Today on my news feed, I read some article about how the new Tesla was going to charge extra for an additional 19 miles range over their standard of 250-ish miles on a charge. Considering how much hype there is over the newest Tesla, it just makes me sad. It doesn’t look like I’ll ever buy an electric car.<\/p>\n
I’ve always been in love with the idea of an electric drive train. Even forty years ago, I wrote science fiction that talked about electric cars, although mine were a bit different from what you see today. My best-selling novel Star Time<\/b> has an electric vehicle as part of the battle against the aliens. It’s not that I don’t like EV’s. I just could never use one.<\/p>\n
There’s certainly a market for commuter cars. Plug it in overnight and you have enough range for the day’s activities. Many people fit that category. Not me. I’m a traveler.<\/p>\n
I’m a science fiction author. My job consists of two parts; stay at home writing and doing my social media outreach, and traveling to events where I spread my books out on a table and talk to people. If I bought an EV, I’d need a second car to do my traveling because EV’s are a joke when it comes to range.<\/p>\n
As I do every year, I’ll need to pack my books and go to St. Louis. On the range a Tesla gives, I’d never even get across the state line before it ran dry. How many times will I have to recharge it, to travel the 825 miles to get there? How far out of my way will I have to go to search for a charging station, and how long does it take to charge a Tesla (I’ve never seen that number). <\/p>\n
This is just one example. Most of my events are in Texas, but half of them are also out of range. One trip I made to Chicago was extended with an exploration of the western states and I logged several days straight with over 900 miles traveled per day. This is just impossible in an EV. A few years back, one trip logged just under 14,000 miles, including many Canadian provinces. I worried about getting gas in some of those places (like Labrador), and expecting to find EV charging stations is out of the question.<\/p>\n
I suppose I could tow a trailer, carrying a generator that was always running\u2014but that’s just a hybrid in different clothes. <\/p>\n
As I said, I’ll never get to use an EV. They don’t make them for travelers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today on my news feed, I read some article about how the new Tesla was going to charge extra for an additional 19 miles range over their standard of 250-ish miles on a charge. Considering how much hype there is over the newest Tesla, it just makes me sad. It doesn’t look like I’ll ever… Continue reading Where are the Electric Cars for Travelers?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[53,54,55,56],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4t90x-sn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1759"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1760,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759\/revisions\/1760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}