Our new car is an Electric Vehicle

Our new car

I mentioned in my post on Friday about not taking our new Chevy Bolt EUV on the long trip to New York because we weren't sure about dealing with commercial charging stations along the way. But we will be learning how to do that soon. We don't take very many long trips but when we do, we'd rather take this car. Not only are we happy to not be burning gasoline and spewing it into the air everywhere we go, but it is a very nice car to drive and to ride in. And before you say that the power plant that provides our electricity is just burning the fuel somewhere else and spewing the gases there, you would be wrong. We have solar cells on our house so the car is being charged by the sun.

Even for those people charging their electric vehicles from a coal or gas burning power plant, at least it is easier to limit the problem at that one location so that thousands of people can use power that may start off dirty but can be cleaned up in that one location - under the watchful eye of the regulators to make sure the cleaning is done corrrectly. That is much better than having all the thousands of people being responsible for keeping their internal combustion cars in good shape and tuned correctly and with a good catalytic converter. And anyway, the trend is for more electricity to be generated by clean, reneable sources. This argument is old and out dated and is mostly spread by the oil and coal companies and the people that believe their lies.

As I said above, this car is a joy to drive and to ride in. There is much more leg room than there would be in an equivalent gar burning car. And the Bolt is very well engineered. It has a long wheelbase for such a small car and gives a very comfortable ride. It is easy to handle and it is easy to park. And you have to try driving an electric vehicle some time. The engine is incredibly smooth with plenty of power when you need to accelerate quickly. The steering is terrific - the car just flows around corners with little effort to the driver steering it. And the smoothness of an electric engine is hard to believe until you've tried it. No more feeling the little jolt as the transmission shifts from one gear to another, Even though it is quick with an automatic, your car is generating no useful power during those periods. With an electric engine, the power is constant with no interruptions. It is just a much more efficient way to get motion from an energy source. And it is so quiet! The major noise we have in the cabin are the fans of the heating and cooling system. You do hear wind noise and the tires on the pavement but that's not much.

Another nice feature of an electric vehicle is the reduced maintenance costs. No more mufflers. No more oil changes. No more antifreeze. No more hoses to crack. No transmission fluid to leak. And a lot of the burden of braking is handled by turning the engine into a generator. It not only reduces wear and tear on the brakes but regenerates power and charges the batteries using the energy of the car's momentum. So, the brakes won't wear out as soon as they would with a gasoline powered car.

And to get back to the efficiency - we are getting over 3.5 miles per kilowatt-hour of energy. There are approximately 33.7 kilowatt-hours of energy in a gallon of gasoline. So, we are getting the equivalent of 118 miles per gallon with our car. Plus, the cost of that energy is much cheaper when charging our car at home. So, we are saving a lot of money when we use the Bolt compared to what we are paying for our gasoline cars.

I'll try to share more things in the future. But just know that this is the best car we've ver owned. Well, maybe the TR6 Triumph I had for a while back in the 1976 was a bit more fun (it was a convertable) but that thing was in thr shop all the time.