By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma

joanne@wktv.org

For Karl Bloss, switching from a gas to an electric car was a fairly straightforward decision.

“My employer at the time had workplace changing and that got me interested, so I looked into how much it cost and developed a worksheet that said I could live with this,” said Bloss who is an engineer and owns two electric cars, a Tesla and a Nissan LEAF. “I started out with a used Nissan LEAF that had about forty miles of range. I had a 10-mile commute so it worked out pretty well. I figured even with a little bit less efficiency in the wintertime and having to run some extra errands after work, it would be just fine and that is exactly what happened.”

Tyler Burke, who owns a Nissan LEAF and helped organize a recent National Drive Electric Week event, said for most people, when choosing a car, efficiency is not the first thing they think of. 

“Is it environmentally friendly is an after thought,” Burke said. “It is the total cost of ownership is what most people find attractive when it comes to electric vehicles or EVs.”

Total cost is relatively low considering maintenance on the vehicles is minimum with windshield wipers and batteries for the key fabs needing to be replaced as there is no tune ups, oil changes, or belts to replace. Bloss noted during ownership, a person may have to replace tires or have the air conditioner worked on but items like the brakes have regenerative breaking, which reduces the need for a driver to hit the brake petal and thus save on repairs.

However the biggest saving, said several who own electric cars, is the gas costs.  

“Well you can figure you can spend about three cents per mile and I know our minivan was about 14 cents per mile,” Bloss said. “If you drive about a 1,000 miles in a month, you are looking at your power bill going up about $30.”

“For a majority of my career was commuting from Kalamazoo to Grand Rapids and I spent nearly $500 a month on gas alone for those trips,” said Gray Vreeland. “Transitioning to an electric its about 60 cents for me to charge it at night for my new commute so that is quite a bit of savings.”

As for finding charging stations, it is not as difficult as you might think with Bloss saying most people are muggles from the Harry Potter world when seeing them. 

“if you don’t know that they are there, you would never realize it. But there are charging stations just about everywhere,” Bloss said. 

Tesla has supercharging stations and a number of other companies have also started to put stations in. Websites, like plugshare.com, shows where many of the stations are located and any mapping service on a smartphone will also help to locate charging stations.

As for range, a 2018 Nissan LEAF has about 150 miles and a Tesla, depending on model, can have a range of 300 miles. Gas cars range do not exceed 400 miles. 

Bloss noted that about every major car company either offers an electric car or are working on an electrification program.

To learn more about electric cars, visit driveelelectricweek.org.