Photo by John Belmont, Merriam, KS

Ninety-six percent of the country drive gasoline powered cars, but watch out! The climate change apocalypse is going to hit your gas guzzling dinosaur mercilessly. No gasoline in your future means no more resale value for your auto. You will be thinking of your costly carriage in terms of scrap iron value. What will post carbon driving be like?

Sure, you’ll have a transition period of availability at $85 per gallon but not enough time to amortize the car’s purchase price. The old clunker will soon be worth $80 a ton scrap value. Not enough cash to buy a new bicycle. What are your options? Catch the bus or drive electric.

After nine years and 70,000 miles running on electrons I’m an expert. What’s it going to be like?

Not so bad.

The most remarkable thing is how unremarkable your driving transition will be. Will it be quieter, with less vibration, and more instant torque/acceleration? Yes Yes Yes. But that’s it. No bone jarring change at all.

*Gas and electric fuel costs vary but rule of thumb; you will pay half to a third of what you are currently paying.

*Maintenance? Forget about it. Except for tires, wiper fluid and wiper blades, you can say adios to your buddies at the repair shop. Electric motors have so few moving parts and fluids that repairs are going to cost you little time or money.

*Range anxiety and fear of running out of fuel? I used to obsess about being stranded in a snow bank on the Quebec-Maine boarder when I first plugged in. But it never happened, not even once. In the city of course, there are charging stations popping up like mushrooms. More and more preferential parking lots show up everywhere you look. If you have any doubts, check your cell phone aps for nearby stations on CHARGE POINT or PLUG IN. Stations are spreading all over every month.

If you don’t have a garage or miles of extension cord to run out your apartment window, you will have a problem. Overnight charging will continue be an issue, but a diminishing one. While waiting for your own plug-in station, battery fill ups will become as fast as gas pit stops. Super fast stations can already give you more than 50% fill up in 30 minutes, and faster services are on the way.

Anti-conservation conservatives tell you filthy coal generates the fuel for your electric car so what’s the point. That’s true of electric generation only if you live in West Virginia. All other states have a balance of hydro, nuclear, wind and petroleum. The share of carbon powered electric generation is dropping like a rock.

Apart from practical considerations favoring electric driving, my standing among my grandchildren is soaring. In their young minds it’s very cool thing for me to do, and will also make their future less warm. While I treasure their esteem as a tree hugger, in fact my motivation was less Greta Thurnburg’s climate change and more Hugo Chavez.

Hugo was the late Venezuelan strong man who took delight in lambasting America. I was so incensed at the indignity of a socialist goon talking trash about my country and our President, that it was too much. The U.S. was keeping the SOB in business by paying him a fortune for his oil. The ingratitude of Hugo and foreign oil oligarchs like him cinched my purchase. I figured that purchase-and-sale should be a transaction. No need to suck up to the customers but at least he should keep his fowl mouth shut.

Hugo has gone to his reward and no more petro-dollars from this chump.

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