Learning to Slow Down with Electric Cars

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One of the weaknesses of Electric cars is that they take longer to refuel than a petrol burning car. One of the advantages of electric cars is that they take longer to refuel than a petrol burning car. For some people this is a deal breaker. They don’t want to be forced to wait from two to 12 hours for their car to charge. I think that this could be a strength of electric cars.

Taking a Break

When you drive a conventional car you go to see people for an hour or two, and then you get in the car and you drive home. With an electric car you don’t behave like this. You drive somewhere that has a plug. You plug in the car and then you sit down, write a blog post, and then you go and see people. You even go for a walk with this people, have lunch, and more.

With a petrol car you go to see people and you can leave whenever you want. With the electric car you need to slow down. You need to give the car time to recharge from an ordinary wall socket. Plenty of buildings do not have the capacity to fast charge cars, so that’s where learning to slow down comes in to play.

Driving Speed

Yesterday I drove home at rush hour and I welcomed that traffic was slow. In a petrol car I would be frustrated and impatient to get from A to B but in an electric car I am not. The reason is simple. If you accelerate fast you waste energy. If you drive fast you burn more energy. If you drive at traffic jam speeds you use less energy for your trip. Instead of using 10 or more percent for a set journey you use seven to eight percent. When 10 percent equates to two hours of waiting for the car to charge, it pays to drive more conservatively.

If you drive at rush hour you can drive more conservatively, without annoying other road users.

The Jubilee Line Experience

When you take Jubilee line trains, or electric buses you hear the sound of the motors as they accelerate, or regenerate power as they slow down. It is a fun sound. You get a tamer version of this with electric cars. I find it fun.

And Finally

If I was driving to the shops and back I would be using one percent or less per trip. To recharge the battery after such trips would take a few minutes, rather than a few hours. Electric cars encourage short trips as charge times are lower but they also encourage longer drives to be for longer periods of time. In so doing electric cars encourage us to take the time to experience the places we drive to.