Ive been thinking a lot about what its like to live with an EV recently.
Doing what I do, I often get friends asking me what car they should buy.
Do they ever follow my advice?
No, no they dont.
Soon they wont have a choice, as going electric will bethe only option.
None of this seems to motivate them right now, though.
Let me put you in my shoes.
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
I proceed to bestow the benefits of electricity, how it will save them money in the long run.
Rarely have I been able to get through to them.
The people are still stuck in their ways.
But do my friends have a point?
Are they (the EVs, not my friends) a pain to live with?
Or are my friends more stubborn than I care to admit?
In this long read well find out if they do have a point.
What a lucky boy I am.
With that my week, my adventure, as an EV owner began.
I picked up the Polestar 2 on a Wednesday.
It had about 80% charge, and around 300 km of range at the time.
Its easy to see why they caught on.
used about 8% charge.
There was plenty of stopping and starting, roundabouts, and accelerations out of corners.
All these moments of getting back up to speed, use energy.
More energy than just cruising along conservatively.
Thankfully, with braking regeneration set to max, the car was consuming around 22 kw per 100 km.
Not too bad for this style of driving.
The highlight of the trip came as a happy little surprise once we got to the beach.
As it turns out, theres enough sun in the Netherlands to charge EVs at 22 kWh!
The charge was now sitting above 80%.
Plenty of charge for the home trip, and the following day.
There areliterally hundredsof these dotted around Amsterdam, and they are super easy to use.
The trick, however, is getting to one when its free.
When youre done, simply reverse this process.
Is it possible to survive with an EV without having direct or exclusive access to a charging point?
Its roughly 120 km from Amsterdam.
Its decidedly unlike the Polestar.
Its old, traditional, and is the exact opposite of what the Polestar embodies.
Even so, it felt like a great place to reflect on the past and muse about the future.
His was pulled along by a rather forlorn looking donkey, and thus became known as a Pipowagen.
I would have to get creative and charge at every opportunity.
I drove the car with abandon, and I didnt care one bit about possibly running out of charge.
All it takes is a subtle shift in perspective.
As an EV driver, you quickly stop caring about petrol stations.
They simply dont matter anymore, and soon they become nothing more than an antiquated relic of the past.
A soon-to-be subject for an episode of Black Mirror.
Filling-up becomes a process of management rather than reacting to a red light on your dashboard.
The trick to charging an EV is plugging-in at every opportunity.
Make this part of your routine, and youll never go far wrong.
Every new Polestar comes with one, and other manufacturers are doing the same.
Plugsurfing is simply great.
Its like a personal assistant that takes care of managing all your charging platform subscriptions.
Theres no need to have multiple apps, and different key cards for all the different charging stations available.
Instead, you have one: the Plugsurfing fob.
Its simple, easy, and removes ALL the friction between user and charging points.
I didnt come across a charger it wasnt compatible with either.
If youre an EV driver, get yourself signed up to something like this.
It takes all the hassle out of charging.
Seriously, it was a revelation.
In truth, the whole experience has left me with one question: Why werent we doing this sooner?
The whole lifestyle is far simpler than most people seem to realize.
If I had the option of charging at home it would have been even easier.
No power, no problem
Going off-grid in an EV isnt as insane as it sounds.
Most of the time the battery was above 50% charge.
Throughout my journey though, the Polestars battery didnt deplete as quickly as I expected.
Quite often, I plugged the car in to charge because I could, not because I had to.
Before setting off into the wilderness, I thought I was going to feel caged.
As if the cars range would hold me back from driving and seeing everything that I wanted to see.
That it would become a nuisance, and a hindrance.
In truth, I experienced none of this.
Anyone that resists the change is a Luddite and a philistine.
Now, I admit my experiences might not be globally universal.
I even found a McDonalds that had a fast charger.
The Polestar 2 is slowly becoming the electric darling of the motoring world.
Its a car that old-school motoring journalists love as much as tech-focused future thinkers do.
It strikes a near-perfect balance between the past and the future.
It still feels like a car.
It doesnt take long to understand why its so loved.
But to view a car based on discrete characteristics is childish and reductionist.
What the Polestar 2 is, is a fantastic sum of its parts.
The P2 gets me excited in the same way the BMW i8 did when that first came out.
The build quality is exceptional, and the acceleration is intoxicating.
Like most of the EVs Ive driven, the Polestar has a sort of Jekyll and Hyde personality.
Ergonomically speaking, the Polestar worked great for me.
It cocoons the driver such that you feel more like a pilot than a motorist.
It seems others see it the same way too.
The Polestar 2 is a real head turner.
Those that didnt know exclaimed, Wow, what is that?
But its a subtle about it, it doesnt scream Look at me!
like high performance cars sometimes do, it whispers, and it lures.
Its not totally perfect, though.
It would have been really great to see electronically adjustable suspension that can be tuned from the cabin.
About that Android Automotive
The Polestars central screen is gorgeous, and is a joy to use.
The Polestar however feels like its there already.
And the air conditioning controls remain fixed at the bottom of the screen for quick and easy access.
The Google Voice assistant is where controlling the car enters a whole new world.
Want to navigate home?
Simply tell it, and it will get you there.
I truly believe its the future.
Android Automotive has bags of potential, and this excites me a lot.
Right now, Android Automotive doesnt feel quite as polished or finished as it should.
Its like having a high-end gaming PC and not having any games to play on it.
Making matters worse, it was painfully fiddly to get it to add one to my journey manually.
It would have taken hours to add enough charge to complete my journey with enough to spare.
No matter what I tried, I couldnt get it to find a fast charger on a main road.
I would then lose the opportunity to add a charging stop.
Not to worry, thanks to Android Automotive being an open platform there are other options.
I pivoted to an alternative navigation app, A Better Route Planner.
And for the most part, it lives up to its name.
After 10 more minutes driving I did.
In the end, it wasnt a massive problem, but it wasnt exactly a smooth or seamless process.
Why didnt the route planner just route me to a charger on my side of the carriageway?
Why was Google refusing to suggest fast chargers to me?
With infrastructure also improving, this will become less of a problem too.
Is it actually as hard to live with an EV as people make out?
The simple answer is: no.
No, its not.
All in all, I still dont quite understand what people find so hard about living with an EV.
Its perfectly average, and one that pretty much every EV of today will be able to manage.
It shows that its not just perfectly doable, it comes with no additional hassle at all.
So what do I have to say to my friends?
Do they have a point?
If anything, Im now questioning why theyre my friends, more so than I did before this trip.
Do EVs excite your electrons?
Do ebikes get your wheels spinning?
Do self-driving cars get you all charged up?
Story byMatthew Beedham
Matthew is the editor of SHIFT.
He likes electric cars, and other things with wheels, wings, or hulls.
