Rented the first time I was there. The T is right there at the airport and goes direct to MIT, Harvard, and Tufts. Never did again, used it and Uber ever since.
I’m 80 years old and recently purchased a Tesla Model Y Premium RW drive. It is the best thing I’ve ever done to make sure I extend my life. The car on Self-Driving is a much safer driver than I am, particularly at night. Self-driving has allowed us to continue to socialize with our friends without the anxiety of driving at night, especially in the rain. Finding chargers on long trips is easy, as Tesla intuitively knows when you will run low on power and suggests stops that align with the closest Superchargers and includes them as part of your route.
If Self-driving wasn’t important to me, I’m not sure I’d buy an EV at all. IMHO, Tesla is the only company that gets the re-invention of the automobile as a mode of transportation. While I’m happy to see the days of purchasing gas behind me, it’s Self-driving that is the reason for me to buy an EV, and for now, only Tesla gets that fact and builds their vehicles around that feature.
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You might find that Super Cruise “gets it”, too. OTOH, living in the Bay Area you wouldn’t need a car for your night-time autonomous vehicle fix — just the apps for Waymo and its 3 competitors (soon to be 4). There are an estimated 2,000 AVs driving across 3 counties.
He probably lives in the Bay Area where $5.70/gal is more likely
My recent trip from Prescott, AZ to Grand Junction in my Miata took 11.5 hours by the clock but only 10.5 actual due to a time zone change. I made 4 stops: 2 bio-breaks and 2 combined refuel/bio-breaks which altogether totaled about 90 minutes or an average of 22.5 minutes each. Thus the breaks would have been on par with using an EV.
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I own a 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 6 and charge it at home between 11 pm and 7 am at the Georgia Power rate of $0.022/KwHr (that’s not a typo!). I usually charge it when my power level is between 20 and 30% remaining for about $5 to “fill it up” to 80% charge.
I took it in for “service” as recommended by the dealer at 8k miles. They rotated the tires for free and offered to change the cabin air filter for $220. I declined the latter because I had already replaced the cabin filter myself with a HEPA filter from Amazon for $20.
I love the car for Atlanta driving but longer trips (more than ~220 miles) are somewhat of a hassle. As much as I hate to support Tesla (for political reasons), after purchasing a Tesla adapter, finding convenient chargers has become much easier. The most annoying issue is finding EVs still connected to chargers after the charging session is over with the drivers nowhere in sight. Imagine if that happened at a gas pump.
All-in-all, I don’t think I’d ever go back to a gas-burner, and I’ve always been a car-nut. I’m an official senior these days and have never in my life owned a car with an automatic transmission…all 5 speeds (when I was young) and 6-speed sticks thereafter. I love my Ioniq 6 (all-wheel drive), and it handles almost as well as my previous BMW 340iX.
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Doesn’t Tesla charge an idle fee if you leave your car connected after it’s charged? Electrify America certainly does, and I assumed they all did. Perhaps people are just unperturbed by the costs?
I think your final sentence is the answer. Tesla does charge, to the best of my knowledge. Obviously, they don’t charge enough!
Similar sized Chinese EVs seem to be able to go further on an equivalent single charge. Just saying.
South Florida. Miami just got the first cybercabs from Tesla, but we’re out of their service area. Super Cruise is a great first step, but without being tied into the GPS or allowed on local streets, it falls far short of Tesla’s Self-Driving.
Adam – you write: ‘I was surprised how many commenters took the story as evidence against ever buying an electric vehicle’.
It is not all that surprising, considering how much thought, time and effort you clearly had to put into planning and executing your trip(s).
I am all for low or zero-emission vehicles, but I think that range anxiety will continue to be a thing until new battery technologies emerge. I am in the UK, and I would never contemplate a pure EV unless it had a genuine range in excess of 600 miles.
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Thank you, Adam, for this. I am still driving a petrol motor but plan to get an EV within 12 months. In particular I am grateful for the advice about ABRP.
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I think the fact that I took the time to write it all down makes it seem like a lot more. I have to assume that anyone driving 300 miles for a three-day weekend in another city is doing quite a bit of planning already in terms of finding accommodation (and thus a destination), picking a route when there are multiples, making sure the car is ready (we would often gas up before leaving town because familiar gas stations are easier), figuring out the schedule of when to leave and when to return, and so on.
I suspect I’ll get faster at this as I learn the apps better, but this was probably only 15-30 minutes of planning surrounding the drive itself.
I’ve been telling local friends with EVs about ABRP, and most don’t know. So it’s definitely worth spreading the word!
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I’ve been on the wait list for over 4 years now with my EV delivery date always slipping (it was originally in 2023). Even though they are still saying it will be in 2026, I know there are a few thousand ahead of me plus i figure they will find another reason to kick the delivery can down the road again for everyone. Is ABRP worth getting and using with my Miata and Jetta TDI?
Volvo is spruiking the launch of the EX60 in Australia. The range and charging times are impressive:
https://www.volvocars.com/au/news/the-best-in-any-car-I-have-ever-tested/
That’s an interesting article. This part stuck out to me.
As Marie Claire editor Georgie McCourt puts it: the EX60 is “the electric family SUV Australia has been waiting for”.
This “family SUV” here in the US lands north of $60k. I hope “families” in Australia are affluent.
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I think the average price of a new vehicle in the US has been around $50,000 for at least a couple years, while the median annual personal income is around $45,000. So a $60,000 Volvo SUV is more than a year’s earnings for a lot of people but not too far off from what a typical car buyer pays. On the other hand, full-sized pickup trucks now cost $70,000 on average.
(note for statistics fans: the auto industry focuses on average selling price, not the median when reporting sales figures, unfortunately. Using the average is somewhat distorted currently because very few budget-priced cars are produced these days and premium priced SUVs and trucks are popular)
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