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Posting here seems to have taken a back seat to other things, to the likely disappointment of nobody. I may be making some more posts in the near future, though no promises.
Today I'm taking a look back on a year of driving an electric vehicle. A year ago today I picked up my Model 3. I had intended to make some posts about the experience of EV ownership as someone who lives in an apartment, without any access to charging at home or work. However, there never really seemed to be much to say that I didn't already say in my first couple of posts on the Model 3.
In short, charging the car over the past year has certainly been doable, though definitely more inconvenient that it would be if I could charge at home. It helps that I have a relatively short daily commute and don't (at the moment) do a whole lot of driving outside of the back and forth to work - though I try to limit my driving largely because it reduces the amount of time I have to spend charging.
As such, I have usually been able to do most of my charging while running errands on Saturday mornings. Though I don't always have that many errands to run so I do sometimes have to fill in the time with other things. This is one of the main sources of inconvenience. If I could charge at home, then I could do errands much faster - more like a surgical strike, rather than padding out time. But, it's generally doable, if at times a bit inconvenient.
Winter was a bit more challenging than the rest of the year. With the overall lower efficiency of EV driving in the winter, combined with the need to warm up the battery before getting much of a charge, charging generally took longer. To help deal with this I tended to do a mid-week charging session to help cut down the time needed to charge on the weekend and also so that the battery could be warmed up a bit more frequently. Again, doable, but inconvenient at times.
Charging infrastructure in my area is - well, it's adequate, I suppose. I generally used the public level 2 chargers since they're cheaper (and closer) than going to the nearest Supercharger (which is about a 20 minute drive away). Since I mostly charge weekend mornings I was usually the only one charging, but on occasion there'd be other people charging which slowed charging down due to how the chargers work. I have noticed some new chargers being installed in the area recently which, I think, is a good sign. It is definitely necessary as the number of EVs continues to increase.
TL;DR / summary: living in an apartment with an EV for a year has been doable, but inconvenient at times - though it certainly helps that I have a short commute; a longer commute would likely make things more difficult. That said, I don't regret getting the EV - I had plenty of time to mull things over so I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into. I am also currently in the process of looking for a place where I will be able to charge at home, which will make things much more convenient. Please look forward to it!
There, that's all for today. With any luck I'll be back in the near future to talk about something completely different.
Freak Out,
-TFitC
