I noticed an announcement of a car that has 450 mile range. That is very significant. In theory, a person would be able to drive 900 miles. That means driving coast to coast in three days, almost. That is certainly something I could live with. If I were still working, it would allow me to drive 200 miles each way to work; or, more likely, 100 miles each way to work for two days. That would be plenty for most of us. If work is just 40 miles away, as it was for me, we can drive the entire work week without one recharge. It might even make it through the weekend too.

So what is the EV, a Cadillac. The price, $125 K. The chances of me being able to afford one, 0. Actually, less than 0. I was barely able to afford the 40K for the Nissan I have. However, I am sure my insurance agent would like it if I bought it. I am sure his share of the insurance payment would be very significant.

Still, maybe one day I will rent one, just to see what it’s like.

While I am on the subject of EVs, I don’t really think that anyone really likes the idea as they would like us to think. If there was really a push on it, there would be an all out effort to get the charger stations out there. There should be one charger station, minimum, every 40 miles along the interstates. I don’t see that yet. I don’t even see any effort for it.

Moreover, some standardization needs to be made. I have mentioned this before, but every station should be able to serve as a level II charging station. That would charge my car from 10% to 80% in about 5 hours. Not ideal, true. However, it might keep us from getting stranded. I might be tempted to drive a little more.

Finally, on another front, one battery builder has released that they are working on 20 year batteries. This is very significant as very few would keep their car more than 10 years. If nothing else, it would increase the trade in value of the car.

Most people are not aware as to what determines battery life. Let me explain it this way. My car, new has a range of about 210 miles. When it drops down to a little over 140 miles, then they consider it time to replace the battery. However, in general, you can continue to use the same batteries. It just is that it gets less and less convenient. (my batteries are warranted for 10 years or 70 K miles. If I can’t get 140 miles out of my car with just 50 K miles, then they have to replace the batteries. First, I don’t guess that happens much. Second, I likely won’t know it. I only have 3K miles after one year. As I said, I’m retired. I don’t drive much. The main reason I got the car. At 76, I don’t think I will be driving another 10 years and I certainly am not going to put 70K miles on the car.