A columnist went shopping for an electric car, but stopped short of making a full commitment
My father always bought used cars, and the lug nut does not fall far from the wheel. I swear to you my dad even bought used tires, and for several years he drove a beat-up Rambler. Style and status were not part of the equation.
So I had it narrowed down to either an electric Hyundai Kona or a Chevy Bolt, and Costco, which could probably get you a deal on a rocket ship, was offering a Bolt discount at Chevy dealerships.The Kona and Bolt can each go about 250 miles on a full battery charge, which is impressive. But as I began shopping for a new car, I was doing some legwork on a climate change story in the desert.
For all the progress on electric cars in the last 10 years, we’re still a long way from having enough options and enough public charging stations to make BEVs convenient for everyone., or 8% of all new cars in the state. The pandemic nicked sales a bit, which had been above 150,000 in the two previous years.that found that 20% of Californians who bought electric vehicles between 2012 and 2018 later switched back to gas vehicles.
“There’s a lot of work to be done over the next decade if we’re going to make electric cars work for everyone,” said Wood, and still unanswered is the question of how to pay for all those chargers.Producing electric batteries for clean energy is dirty business. “By 2025, I think that we’ll be in an even better place. Many people will know someone with an electric car, most dealerships and brands will have multiple EVs that they are pushing, and charging will be even more available,” Reichmuth said.I took a half step into the future. I got myself a plug-in hybrid, or PHEV .
I’m guessing the Los Angeles dealership where I got my car is not selling a lot of electric cars, because after I signed the papers, three employees were unable to figure out how to remove the cable from the charging port. They looked as if they were trying to yank the trunk off a baby elephant. Finally, a fourth employee figured it out, and I drove away, a brand-new member of a very small club.