'100 days, 25000 miles, 48 states. One shovel, zero emissions'
https://cleantechnica.com/2015/08/08/a-sincere-accounting-of-the-costs-benefits-of-electric-vehicles-part-1-whats-so-bad-about-evs/ A Sincere Accounting Of The Costs & Benefits Of Electric Vehicles, Part 1: What’s So Bad About EVs? August 8th, 2015 by Brian Kent [images https://cleantechnica.com/files/2015/08/carbon-negative-road-trip.jpg carbon negative road trip https://cleantechnica.com/files/2014/10/nissan-leaf-electric-car-attractions.jpg nissan leaf electric car attractions ] I am an electric vehicle driver. I no longer drive ICE* cars unless I absolutely have to. Why would I have to? This four-part series is intended to describe the efforts I took to change my transportation-related carbon strategy. Considerations that took some thought and some time, but what I’d describe as minimal effort. Life is certainly different now, but it sure isn’t worse. If you’re interested in giving electric vehicles a fair shot, please take the time to read through the steps I took to do it ... Before I ever drove an electric vehicle, I drove a wide variety of gas cars and trucks. I have well over 300,000 miles of experience with ICE vehicles, and now 25,900 miles on an all-electric (a 2013 Nissan Leaf S). I think that’s enough laps around the block to form an objective opinion on both ... I come from a family of auto enthusiasts, and I’m one myself. But mine is also a family of realists—if not conservationists—and if push came to shove, there’s no question where my loyalties would take me. I’m glad companies like Nissan and Tesla, in particular, are paving the way to ensure we don’t have to make that choice. And even now, we don’t. Not usually ... What’s frustrating is that EVs are still unfamiliar enough to people to not even be given a fair comparison. We overwhelmingly choose what’s familiar rather than learn more about EVs and simply let the better vehicle win ... We still can’t, and the proof that we can’t is the scores of people continuing to rule out the purchase of an EV based solely on the almost entirely irrelevant metric of ‘range on a tank.’ No, it’s not entirely irrelevant. It matters in that typically miniscule percentage of cases in which you not only have to go a long distance, but go a long distance fast. With your only vehicle. Through a deep, foreboding woods with no sources of electricity up a constant hill in the winter. Pardon the hyperbole—the temptation to fight combustive fire with fire was too great just that moment. Why should anyone believe that people will eventually come to the point of measuring the car they drive—one of the most critical environmental decisions a person can make—by something other than “how far can it go without stopping for fuel?” Consumers already deny or blatantly ignore the economies provided by EVs—lower operating and maintenance costs which more than make up for modest differences in sticker price. The reality is we still aren’t even at the point of holding corporations accountable for carbon pollution—and individual consumers are far downstream from that. Some are still debating whether carbon pollution exists or even matters. I had to make a paradigm shift. I had to try it and see for myself. And I was ultimately surprised by the results. Usually, it’s better to drive an EV. Even now, in the relative infancy of EV development, plug-in vehicles can more effectively accomplish the lion’s share of use cases than can ICE vehicles—setting aside for a moment the fact that they generally do it more cheaply and with less environmental impact. Paradoxically, the effectiveness of EVs isn’t the real problem. The problem is that, because EVs are unfamiliar to most people, most people cannot reasonably compare them based on their effectiveness. That leaves solely the limited experience they’ve had with them, which is sadly equivalent to judging a book by its cover, or a person by the color of his or her skin. It boils down to chicken-or-egg: people will accept them when they’re familiar with them, but they’ll only become familiar with them when they accept them. And until that happens, they can’t very well go based on anything but what they hear. I would not have believed this before. I was pretty reluctant to ‘take a risk’ on an all-electric vehicle, and it was made even more difficult by the fact that I couldn’t find the precise one that I wanted near where I live, and by my normally progressive family encouraging me to take what they perceived to be a more conservative approach—“buy a hybrid.” I didn’t, and despite that I’ve had some growing pains, I’m now glad I had the confidence in the technology and in myself. There wasn’t much effort up to this point, however. All I had to do was believe that an EV might work for me. In part 2, I’ll describe the efforts I made prior to purchase—the costs of considering an EV, a consideration that I now look at as one step I needed to take locally in order to sincerely think globally. About the Author Guest Contributor is many, many people ... Brian Kent is a Nissan LEAF owner who is about to embark on a negative-carbon US road trip to all 48 contiguous states. (You can help fund the cause via that IndieGogo link.) He has written an excellent 4-part series for CleanTechnica and our sister sites EV Obsession and Gas2 on “going electric..” In this first piece, Brian discusses the initial sociopsychological hurdles that he faced just when considering whether or not to buy an electric car, ones that I think are far, far too common. Enjoy the article, and share it with friends! [© Sustainable Enterprises Media] https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-first-annual-negative-carbon-u-s-road-trip--2#/story The First Annual Negative Carbon U.S. Road Trip Johnny Appleseed meets the electric highway--planting trees in each of the 48 contiguous states ... Hi. I’m Brian, and I’m an electric vehicle owner. I’ve driven over 25,000 miles without ever once stopping for gas, and I’ve learned a lot in the process. I want to tell you my story...I think it will change the way you think about driving. My campaign is about exposing the myths of electric vehicle use. I want to show people what electric vehicles can do--because seeing is believing ... To me, it’s a shame that so few of us take advantage of such an easy way to reduce the impact we have on the world we live in. But doing things differently starts with thinking differently ... Let me give you a short synopsis of my project… On Wednesday, August 26th, I will depart from my hometown of Albion, New York on a one-hundred day, 25,000 mile all-American road trip in a base model Nissan Leaf. …a car with an EPA-estimated range of about 84 miles. With your help, I’ll be planting trees in each of the 48 states I stop. The same way John Chapman [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Appleseed ] did back in 1800. One tree at a time, one step at a time. Nothing worth doing gets done until someone decides to do it. Unfortunately, that usually means someone stopping whatever it is they’re already doing. This time, it doesn’t have to. [image https://res.cloudinary.com/indiegogo-media-prod-cld/image/upload/c_limit,w_620/v1436733102/vw01nezdfyvgk7b6hdx5.jpg I’ve already driven 25,000 green miles. ] This time I’ve just planned a different route…and I’m bringing a shovel. My campaign will be both strictly budgeted and 100% transparent. Every dollar pledged to this project will help reduce carbon pollution. Every dollar will be spent toward planting good-quality, hardy, long-lived, climate-appropriate trees. There will be no money spent for sightseeing (it’s not about the destinations, it’s about the journey.) There will be no money spent for accommodations (just a tent, a sleeping bag, and a whole lot of stars.) There will be no money spent for advertising (but I’ll need you to talk about it.) ...just tell one person then follow the blog here: Negative Carbon roadtrip [ https://negativecarbon.quora.com%20/ ] I'll chronicle the daily victories of the trip—as well as the inevitable setbacks. This is your shotgun ticket to emission-free driving without the range anxiety of a long uphill climb in the wilderness with no outlet plugs in sight ... [© 2015 Indiegogo] For EVLN posts use: http://evdl.org/evln/ {brucedp.150m.com} -- View this message in context: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/EVLN-Kent-s-100day-25k-mi-U-S-Leaf-road-tree-planting-trip-p1-4-tp4677121.html Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
