Living with only Electric cars – can it be done?

Well, I am about to find out.

The perception with electric cars today is that you have to have access to at least one internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle. The reasons vary like going on a long trip or the size is big enough to haul your stuff. And then there are those of us that have had pickup trucks and some of us won't live without one.

We recently made the switch from two ICE vehicles to two electric vehicles. And even more surprising is neither is a Tesla.  There are choices in the market.  We used to have a  Ford F150 and that turned into a Mustang Mach E and then I had a Mustang convertible and that has turned into a Mini Cooper S EV. Certainly, the change has been interesting yet really it has lacked a lot of drama some might expect.

The Mustang Mach E is a great car and surprisingly we don't have and haven't had the need for a pickup truck for a long time. The storage space inside the Mach-E is great. Love the frunk with the drain.  We just took it on a 2000-mile trip and were able to load it up with boxes and luggage and different things for my son who just bought a new house. And it was very surprising how much we were able to get in that car. Now to take all that stuff to my son we had to drive 1000 miles one way and while it took more planning than I would normally give to a trip of this sort it wasn't ominous, or scary, it was easy. I just invoked some rules or parameters if you will that made it an enjoyable trip. 

One of the things that I did was I used PlugShare to do the planning. I found it a good website for EV traveling. I was able to pick my minimum charge level my maximum distance and assorted other things and it worked well. My parameters were:

·      don't let it go below 20% charge 

·      charge to 80% and then drive to the next charge station. 

·      Drive the speed limit (that was the big change for a lead foot like me)

Now with the Mustang Mach-E that turned out to be extremely conservative compared to what I really needed to do. We skipped our last charging stop because we just didn't need to do it. All this means is that the drama of driving a long distance in an electric car is becoming a nonevent. As more and more stations are added charging will become a nonissue. Or at least until they become crowded in the future and us early adopters remember the “good old days” when there were no lines to charge. 

The other thing that owning an electric vehicle does is it changes your driving strategy especially on a long trip. For example, I drove the speed limit or the speed limit +5. And then I was able to go at least four hours based on the parameters I just outlined above for how long between stops and so by the time 4 hours passed I'm ready to get out of the car anyway. The other discovery on this long trip was that I can stop at Electrify America with many located at a Walmart charge the car and the body along with all the things that you need to during a stop.  By the time you're done the car is charged or nearly charged. It lowers the chances of a speeding ticket and increases the relaxation of the trip. At least that's what I found

My wife announced that she no longer wanted to shift gears in my manual transmission Mustang EcoBoost premium convertible for a variety of reasons. So, I had the excuse I needed and decided ‘well I think I'm going to get a new car’. I've always been interested in the Mini Cooper.  Once upon a time long, long ago I fixed, worked on, puzzled over British motor cars. And from that time the MINI has always held a fascination.

So having done the research and looking around I had priced one out online. The delivery dates seemed kind of long, four months or so. Then one morning I just had this urge to go to the nearest dealer. My wife said ‘well give me a moment I want to have a cup of tea’ and I said ‘just put it in a to go cup we really have to go now’. I don't know why but we had to get to the dealership. We pulled in and there it was a new British racing green Mini Cooper S EV that had been ordered by another couple but for some reason they didn't like the interior. Well good for us because that car became ours that day and I really like how it looks and I'm really happy with how it drives. And it's a very different car from the Mustang Mach-E.

You can see the difference in the Mustang Mach-E because it was designed from the ground up to be an electric vehicle. Based on some of the Munro Live videos that I've watched on its disassembly I've been surprised and quite pleased about what I've learned about the car. From an owner and driver's perspective it is an excellent car, very well done and a pleasure to drive.

The Mini Cooper on the other hand is very different because it is also built as an ICE model. It's already been in production for some time and has been modified it with a BMW electric motor and battery system that is really well done yet it's a very different car.  Sportier in its handling and nimbleness it drives like a big car much bigger than it is. The range difference between the Mach-E and the Cooper S is as extreme as the cars themselves are from each other.

For around town errands, shopping, going to dinner, visiting friends the 110-mile range has been much more then enough. And a lot of fun to drive at the same time. Will I ever take it on a long trip?  Well, I never say never normally.

Now that we have two electric cars, I have to keep them charged at home: right?  What do you do when you have two electric vehicles? Now there's a longer story behind this but when I built my house, I was only able to get a 240 Volt 30-amp circuit put into my garage. It happens to be a NEMA 14-30 plug, the same kind that you use with your electric dryer. We purchased a ClipperCreek LCS-30-P EVSE (charger). Not WiFi enabled and the like but it gets the job done and works on the installed outlet and both cars.

So now the fun part of the whole equation is that I have to figure out charging schedules 'cause at the moment I have one EVSE and I have two electric cars! Should I install 2 EVSE’s?

Probably not.  Why, based on our driving habits we could get away with charging the Mach-E once a week and the MINI every 2 to 4 days. What is actually happening is about every other day one gets charged then the other.   Only once did I need to charge both cars the same day.

With the Mustang Mach-E being the “hauler” and “trip car” and the Mini Copper being the errand car owning 2 electric vehicles is just….well…not dramatic nor particularly challenging.  

So yes, it can be done!