So, I bought this little car the other day. EV Karma - 1971 Karmann Ghia ... On my way home tonight I had this thought - what if I reworked the car well enough to let me avoid driving my gas car for all but a couple days a year? What purpose would it serve to continue owning a vehicle I drive once or twice a year? And then I was just listening to an EVCAST episode (see embedded video below) where they went into much the same question. And it's there's an interesting question here.
I dunno about the rest of y'all but I'm doing this because - if I practice self awareness while driving, while driving my gas car I feel "dirty" and that I've compromised my principles or desires by driving the gas car. And after 10+ years of researching and advocating for EV's, well and 10+ years of desiring to have EV's, it's a very strong desire, that every mile I drive be clean. Unfortunately the design of our cities and the available cars make it very hard to live up to that desire. But I keep experimenting with different methods, and I keep feeling compromised every time I drive the gas car.
Now that I have this beautiful little EV car I want to rework it for enough range/speed so I don't have to compromise myself with a gas car. But there's a pocketbook limitation too. How much budget do I have for batteries and if I'd had the budget maybe I'd have bought a Tesla Roadster long ago. But I don't so I didn't.
One of the principles I've come up with is: No more than one large vehicle per person. Multiple small vehicles where one purpose of the small vehicles is to limit use of the large vehicle. e.g. an electric cargo bicycle for doing grocery store trips rather than firing up the gas car
Unfortunately I'm in violation of the principle right now. (gas car plus karmann ghia) Hence the thought this afternoon is one which would bring me back into alignment with the principle. Own only the karmann ghia and for some long trips rent a gas vehicle.
This posting is about "wants and desires" and not logical reasoning. The idealness is for the EV to handle everything I want to do. And I think the KG can be reworked to handle a huge part, and perhaps have a proper long distance gas motorcycle (honda silverwing or the like) to handle a large part of the rest of my travel. That would reduce the gas car to only serving to haul stuff around and I really do that very few times a year and could rent a truck for those times.
An issue around here is hills. Serious ones. While I live at sea level on flat land within spitting distance is a mountain range that rises to 1500+ feet and goes all the way north to San Francisco. And speaking of which a couple weeks ago I went to a house at the top of a stupendous hill in San Francisco that was astonishing to drive up and of course the view from the house was simply amazing but driving an EV up that hill might be tricky.
the first question is how much range do you need to only need to use another vehicle once or twice a year?
including the 1500ft elevation gain.
from there its a matter of how much battery is needed.
Matt
Daily Ride:
2007 Vectrix, modified with 42 x Thundersky 60Ah in July 2010. Done 194'000km