Nine Years Driving Electric–a Look Back

By Paul Gipe

This fall it will be nine years since Nancy Nies, my wife, and I leased our first Electric Vehicle (EV). Doesn’t seem that long ago, but it was practically pre-history as far as EVs are concerned.

Since the fall of 2014 I’ve written extensively about our experience driving electric, why we did it, and how it’s worked for us. (I am not going to recount those articles here. There will be links below.)

2015 Nissan Leaf

We began our journey with a low-capacity, low -range Nissan Leaf. Ostensibly it had a 24 kWh traction battery, but only 22 kWh of that were usable. On a good day, it had a range on a level road of about 100 miles, often less.

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Bakersfield’s at the bottom of the San Joaquin Valley. If you wanted to drive east, west, or south you have to climb out of the valley. That takes a lot of juice—juice that was in short supply with the Leaf.

You don’t notice it in a conventional car because the engine is so inefficient and you have so much powerful fuel in the gas tank. In an EV with a very small “fuel tank” you have to watch your fuel carefully. This necessitated “drafting” behind heavy trucks in the truck lane when climbing the “grapevine” toward Los Angeles. It also required stopping at the top of the pass and recharging before heading down the other side.

In 2014 there were very few places to charge—even in California. In those days, we searched out RV parks with 240-volt outlets and truck stops with kiosks for overnight parking. We carried a bag full of cables, adapters, and a powerful mobile charge cable so we could charge anywhere there was an outlet.

We made it work. And we had fun. Nancy misses those days. They were of necessity slower. We would drive an hour and then have to charge. We brought our lawn chairs and a picnic basket. We made each trip an adventure. We had plenty of time to walk around, read, and nap. By driving the Leaf we got to see a side of California most never see.

We still had a gasser—a conventional car—for longer trips the Leaf couldn’t do at all.

2014 Volt

In 2016 we dumped the gasser for a Chevy Volt. It was an extended range EV with a gasoline engine backup. For much of the time we owned it, we drove it as an EV. On longer trips we’d drive about 30 miles on electricity and then the remainder on premium gasoline.

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The Volt was a surprisingly well built car. Being a former GM employee who wasn’t happy about his experience with the company, the Volt called for a reappraisal of my attitude toward all things GM. The company could actually build good cars—when it wanted to.

Still, we didn’t keep the Volt long or drive it much. After one year we downsized to one vehicle: sold the Volt and returned the leased Leaf. We went all electric and haven’t looked back.

2017 Bolt

We jumped to a 2017 Chevy Bolt as our sole vehicle at the cost of a cell-phone plan. It was night and day compared to the Leaf. The Bolt had a “big” battery, 60 kWh of usable capacity, a spacious cabin, and refined appointments by our economy car standards. It was hard to imagine that it was a Chevy.

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In a small car–Chevy calls the Bolt a “compact utility vehicle” or CUV–a 60 kWh battery is more than enough. And as California began building out its charging infrastructure, it was beginning to be possible to go anywhere in the state with a Bolt. Not quite anywhere, but close to anywhere.

We drove that Bolt in places we probably shouldn’t have. But it worked—and got us in and out—once requiring us to drive off road in a remote area.

We were so happy with the Bolt that when the lease was up, we decided to buy one and keep it as long as we wanted.

2020 Bolt

Since we bought a 2020 Bolt we’ve driven it 32,000 miles and have no plans to stop driving it. It works for us.

While many 2020 Bolt owners never got a new battery during the great battery recall, we did. The battery in our Bolt was one of the flawed ones. Being the nerd that I am, I identified the cell that was failing and took it to the local dealer who replaced the battery under warranty.

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We’ve already driven 12,000 miles on the new battery and it works even better than the first one.

Your Mileage May Vary

On average, we get about 4.2-4.3 miles/kWh in the Bolt in both highway and city driving. That’s much better than the early Leaf and far exceeds many modern EVs. Many of the new EVs on the market are huge SUVs that get less than 3 miles/kWh. The Bolt runs rings around them on efficiency.

Driving Electric Gipe Nies Nine Years

To charge at home, we use a 40-amp Level 2 ClipperCreek that we installed in 2014. It’s worked almost flawlessly in the nine years we’ve been using it. On occasion it has mysteriously tripped off, but it has otherwise restarted on its own or I’ve gone out and restarted it. The EVSE (Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment) delivers 32 amps at 240 volts to the car or ~7 kW. That’s more than enough for this size car. We typically charge overnight or on a weekend afternoon.

I once calculated that we do 90% of our charging at home. We’ve used 17,000 kWh since the ClipperCreek was installed. All told, we’ve probably consumed 19,000 kWh driving more than 80,000 miles on electricity.

Cost Savings

Obviously, we don’t pay for gasoline. We buy electricity instead. And electricity in California is among the most expensive in the continental United States. Has driving on this very expensive electricity saved us money?

That’s a tricky question, requiring a number of assumptions. Here’s what I know. We’ve paid an average of $0.22/kWh since 2014. I know that because I am a nerd and have been keeping monthly records of our utility costs for decades. We’re currently paying close to $0.40/kWh!

I also know what the average cost of gasoline in California has been during the past eight years courtesy of the EPA: $3.60/gal. That’s the average. It’s been more than $5/gal at times. It’s cheaper elsewhere, but that’s the average here.

Our last gasoline-powered car was a Prius—of course. We averaged 41 mpg over 30,000 miles. That’s not the EPA mileage or Toyota’s promotional number. That’s the real average over all that time. As I said I am a nerd. I have a log of it.

So we paid ~$4,200 for 19,000 kWh of electricity. If we’d driven the Prius for 80,000 miles we would have paid ~$7,200. We saved ~$3,000 over the past nine years. We’ve replaced two sets of tires, two sets of wipers, and some washer fluid. That’s been the extent of our maintenance.

Now, if we’d driven a car with the average mileage of new vehicles in 2021 of 25 mpg, gasoline would have cost us ~$11,600 over that period—more than twice and almost three times more than what we paid for electricity. We would never buy a car with such woeful mileage ourselves. My recommendation now to friends and family is never buy a vehicle that gets less than 100 mpg.

Of course, these are just averages. Your mileage may vary.

Driving electric has worked for us.