Electric Cars – Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane
Last week I got the opportunity to ride along with my parents in my Mom’s Tesla on a cross-country road trip for the first time. We traveled across Missouri the 3.5 hours from Kansas City to St. Louis to visit relatives, many of whom we hadn’t seen in nearly 2 years because of COVID. When they were first looking at buying an electric car it was understood that because of battery range limitations those vehicles would make good city cars but wouldn’t be nearly as good for any long trips between cities. So, when Tesla announced their Model 3 would have an option for a 300-mile range and would be priced low enough that they could be more likely to be affordable in the long term, my Mom jumped at the opportunity. In many ways, while the electric car market was quietly growing before Tesla, with models like the Nissan Leaf driving the way forward, Tesla has in its own way revolutionized the speed at which electric cars are growing in the American automotive market.
In ideal conditions, at 248 miles, St. Louis is within the range for the Model 3 to make it without stopping to recharge. That said, generally it’s a good idea to stop and recharge in the middle. Yet as much as Tesla has revolutionized electric cars, the batteries are still susceptible to range fluctuations depending on the weather. In this case, we left Kansas City on a blistering cold day, and were lucky to make it as far as the supercharger at a Holiday Inn on the eastern side of Columbia, MO where we could recharge. Superchargers have the benefit of fast charging; it only takes 30 minutes or so for the batteries on a Model 3 like ours to fully recharge at a supercharger. Still, the idea that we were making a “refueling stop” that would take longer than 5 minutes, my usual stop length when I’m driving my Mazda, seemed a little bizarre. Still, the rare moment where we didn’t really have anything to do gave us the opportunity to stand around and chat.
Developments are being made in terms of making electric car charging stations more common across the country. 7-11 announced in June 2021 that they were beginning the process of installing charging points at 250 of their 9,522 stores in the United States. Meanwhile, cities like Kansas City, MO have long had partnerships with their local power companies to provide electric car charging stations at businesses and institutions throughout the city. Going forward, I think it would be well within the best interests of gas station chains like QuikTrip, BP, Speedway, Shell, or Mobil to invest in electric car charging at their locations around the US and globally.
In my own case, I plan on my next car being electric, whether that’s in five years or seven. I currently drive a 2014 Mazda 3, a wonderful sporty car that has proven itself time and again on my long drives between Kansas City and Upstate New York four times a year over the last four years. As much as I love that car, I fully recognize the need to move off fossil fuels and internal combustion in favor of vehicles and other transportation modes that aren’t as harmful to our environment. Thus, my interest in an electric car.
While my ideal would see the United States moving toward more public transit, better electrified rail networks, including a national high-speed rail system, and less car ownership all around, we live in a country rebuilt after the Great Depression and World War II with the car in mind. Here in Kansas City, I’m lucky to live in a neighborhood that is walkable, and that has regular bus service to Midtown and Downtown. I could conceivably even take the city buses as far as KCI Airport and not worry about driving up there at all, though the way the local public transit system is currently set up, connecting buses is more challenging than it needs to be.
As it stands, the US is going to remain a car-dependent country. Better to drive cars that are more sustainable, quieter, and safer. Progress means we continue innovating and moving forward. Let’s do it in electric cars!
Wednesday Blog by Seán Thomas Kane 