$6.00?... That was the increase in my monthly electricity bill during the month of August. Normally, I would not have paid any
attention to my electricity bill, but in the month of August I drove Mitsubishi's all electric i-MiEV, so I was curious to see
what sort of impact charging the car at home would have on my bill. Now, if I
had been driving my BMW MINI, I would have used at least a tank of gas for the same mileage. A full tank is about $65 at the current price. $65 vs $6?...
I think back to where I drove the EV during that month. Many of the trips were around
Aurora, Ontario where I live. I ran in-town errands and lots of back and forth between the GO train station and my house. For that distance, a gas powered car would hardly have had time to
warm up, let alone drive efficiently. Some trips were for business in Markham and Richmond Hill. In some of the cases, I let other people test drive the car. Usually they all wanted to see how fast it would go and would stomp on the accelerator. I say "accelerator" because you can't really say "gas pedal" when talking about an electric car, but I didn't feel guilty slamming down on the pedal because I knew that all I had to do was go home, plug-in and wake-up in the morning to a "full tank" of electrons.
At $6.00 for the month, I felt a little smug driving the i-MiEV as if I had discovered the secret to cold fusion or downloaded my first song from the internet. And the best part of it was the feeling that I was the only one who knew. That kind of smug. It made me think that driving an EV is kind of like sailing. When I am on a sailboat, the wind gently heeling over me, moving the boat along, I cannot help think that I'm cheating. Here I am moving along and I don't need an expensive and noisy gas or
diesel engine. I am harnessing a force of
nature and am being whisked along to my destination leaving only a ripple in the water
behind. That is how I feel driving an EV. I have harnessed a force of nature
and am whisking silently along the road to my destination leaving only... well, I don't leave anything behind really except the other cars in my rear-view mirror. That kind of smug!
Ron Groves, Manager of Education and Outreach
Plug'n Drive
