Will an Electric Car Fit My Needs?

My perspective on cars is different than most, I want to get the most VALUE out of my car. That means driving it as long as possible. My current car is approaching 11 years old. It is a 2012 Honda Ridgeline and has 182,000 miles on it. A lot has changed in the car market since 2012. The materials are plush, the gadgets are flashy, and the price is equal to what I spent on my first house. Add to that the entirely new brand of cars. The electrics. Do I get swayed by the politics of the cars? Not really. But the speed and torque draw me to them, enough to make want to research if an electric would be a good fit for me, but how do I go about that?

First I am going to look at my driving needs. Next I want to look at an infrastructure comparison measured against my needs to see if the Infrastructure is able to support my needs.

Driving Needs

Prior to Covid I drove on average 398 miles per week. We can round that up to 400 miles per week. During and after Covid I now average 68 miles per week. We can round that up to 70 miles. That equates to an average of 20,702 miles driven per year. Since Covid that has dropped to only 3,542 miles per year. I even took the time to break my driving needs down into what I will call local driving needs verse long distance driving needs. My local needs included anything I had to do on a daily basis. Long distance driving needs included 100+ mile drives, which turned out to be for vacations. Prior to covid only 4% of my driving was considered long distance. After Covid that number jumped to 21%. Given that change it is important to look at my typical long distance commute during my infrastructure comparison. In fact, that is the only infrastructure comparison I am going to need because my entire weekly driving miles (70 miles per week) now is far below that of what an average electric car battery can supply (as of 2022 the average electric car has a range of 300 miles). I would be able to charge the car at home and drive slightly over three weeks before having to charge it again.

Infrastructure Comparison

Given what I have just learned I now need to look at what are my typically long-distance drives? Looking back my typical long drives include a visit with relatives, a visit to the shore, and we enjoy taking our son to Washington DC to visit the Smithsonian’s. The routes I typically follow are highlighted in light grey in the images below and can be seen on the map below.

The routes I typically follow for my common long trips

Well, the results are already in. Since none of my “TYPICALL” long drives is longer than the average range of an electric car today I should be fine considering an electric car. I just need to make sure there are plenty of options to charge once I reach my destination. I’ll do the analysis anyway just because I am interested to see how the infrastructures compare.

Time to Get the Data

I was able to collect a dataset that included 1982 gas stations and 1404 charging stations. You can download a copy of the datasets here.

Next, I want to see how convenient the stations are to the routes I will be traveling. When I am traveling, I want the gas or charging station to be accessed quickly from the road. I am going to first look at stations that are within a quarter mile of the road or a half mile diameter around of road. In my current car I have had to stretch that sometimes so I will also look at half mile from the road or 1 mile diameter. Then in the worst-case scenario I will, if I must, travel up to 5 miles. If I need to do this, it would be a deal breaker though. I could not make a habit of traveling that far out of my way on a road trip.

The image below shows my route and the buffer areas I described above being the 10 mile, 1 mile, and half mile diameter buffer areas.

Doylestown to Avalon

By looking at the next three maps you can see the number of gas verse charging stations within a quarter mile of the route are roughly equal. Both the gas and electric charging stations have a 20ish mile gap between Turnersville, NJ and Hammonton, NJ.

My only concern is when you get to the shore and realize there are only a few charging station South of Wildwood while there are plenty of gas stations.

Doylestown to Schenectady

After doing the in-depth comparison between the gas in electric charging infrastructures and knowing all of these routes can be accomplished with a full charge from my starting location I focused more on the availability of chargers at my destinations. Upon knowing the availability of charges in both Schenectady and Washington are much robust compared to Avalon I am comfortable considering an electric car during my upcoming car search.

Doylestown to Washington, DC

I did a quick analysis of the Doylestown to Washington DC route as well and feel comfortable with the infrastructure.