Mach-E

We love our new EV. But are they for everyone?

Today we joined the “green” revolution by taking delivery of a brand-spanking new Ford Mustang Mach-E, EV. It took a year to arrive, but it's indisputably a wonderful car that was worth the wait. It's my my wife's car and she'll be using it for her 50-mile round-trip commute to work. We have a 220-volt charging station at our house and potentially another one at her work. I ran the numbers and we should be able to keep it adequately charged, even in winter, if we are only able to charge it at home. We're good to go.

We're really, really happy with the car. The dealer here in Pocatello treated us well. Even though EVs are in high demand we got a very fair deal. It's really a nice vehicle too. It was expensive, but we believe that it makes great economic sense for our application.

That last part, “our application,” is key, because despite the clamor from the Green New Deal crowd, EV's currently don't make sense for everybody, perhaps not even for most people. And that's not the end of what's on the table with any potential EV purchase. While on the whole EV's are, indeed, “greener” than conventional fuel vehicles, they are not a social or environmental panacea. You need to understand what you are getting into if you are interested in surfing the wave.

The first thing to know is that your odds of completing a successful, stress-free, cross country trip in an EV is quite low with the present state of infrastructure. This has been thoroughly documented in both the motoring and the mainstream press. EV's take a while to charge – even with a fast charger (which you should not use all of the time anyway) and there's no guarantee that you aren't going to have to wait in line for a charge. It's not at all like pulling into a gas station and being in and out in five minutes.

This won't be the vehicle that we use to visit our in-laws out of state.

The second thing that you need to think about is that while an EV is, indeed, emission free as it goes down the road, the electrical energy that propels is almost certainly not emission free – and is unlikely to be so anytime in the near future. On balance you are producing less emission as you drive than you would in a traditional vehicle. But absolutely no mass-produced EV currently on the road can claim to be “emission free.” All you are doing with any EV is transporting the source of emission away from the car to the point of origin for the electricity - albeit with an improvement in efficiency.