A Year Driving an Electric Car

" You want a Bolt?", asked BW when I floated this idea by her.

BW already had the Tesla, so it wasn't as if I was completely off my rocker. We already had the charging unit and one electric car in the stable so I thought having another one for me would make sense.

By this time I was putting a lot of miles on the Honda CR-V and also putting a lot of gas in it - about $40 a day. This wasn't exactly too hard of a sell.

I think it's the fact that she had a preconceived idea of what the Bolt would be like and when we test drove it, it was actually better than we thought.

Now that I have had it for a year, I have some thoughts:

1. It's cheap to run. I switched our electric plan to get the cheap rates at night and my Tim Horton's coffee costs more than to fill the car with electricity for the day.
2. Mileage: I get about 200-ish miles - about the same as the Tesla. In the winter, it's about 15 percent less due to the cold weather. I don't drive long distances and 200 miles is more than enough city driving for one day. If I run out of juice, I come home and take a nap.
3. It looks like a small car - and it is, but I get compliments all the time about how roomy it is.
4. It has heated seats and a steering wheel. I feel like I'm living in the future.
5. I never use the brakes; I use regenerative braking all the time. My brakes will rust out before they wear out.
6. Because it's a small car, tires are small and cheaper. Replacement tires cost about $100 a corner.
7. I've saved well over $1000 on oil changes this year.
8. It's got all the features one could want and big 10 inch screen
9. It's peppy. I think the 0-60 speed is 6.5 seconds. My first car's 0-60 speed was 15.6 seconds. This is like driving a really smooth go cart. It's small and nimble and torquey.
10. No engine. Not much to break down. I've got some weird clicking noise in the front end which is a common thing, and not prohibitively expensive to repair - less than all those oil changes

Lastly, it's quiet. No motor noise is a weird thing when you first get into it because we've been so used to an engine in front of us making noise and changing gears shifting and brake noise and with the Bolt, it's all gone. Just a whirr...and even that noise is due to safety regulations. It would be even quieter without.

I'm looking forward to another year with the Bolt. It's a great value for a small commuter car, which for most of us is enough. I even make more money driving for Uber in an electric car than I would with a regular car, and I don't have to fill it up with $40 of gas a day.

I'm never going back to an ICE car.

Go Electric!

TH and Co.