Putting Convenient Home EV Charging vs Public EV Charging Into Perspective

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A couple of months ago, I published an article about how well electric cars work as primary cars. On the CleanTechnica repost, reader “AltairIV” made a superb comment and I asked if we could republish it. Luckily, he was happy to see it reach more eyes and enthusiastically replied, “It would be an honor!” Slow and always busy me took ~2 months to get to it, but here it finally is (following the image from BMW, and with a Fastned image added on the bottom):

It seems that it’s very hard to keep people from overly focusing the negative and de-emphasizing the positive. Lets see if an analogy will help…

Imagine you are offered a job that is comparable to your current one in duties and has about the same pay and benefits, or even a bit better. Also, 95% of the time it will be easier and you will have better working conditions than in your current position. But of course there’s a catch. For the other 5% of the time you will have to work just a bit harder than you do now, under slightly more difficult and stressful conditions.

Would you take the job? I’d say it would be foolish to turn such an offer down, wouldn’t you?

That’s what an EV is like for many people right now. 95% of the time it is perfectly suitable for their daily lives and offers benefits that ICE cars cannot. They go to work, they go to the store, they go home and plug in overnight, and the next day they’re ready to go again. No gas-ups, no oil changes or breakdowns, just quiet, clean rides with few hassles and the satisfaction of knowing that they aren’t spewing noxious emissions everywhere. But maybe about 5% of the time, generally when they need to go on longer trips, they have to put just a bit more effort into it than before. They either have to plan their iteneraries more carefully or rent a gasmobile for the trip. Nothing generally too onerous, really, but just requiring a bit of planning and foresight to manage properly.

So when we consider the overall picture honestly, do the benefits outweigh the hassles? Is having to rent a car to visit granny in Scotland twice a year really such a terrible thing?