I woke up two days ago to these gorgeous photographs from my cousin in South Africa. They are stunningly beautiful and made me both happy and homesick. This is in Port Alfred, the small fishing town where I spent my summers growing up.
We, at the same time, were collecting our rental car to take a 600km drive through icy snowy Sweden to visit my husband’s family. It all started out okay, with a brand new car.
We normally rent hybrid cars, but about 1 hour in, we realised that our car was 100% electric. Neither of us knew anything about electric cars. How to charge them, where to find charging stations, how long a charge would hold. We looked at the dashboard in horror as our charge rapidly disappeared.
The short version is that our normal six-hour journey took 10.5 hours. We discovered that there were many out-of-order charging stations, long queues to use charging stations, and that it was horrifically expensive. We were not familiar with using the different modes of driving to conserve energy.
We considered changing cars at the rental place here so that we can have a petrol or diesel car on the return trip. But we want to do the trip home and see how much of a difference it will make now that we know the car is electric. We are going to plan our trip accordingly and recharge at less popular rest stops. We will have to leave much earlier though.
We will continue to use hybrids and start using electric cars when we do short trips, but I will not travel a long distance in an electric car until the infrastructure is better. Particularly in winter. As it is now, as a woman, I would never ever drive an electric car long distances alone. Most of the charging stations were in dark, secluded spots at the edge of parking lots. And running out of charge would be a frightening experience.
Janet, I’m grateful that I don’t drive, I know that electric cars are getting better and going further on a full charge but it still worries me that there are so few charging stations and what there are seem to be expensive to use. Good luck on the journey home and I wish you a safe trip.
The pictures from South Africa are gorgeous!
I have to say that I’m very clueless when it comes to electric cars. I feel the same way you do about not taking long trips or being alone when charging. Is it more expensive than petrol, you think? I think that Germany has the most expensive electricity in the world or at least in Europe. I’m holding tight to my petrol car for now! I hope today is a better day than yesterday!
Our trip there and back (1200km) will be double what petrol would have cost. Diesel would have been even cheaper. So e-vehicles for us and long trips is a no-no right now with the infrastructure as it is. But if we owned an e-car in Stockholm we could charge it for free using the solar panels on our roof. Then short trips would basically cost us nothing.
It’s really good that charging your car by your building is free… Now that is worth it. But yes, long trips is probably not the best…
I remember blue bottle jellyfish stings (top picture)
Oh yes! It happened to me once and after that I was so careful!
for all of those reasons an EV is not in my future…hope your return trip is easier.
I am dreading it, to be honest. It is so icy and cold too