The age of electric vehicles has already arrived

I have driven from Brooklyn, New York, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, (about 1,150 miles) in my 2018 Tesla Model 3 three times without range anxiety. The average stop time was between 15 and 20 minutes after a 200 mile or so drive. My first drive back in 2018 took about two hours longer than the 2022 trip because of the slower superchargers. And today, you have way more stops along the route. The car maps out the charging stops for you. But you can opt out at any time and go to the next supercharging station.

Now, the range on a Model 3 Tesla can be 358 miles, but if you choose a non-Tesla EV, I agree with the writer of the March 20 letter, “Electric vehicles have a long way to go,” that road trips are problematic because of minimal and unreliable fast charging infrastructures like ChargePoint, EVgo, Electrify America, etc. But, that’s rapidly going to change because of the billions in federal money that will go into improving these chargers and the fact that Tesla is opening up their supercharging network to non-Teslas across the United States (they are already doing it in Europe).

Lastly, while it’s true the price before the $7,500 tax abatement and possible state incentive of a Tesla Model 3 starts at $43,000, that’s about the average price car buyers pay today for a non-electric vehicle. And the maintenance of an EV is far cheaper (the most expensive thing I had to buy in my four years has been a set of tires). For the non-EV, there are oil changes, spark plugs, antifreeze, high gas prices, possible muffler and catalytic converter and other engine issues.

The automobile started slowly replacing the horse and buggy around 1900.

But by 1910, automobiles outnumbered buggies. Today, we will see the swift switch to EVs by 2033.