Before the Leaf There Was the Ranger

Part 1 - The Up Side


The Leaf was not the first electric vehicle I've owned. In 2006 I purchased a 1998 Ford Ranger EV pickup truck. It had 8000 miles on it at the time, and I paid about $15,000 for it. It was originally part of a fleet of vehicles owned by Broward County, Florida. I bought it from a guy in Portland who had a passion for electric vehicles. He owned a few Rangers and at least a couple of Chevy S-10 EV pickup trucks at the time.

I'm not sure exactly how I came to be interested in EVs in the first place. I remember reading about the movie Who Killed the Electric Car? in Time Magazine. Eventually the movie was out on DVD and I purchased it. At around the same time I had a patient who owned a Geo Metro that had been converted to run on electricity. The gasoline engine had been replaced with an electric motor, and several batteries (12 volt lead-acid batteries, if I recall correctly) filled the rear compartment. Cool! A short while later he told me he had purchased an electric Ford Ranger. He found it on eBay, paying about $25,000 for it. A year or two newer than the 1998 Ranger I eventually bought, it was powered by NiMH (nickel-metal hydride) batteries, which were more reliable than the 26 lead-acid batteries in my Ranger. 

We went for a ride. It reminded me of riding in the electric city buses in San Francisco when I was a child. Their electric power came from overhead wires. Riding in one was very different from an ordinary bus – no engine roar, no jerky gear shifting, and no stinky exhaust, just quiet, smooth acceleration. (Another interesting feature of these buses was that the trolley poles often disengaged from the overhead wires, so the driver had to get out and guide them back onto the cables.) Riding in this Ford Ranger EV was quite a thrill. I had to have one! Not long after, I noticed an electric pickup truck with a FOR SALE sign on it. It was too good to be true (and in the way it was). It was parked in front of the shop of the guy who owned several electric trucks. I visited with him a bit, then came back with my wife to take a test drive. She was hooked too.

Arranging the financing was interesting. The loan officer at the credit union had never heard of an EV, much less made a loan for one. He had no idea how to estimate the value of this truck, so I sent him links to several websites that featured EVs for sale, including a couple of other electric Rangers. That was good enough to establish the market value for him. The CU got the title, and I got the EV.

She looks brand new here. The charge port cover can be seen to the right of the headlight.

Under the hood.

That Ranger was everything I hoped it would be, and less. It drove just like I expected it would: smooth (for a pickup truck) and quiet. The electric motor had a lot of torque, so acceleration was no problem. It had a top speed of about 70 mph. A dedicated 220 volt circuit was installed in my garage, I purchased a portable charger for about $300, and changed my electric utility service to a time-of-day plan so it would cost less to charge at night. I made two bumper stickers and applied them to the rear of the truck. One said ELECTRIC VEHICLE. The other announced ONLY GAS IN TRUCK IS DRIVER’S. I was having fun. (My wife strongly recommended removing the latter sticker.) There was even a gas tank cover where a service station attendant (we don't pump gasoline in Oregon) might insert a gas pump nozzle, although when you opened the cover there was no receptacle for the nozzle, just a dead end. I thought it would be fun to pull into the nearby 76 station and ask for a fill.

After removing one of the bumper stickers. Look, Ma! No exhaust pipe!

That was about where the fun ended. And this is where this post ends. 


Next: Part 2 - The Under Side.