Why did I go electric - half year update

everything is possible - my experiences after 6 months driving electric

Maybe you have read my first, lengthy article on my decision making for driving electric, which I presented some months ago. Maybe you haven’t… so here is the link: Why did I go electric!

It was more about the pros and cons and why I made this choice after all. This time I want to tell you why I am even more convinced than before that I made the right choice and about breaking the myths about range in electric driving. So, what has changed since my first article:

• I used my company EV in all situations, day to day local driving, medium distance work engagements (230km one way) and long-distance vacation trips (830km one way)
• New studies predict that EVs sustainability footprint gets better and better with the use of renewable energy in production and usage (read ICCT study as PDF) and new battery developments
• ?The amount of new EVs with good quality and affordable pricing has dramatically increased and the number of EVs in Germany has doubled within a year to 365k
• More and more car manufactures have announced to get out of combustion engines altogether, such as Audi by 2026 and Mercedes by 2030
• We currently exchange our family vehicle also to an EV and will soon be 100% electric

My personal observations using an electric vehicle after half a year

First, I have to say that it is probably way less spectacular than I have thought it would be. Most of the time I don’t even feel the difference to driving my prior petrol cars. But I still do enjoy when people do not hear me coming :) but it also makes me more cautious, because sometimes they just step onto the road without looking.

But the most important observation is:

So far, I never had to worry about getting to where I wanted to go!

Honestly never! Yes, once in a while it needs a little planning, but even on a long-distance drive it was possible to just go and find my charging stations on the fly with no effort.

One thing that I needed to get used was changing my “fueling” behavior, which is probably one of the reasons why a lot of people are still sceptical. While usually you fueled your car only once in a while wherever you were, you now charge your car whenever it is possible and your car is not driving, which is more than 90% of the time. Yes I am blessed with being able to charge as well at work as at home, so it is mainly no problem for me, but more and more I also charge at supermarkets, parking lots, hotels,… and maybe one day even at my hair dressers.

Where I also needed to change my way of thinking was that EVs do not always need to be charged 100%. For example, once I needed to get home quickly but hadn’t enough State of charge (SOC) to make the last 140km. I went to a high performance charging (HPC) station on the way to charge my car, but instead of charging it to 100%, as I would have done with a petrol car, I just got enough SOC for another 170km. That took me just 11 minutes, so no big deal. At home I recharged while the car was not in use (in line with my previous observation).

My next observation is that we drastically need more high performance charging stations, everywhere. With the amount of EVs driving around we are still good with approx. 41.000 public charging station at 22.000 locations, but thereof only 1.700 HPC (>150kW). But when we consider that the growth of EVs keeps going, the number of EVs doubled in Germany just in one year to 365.000 EVs, then I can foresee people waiting for charging on the motorway, which will ruin it for people altogether. But with the growing demand I expect companies to invest and create more charging capacities, as this is a growing possibility for profits. But also governments need to support the needed infrastructure investments to make it feasible for everyone to use an EV.

Finally, and this is of cause a no-brainer, we need a faster growth in renewable energy production, but this is not only true for EVs but for all industrial sectors in order to meet our climate goals.

Breaking the myth !

One of the big problems people tend to have with EVs is the range of the vehicles. I hear a lot “EVs don’t have a sufficient range yet!”. The average distance of a German driver, according to the federal office of statistics is… 16km… what!? The max. daily distance in average is 30 to 40km.

If you purchase an EV today it will definitely have a realistic range above 300km, so probably last for 10 days if you don’t charge it.

But now here comes the killer “what if I want to go on vacation?!”. Well, I was so interested in answering that question that I simply tried it myself and went on a trip to Austria, with my family, so 4 people altogether plus luggage… and believe me we do have a lot of luggage :(

The trip was going to Wagrain, Austria one way 825 km. We started early at 3:30am (Monday) and returned early 04:15am (Wednesday) to avoid traffic. And guess what we were able to charge our car at the hotel… for free :)

Here are the stats:

Conclusion

As I already wrote in my first article, I guess by now most of us have understood that something needs to change in the way we live and eat up our planet if we like it or not. But how can this change happen and happen quickly as it is already about 5 past twelve… !!!

I still believe that we need 4 major changes for a successful transition (see my first article):

1. Change to more sustainability needs to be sexy to make it attractive for people to change
2. Doing sustainable business must become more cost effective than non-sustainable business
3. We need to get used to a mix of energy sources for our mobility
4. We must create demand in order to create investments

I can now say that driving an EV for me covers 1), 3) and 4) and is a viable possibility to make a difference in a comfortable way without changing my behavior too much. This is true, today, in 99% of all cases in Germany and I truly believe that in some years it will be 100% of the cases, and not only in Germany. We will see a better infrastructure for charging as well as better batteries… however this needs to go along with more renewable energy and sustainable battery compositions, but it will come. We however, every single one of us needs to be bold, make the change and create the demand that creates investments into these technologies.

That’s why we as a family now also swapped the family car to an EV and are now 100% electric!

Be bold! Drive the change and create a better future, a future worth living.

#futureworthliving #enkelf?hig #goelectric #drivethechange #Haniel