DEAD CAR
My car of 14 years died in October. We bought an EV. The first thing we did with the EV
was drive from Maine to Montana to Idaho. An EV adventure. In hindsight, you just don’t do that with an EV. As you go West, we learned, charging stations get less, unless of course you
bought a Tesla.
RANGE ANXIETY
Naïve to the bone, we installed at least eight separate apps on our cellphones to locate
EV charging stations and then began hop-scotching our way westward from charger to
charger. We experienced moments of “range anxiety.” It’s a real thing. We’re not simply
cruising in our EV, listening to a book on Audible, and eating chips. Oh no. We’re busy
road beavers on an endless scavenger hunt for charging stations. Will they be
operational? Will they be fast-charging (30 to 60 minutes) or slow-charging (hours-long
to eternity)? We stopped every couple hours to avoid the ultimate embarrassment of
running out of juice on the road and calling a tow truck. (More about that later.) In short,
driving an EV into unscouted territory is exhausting.
One bright spot was Walmart, a charging oasis. Walmarts have fast chargers, and you
can go shopping while you wait! A good thing, because one spree included the
purchase of extra underwear, a necessity as the trip wore on.
JUST BUY AN ADAPTER
It gradually dawned on us that we’d have trouble making it across North Dakota and Montana, due to too few chargers and cold temperatures, which affect battery efficiency.
To be sure, there are plenty of Tesla chargers in all these tiny towns and truck stops along the way, but alas, we were not Teslavarians. I would never buy a Tesla from Elon Musk, although I do covet his ubiquitous stations.
The salesman at the car dealership in Maine had told us that we could buy an adapter to use at Tesla chargers. Brilliant! In a marvel of modern technology, we ordered such an adapter from Amazon on a Saturday morning in Madison, Wisconsin, and picked it up the next morning in Eau Claire at an Amazon storage locker. My husband punched in the correct code, and the door popped open to reveal our package. I cannot overstate our euphoria, short-lived as it was. Alas, the adapter did not work. After Googling more intensely, we discovered only Rivian and Ford EVs are outfitted to use Tesla charge stations. The rest of us? Well, you get the picture.
FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA
As we crossed Minnesota, we realized we wouldn’t make Bozeman, Montana, our initial
destination, in time for Thanksgiving with our two sons. Drastic situations require drastic
actions. When we pulled into the UHaul station in Fargo, North Dakota, temperatures
hovered in the ‘teens and a wicked wind made it deadly cold. With frozen fingers we
hooked up a UHaul trailer to a UHaul truck and loaded our EV. Sheepishly, we skulked
out of town.
Even so, you can’t imagine our relief climbing into a purely analog, gas-powered vehicle
with a crappy radio, a drafty window, and uncomfortable seats. Pure mental luxury. No
more charging apps, no more range anxiety. Just a truck, a trailer, and a car forging
westward.
We did make it to Bozeman in time for the holiday. We toyed with dropping the UHaul in Bozo and driving the car to Driggs, Idaho, our final destination. But armed with the wisdom of eight days (I know, embarrassing) on the road in an EV, we said no and saddled up the car. A good thing, too. Apps indicated there were three chargers on the way to Driggs. One charger was purely aspirational and had yet to be installed. The other two were shut down because the company that owned them went bankrupt. Now that we’ve safely settled and have daily access to a charger, we have only one final concern: How will we ever get back to Maine in the spring?
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