My journey to driving electric started back in 2000 when I saw a story on the local news. It wasn't long after that I first met John Wayland who I found through some internet searches. He pointed me to the EVDL. After describing my commute to him it was apparent that I could not build the EV I wanted. It was the classic you can only have 2 of the 3 requirements scenarios. In my case, the extreme range that I required meant that I would be stuck in the slow lane holding up traffic going up some nasty inclines that were unavoidable, so in March of 2001 I bought my beloved Honda Insight instead. It soon became apparent that as cool as the hybrid thing was, I still really wanted to drive electric. About a year later, I bought a 1974 Suzuki GT 250 with the intent on doing my first conversion. I felt a motorcycle was a lot less complicated and cheaper to convert, and I would learn lots of valuable lessons along the way. It turned out well, and gave me the ability to get around f ully electric for some of my driving, but definitely would not cover my full commute. I toyed with ideas of how I could make this vehicle work. I even loaded it up in the back of my van on a couple of occasions and drove half of my commute then rode the motorcycle for the rest (the original PHEV). My thinking was that I could stage a dump charger or swap-able battery pack at an EV friendly business or residence along the way... I decided the motorcycle was not the answer, so my next adventure was my 1970 Datsun truck conversion. Both my motorcycle and my truck have served me well over the years in specific scenarios and I have had lots of fun driving electric, but was never able to make them work consistently for my needs, so the quest went unfulfilled.
September of last year I bought my wife a 2017 Prius Prime with 4000 miles on it. Last week I traded in my 2016 Hyundai Sonata SE hybrid for a 2016 Hyundai Sonata PHEV Limited with 15,500 miles on it. Both of these cars cover all of our current daily driving needs on electric alone. They both feature all the latest tech and are wonderful to drive. Charging is a breeze and I never worry about murdering the batteries. Trips to the gas station are months apart. I would estimate that roughly 85% of our driving will be electric now and that includes road trips which we usually do a few times a year (at least 4000 miles worth). I'm in no hurry now to buy an OEM BEV. There is not currently one on the market that I find compelling. I suspect that is going to change as there are lots of interesting ones in the works, but I will probably wait a couple of years after that for good used ones to be available. It's amazing how fast cars lose their value, especially ones that are purchase d with govt tax incentives. Both my recent purchases feel like brand new cars without sticker shock. I feel like I have finally arrived. My family is driving electric everywhere now, and with the addition of the 8KW solar system I installed on my roof this year, I'm also making my own fuel :) Its a good time to be an EV enthusiast! Damon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20181217/1d90d7fc/attachment.html> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
