EARLY ADOPTERS Imagine parallel parking, facing up a steep hill, and wanting to move a few inches forward to fit in the spot. That can be a challenging task in a gas car, but it's very easy in an electric vehicle. I'd read about this stuff before we got our RAV4-EV, but I didn't really understand it until I'd been driving electric for a couple of months. Now on those occasions when I drive a gas car, it's startling how awkward it seems. Soon there will be young people learning to drive in electric cars. I suspect those people will look at driving on gasoline the same way we think of horse and buggies: quaint, but not something you'd want to do every day.
Charge Times
The single most frequent question I answer for people is "how long does it take to charge?" The answer to that question is both complex and misleading. Once you really understand how driving electric is different from driving gas, you realize it's not even the right question to ask. We all understand the process involved with fueling a gas car. It's so simple and common it doesn't even occur to us to consider the thought process that goes into it. In a gas car, you drive until the gas tank is low enough that you feel it's necessary to gas up. You drive to a gas station and (assuming you can afford it) you fill the tank up to full. No one pops into a gas station with 3/4 of a tank to add a gallon of gas. Going to the gas station is annoying, so no one does it any more than absolutely required. Driving electric is different. Charging is easy and convenient, mostly done at home, and requires only a few seconds of your time to plug in. You almost never do a full charge from empty to full, you just charge back up to full each night. This might take a few minutes or a few hours, but you don't care because you don't have to stand there
26 CHARGED JAN/FEB 2012
while it charges. If someone asks me how long it takes to charge the RAV4-EV and I tell them five hours, it can picture the image going through their head. They imagine me driving to the grocery store, realizing I'm running out of charge, pulling
into a charging station and waiting five hours before I can go buy my gallon of milk. That's how it works with a gas car, but only because filling up is inconvenient but quick. With an electric car, you start every day with a full charge