 230. Hence, the six stops. In cold weather, that efficiency declines further.
In reality, when you stop at a supercharger, you aren’t going to charge it all the way to 100%. The superchargers charge very quickly until about 85%. At that point, the supercharger has to slow down so it doesn’t damage Jeeves’ battery. Jeeves will give me a buffer so that I’m not cutting it too close as I drive on my journey. Essentially, it will try to minimize the number of stops I need to make, while maximizing the efficiency of each stop. As I charge, Jeeves tells me how many more minutes I have remaining. When Jeeves determines I have enough charge to continue driving, it lets me know.
Gas stations are ubiquitous across this country. You might run out of gas because you don’t have any money or perhaps because of your own foolhardy attempts to live on the edge, but it almost certainly isn’t because you can’t find a gas station. But for electric vehicle owners, range anxiety is real. There are only so many superchargers. For common routes on major highways, there are usually plenty of them. On lesser-traveled highways, they can be few-and-far-between. On the route to Denver via I-70, there are superchargers in Salina, Hays, Colby, Goodland and Limon. I stopped at all of them on my trip. In Denver, like most large metro areas, there are several.
The first leg of my trip to was to a supercharger in Salina next to a Holiday Inn Express. I recommend the bathrooms there: the soap smells lovely. Sadly, I did not find the sunglasses I left on top of my car the last time I was there. About 20 minutes later, we were on our way to Hays. That supercharger, nestled behind an Applebee’s, provided a scenic view of the highway on-ramp.
What do you do when you are stuck at a supercharger? You watch Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus or YouTube on your touch screen. Alternatively, you can play a variety of video games, including a dune buggy game using your actual steering wheel (which makes you look like a little kid pretending to drive his dad’s car).
The stops in Colby and Goodland were uneventful. But once I entered Colorado, things perked up a bit. The supercharger in Limon was next to an Arby’s, which is a serious SCORE because…curly fries. It was one of Tesla’s faster superchargers (more recent installations can charge even more quickly), so the charging went very quickly, until it didn’t. It stopped. Huh. Must be this charger. I moved the car to another. It didn’t work either. There were about six other Teslas there. We conferred and discovered none of us could charge. I called it in to Tesla. No estimated time on a fix. Luckily for me, I had accumulated quite a bit of charge. Jeeves told me I would make it to a charging station near the Denver airport with 6% remaining.
Now, because I know Jeeves, I know that 6% is really more like 10%, so I was confident I could make it with no problem. But just in case, I drove 65 mph most of the way (which feels like 25 mph on I-70). As I tooled along at that stately speed, a lifted Dodge pickup truck passed me on the left and paused. I noticed he had a bumper sticker in his rear window with the quote, “How do you like your Prius?,” accompanied by a picture of what appeared to be a crushed Prius. He paused to “roll coal” and then continued on. If you aren’t familiar with the term, it’s when a man in a truck with a diesel engine emits black smoke in an attempt to compensate for other inadequacies in his life (or underpants).
Under normal circumstances, I would have left him in my dust. That’s the other advantage of the Tesla: they range from very fast to insanely fast. Jeeves hits 60 mph in just over five seconds. But I was dedicated to saving energy, so I continued at my stately pace. Plus, I’d seen the early Steven Spielberg movie Duel, and was not interested in a Battle on I-70.
Once I stopped for a charge in Denver, it was smooth sailing to Keystone. The whines or throaty roars of a gas engine struggling to get up a mountain were replaced by quiet and effortless uphill acceleration. Jeeves shined in the Rockies. I arrived safe and sound in Keystone in time for dinner at Dos Locos.
Back to brass tacks: it cost me $58.48 in supercharging to drive to Keystone. Assuming 25 MPG at 600 miles of travel with $5.00 gas, that would be a $120 tab in gasoline. Thus, the fuel cost was less than half of what it would have been in a gas-powered vehicle. When I drove Jeeves to Austin in February, my fuel cost was $0, thanks to 1000 free supercharging miles from a referral program with Tesla. Sadly, that referral program has ended, but the costs are still relatively low.
Of course, costs come in forms other than currency. The trip took 20-25% longer than it would have in a gas-powered vehicle. That two hours was a time-cost that not everyone is willing to pay. My friend Rolf Potts can wax eloquently about the concept of time-wealth. But to put it succinctly, this philosophy advocates that time is the most important form of wealth that we have. We have a finite amount of time on Earth and (barring cryogenic freezing) it can’t be expanded beyond a max of about 120 years.
The return trip to Wichita cost almost exactly the same in supercharger costs, but I experienced fewer hiccups. There were no angry pickup truck drivers and no supercharger failures. It should be said that I’ve only experienced one supercharger failure in the last three years, so it seems to be a fairly reliable process. All told, I saved about $124 in fuel costs by driving the Tesla, but spent four more hours driving round trip.
So is an electric vehicle worth it? It depends on what’s important to you. For local driving, it’s hard to dispute the advantages of an electric vehicle. For long-distance driving, it is more of a toss-up. There will be a time in the near future when affordable electric vehicles will average 500 miles of range. That will be the tipping point. In the meantime, long-distance travel via electric vehicle will add time to your trip. It’s for you to decide if the time is worth the dollar savings. As for me, my family has outgrown the Tesla. I need more room for dogs and children. I’ll be getting a Chevy Traverse soon. It will cost me more on a daily basis, but I need the space. I will miss Jeeves dearly.
