Electric Vehicles: One Owner’s Perspective

By Marty Bitner

New cars today offer an array of features and options. The most important option, however, is how your car is fueled, and lately options for electric vehicles (EV) are getting better. Today, enough fully electric and plug-in hybrid models are available to meet the needs of most people. You owe it to yourself to consider making the switch from a gas-powered car to an EV. My family did over a year ago; we’ll never go back.

 

 

EVs are fun to drive. When you step on the accelerator, the car responds instantly: it just goes. This is true across the board for EVs, not just those tuned for performance. It is the nature of electric motors. You get all the torque available right from the start with no lag. Electric motors can also run in reverse to slow the car down. This is called regenerative braking. When you lift your foot off the accelerator the motor charges the battery by capturing the energy of forward motion. This makes the car more efficient by storing energy that would otherwise have been wasted and allows you to enjoy one-pedal driving. You simply press down or lift off of the accelerator to speed up or slow down rather than having to switch between the accelerator and the brake pedal (though the brake pedal is always available for sudden stops).

EVs handle well. Typically, the battery of an EV is located beneath the floor of the car. This makes for a low center of gravity so the car doesn’t roll when making turns. Your music will sound better since it doesn’t compete with engine noise.

EVs are easy to own and economical to maintain. Aside from tire rotation, no routine maintenance is needed. Because they have significantly fewer parts than gas-powered cars, EVs don’t need the oil changes, exhaust system replacements, or many other maintenance tasks to which we’ve grown accustomed.

Partly due to the design of an EV, they tend to be safe cars. They can have larger crumple zones in the front and rear because they have no internal combustion engine or gas tank, making them safer in a front or rear collision. The large battery in the floor tends to keep the car upright in an accident. They often have additional rigidity to absorb side impacts.

Do you want to preheat your car on a cold February morning while it’s in your garage? No problem with an EV; there are no harmful emissions to worry about. You can heat up the car from your smartphone and you can do it while the car is still plugged in, drawing energy from the grid rather than the battery. Charging an EV is easy: you just plug it in at home.

EVs can have larger crumple zones because they have no internal combustion engine or gas tank, making them safer in a front or rear collision.

Suppose you can’t charge where you live, or you’re on a road trip? Public charging stations are growing common. There are four in Belmont Center. For road trips, networks of fast charging stations make almost any trip possible. My family recently drove our 325-mile-range Tesla Model 3 to Ohio, a 10-hour trip over 600 miles, and only had to stop twice to charge along the way. Our total charging time was an hour and a half. We had a meal while we waited.

More public charging stations are being built every day. Funded by $2 billion from Volkswagen’s diesel emissions settlement, Electrify America has a goal of installing nearly 2,000 charging stations this year and plans to have charging stations no more than 70 miles apart along all major roadways in most states.

EVs improve air quality because they eliminate car emissions. To limit children’s exposure to air pollution, Massachusetts law forbids idling a gas-powered car within 100 feet of school grounds. No problem with EVs. EVs also direct our energy dollars to Belmont Light, our locally owned utility, rather than to a multinational oil company.

But the most important reason to switch to electric vehicles is the benefit to our climate by reducing carbon emissions. Only 20 to 30 percent of the energy from the fuel you put in a gas-powered car goes towards moving the car forward. EVs are much more efficient, converting about 60 percent of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels. They need much less energy to cover the same distance. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that generating electricity from the grid for an EV in New England emits the same amount of carbon as a gas-powered car getting more than 100 miles per gallon! Of course, no such gas car exists. And EVs will get cleaner over their lifetimes as an increasing share of the production of electricity comes from clean, renewable sources.

Switching to EVs plays a critical role in achieving our climate action goals. For help with switching to an electric vehicle or plug-in hybrid, please contact Belmont Drives Electric.

Marty Bitner is chair of Belmont Drives Electric, co-chair of the Belmont Energy Committee and a Town Meeting member.