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I had been thinking about buying an all-electric car. Thinking it would be a good thing to do for the environment, but not thinking I’d do it like now. Maybe next year or the year after. Fun no-cost future thinking. Dreaming. I’d gotten as far as what color I wanted.
Then the son of a friend of ours needed a car. Something old but reliable. Maybe a bit sporty. Good tires. Low mileage.
It had taken me three years to find my last car. I’m from Detroit, where learning to drive and buying your first car are rites of passage. Cars, if you're from Detroit, are not just transportation. They are dream machines, part of your persona.
I wanted to be a REAL driver, so I learned to drive stick before I got my license, and except for that brief mother-of-small-children-minivan period in my life, every car I have owned has had a standard transmission.
My first car was a cherry-red Karmann Ghia Coupe. Four on the floor stick shift, of course. Lots of fun to drive.
The car I sold to our friend’s son was a thirteen-year-old champagne-colored/stick shift Honda Civic with 73,000 miles, a moonroof (I had always dreamed of owning a convertible, but in reality, I am ivory-skinned Irish and can sunburn in a summer thunderstorm, so I settled for a moonroof), a full tank of gas and a new set of tires. Sensible but sporty in its own right.
My trusty Honda gone, my search for a new car was on.
I mentioned that cars were an essential part of a Detroit persona. Think of it like a heartbeat—a kind of private as well as public identity.
Sorry, I couldn’t buy a Tesla. Teslas are top-notch, sexy, modern…all that. But not me or my bank account.
Buying an all-electric car was not about the status for me. It was my way of doing the right thing, one small change at a time.
I keep my cars for a long time. I get attached. Because I drove my last car for thirteen years, I felt I couldn’t wait a dozen years or so to make the environmental commitment to go all-electric. An EV hybrid wasn’t part of the equation. It was an all-or-nothing decision: time to let go of my past dependency on gas and oil and improve my carbon footprint.
After shopping around, I settled on an all-electric Nissan Leaf. Bright red, of course. Nissan calls it scarlet. Nice name. Perfect.
Here’s what I didn’t know when I switched to an electric car.
- It has amazingly quick acceleration. The car goes from 0-70 with a soft tap on the accelerator. It also stops quickly, so it took a few weeks to adjust my heavy gas/brake pedal driving ways.
- Surprise…everything in the car is run off the battery. When you turn on the AC, listen to the radio, make a call with Siri, start the car, roll down the windows, etc., you’re drawing on the battery, i.e., your mileage per charge goes down. The good news: you pay more attention to the energy you are using. Not a bad thing.
- The car is quiet. Why does this matter? Every quiet electric car on the road contributes to the reduction of noise pollution and emission pollution. Unless you are backing up or driving less than 25 miles an hour (Nissan figures at such slow speeds, more than likely there would be school children or neighbors out for a stroll, and they ought to hear you approaching), your car doesn’t make a lot of noise, and you don’t hear a lot of noise. When I drive my husband’s Prius, I’m amazed at how much noise gas-fueled cars make, even hybrid ones.
- My car gets around 210-230 miles per full charge, which costs about $5. We have a charging station where we live. EV charging stations are cropping up across the country, making road trips possible. It's true, there are not as many charging stations as there are gas stations, but this is changing.
What’s my favorite thing about driving an electric car? I live in a less noise-polluted world. Oh yeah, and I no longer have to panic when gas breaches $3.00 a gallon. The last time I filled up my Honda (I got 210-220 miles per fill-up…about the same as a full charge on my LEAF) cost me $27.00.
All-electric for this old Detroit babe…no brainer.
