Life With An EV

I know I'm way over due on a blog posting and everyone has been waiting for a update on what it's like "Driving a EV". Well the best way for me to explain what it's like to drive my S10 EV is to tell you to imagine driving what ever car you have - just the way you do now - fast or slow - but you only have a one gallon gas tank. Which means you can only go say 35 miles before you have to stop and fill up. Lucky for you since you only have a tiny gas tank, is that you can fill it up anywhere your 30ft cord can plug into a 120v outlet. And best of all it only costs about a $1.50 to fill up.

What's the catch? You have to fill your tiny gas tank using a eye dropper. So getting that 1 gallon worth of energy into your car takes about 8-12 hours. Charging on 120V is slow and at best is only about 50% efficient, so there is a lot of waste heat. Since my garage is air conditioned I charge the truck outside. I put up a canopy so that the truck is protected from all the droppings from the trees. The canopy also lets me keep the windows down, and the EV out of the sun so I don't notice the lack of A/C as much.

Batteries don't like cold so I'll keep it in the garage this winter. The excess heat given off during charging will just keep the garage warm (it's heated). I can charge with 220V using a buck transformer I got off of eBay and that is much more efficient. Charges in 4-6 hours on 220V and is about 70% efficient.