I just bought a squeegee to clean the windshield of my Leaf. I haven't been to a gas station in almost a month. I used to clean my windshield when I bought gasoline. If that's the only downside to not patronizing service stations, I can live with it. I suppose I might have to visit a gas station occasionally to put air in my tires, but that's no longer a free service anyway. Both are do-it-yourself, but I could clean my windshield for free; air costs a quarter. The squeegee cost me about $5.
Of course, I much prefer washing my windshield at home to frequenting a service station for a fossil fuel fix, even if I don't have to pump my own gas here in Oregon. As an EV owner I pump my own electricity at home, and this is also preferable.
I didn't do anything notable by buying a Leaf. It did not take any particular talent, competency, or a higher intelligence quotient. Anyone who has enough money or can qualify for financing (and who has the patience to wait a year) can get one. The requirements are about equal whether you buy an electric vehicle or one that runs on gasoline. Perhaps I am helping in a very small way to slow the rate of climate change, but I'm not sure this is any better than buying carbon offsets. What I would like to believe is that I am helping drive the creation of an infrastructure that will support electric vehicles.
In my daily commute and other sojourns around the city I only infrequently see other electric vehicles, certainly less than one per day on average. What I am most aware of are the thousands of other cars on the road, all burning fossil fuel. Even the hybrids rely on gasoline more than they do electricity. When plug-in hybrids start appearing on our thoroughfares, I suspect that nearly all of them will exceed the limits of their electrical ranges on most days. All of the cars rolling off the assembly lines in Kentucky and Michigan and Indiana and Korea and Japan and Germany and wherever else automobiles are being built, are designed to run on fuel pumped at gas stations. They combine the fuel with air, a cylinder compresses the mixture which is then exploded, causing the piston to turn the crank shaft. The end products are force (desirable) and exhaust (not so desirable). I suppose when the first Model T rolled off the assembly line, gas stations were few and far between. Most of the roads in those days were ruts created by wagon wheels, dusty in the summer and muddy or frozen in the winter. But as people bought those cars, the need for conveniently located refueling and a better medium upon which to drive at the faster speeds those horseless buggies were capable of created a market for service stations and tar-bound macadam. Eventually gasoline burning vehicles evolved to the stage where large fuzzy dice hanging from rearview mirrors and scrotums dangling from the rear bumpers of pickup trucks became necessities (which, it occurs to me, is an argument against intelligent design).
The more electric vehicles there are on the road, the greater will be the demand for public charging stations and other methods to make electric vehicles a viable alternative to the internal combustion engine. What the early adopters are doing is foregoing the luxury of unlimited range which the gas guzzlers take for granted. Terms like pioneer and new frontier do not come to mind.
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