Ice Ice, Baby!

It's highly unlikely that I'll ever own another car in my life. And there's a non-zero probability that I'll never even get behind the wheel again. The only time I've driven since before covid was taking my sister Trish back home from her colonoscopy. 

It's not as if I don't like to drive. I actually love to get in the car and go. It's just that having a car I don't need is a big PITA - a big costly PITA. Sure, there's non-ownership opportunities to drive, but since no two rent-a or Zip cars are the same, hopping into temporary wheels has such an upfront learning curve - where are the wipers? the lights and the gas tank? does that icon mean open the tank, the trunk, the hood? why can't I adjust these mirrors manually? - that I dread hopping into one. 

None of this prevents me from fantasizing about driving cross-country, replicating the trip my friend Joyce and I made in 1972 in her little green Karmann Ghia. 

But, no.

The truth is, there's scant chance that I'll ever own another car. But if I did, I would have to put my money where my mouth w.r.t. environmental concerns is and get me a hybrid, maybe even an EV, even though I know that having an EV without owning a home where you can plug it in and charge it would be a tremendous PITA.

Since this probably isn't going to happen, I hadn't put a lot of thought into just how tremendous a PITA having a car where you couldn't just roll into a gas station and fill 'er up would be. Which is plenty enough challenging if you live, where I do, in what is something of a gas station desert. When I was a car owner, there were a couple of gas station's in my 'hood. All of them long gone. When I've had to fill up a rent-a or top off a Zipcar tank, I've had to do so near Fenway Park or in Charlestown.

A recent article in The Boston Globe brought the EV challenge home.

It seems that there are too many EVs chasing too few charging stations. 

While 80% of EV owners (like my friend Peter) juice up at home, that leaves 20% of EV owners crawling around looking for a charger. What happens if you can't find one? Does your car just stop dead the minute the battery zeroes out? It's not like the old days when you could glide your car to the side of the road, trudge to the nearest gas station, and trudge back with a gallon or two in your handy-dandy (and suddenly heavy-heavy) bright red gas can.

The scarcity of public charging stations leads to the inevitable: human behavior, which, as we all well know, isn't always all that noble and giving. 

There are intra-EV drivers who violate EV etiquette, leaving their cars connected for hours after they've completely recharged their batteries. And there are those who plunk there for a complete recharge, even when there's a queue of cars who just need a little boost.

It probably should come as no surprise that a significant strain of tension isn’t EV driver vs. EV driver at all. Rather, it pits EV drivers against those driving Internal Combustion Engine cars. It happens when a motorist driving a gas-powered car parks in a spot reserved for EV charging — either because he wants the spot or as an act of rebellion. The acronym is ICE and the act is called ICING. (Source: Boston Globe)

I know up close and personal how god-awful it is to hunt for a parking place. Sometimes, after driving around for half an hour or so, you think you've spotted a space, only to find out that there's a hydrant there, or a loading zone sign. 

If it's after a snowstorm, and you live (and park) in South Boston, you may find that the space you're eying has an old kitchen chair or old toilet occupying it, a sure sign that the person who shoveled it out expects it to be ready for them when they return. The price of ignoring the kitchen chair or old toilet could be slashed tires, a smashed window, a keyed door, a beatdown. Those, of course, don't seem like the sort of deeds an EV driver who finds the charging station occupied by a gas guzzler would resort to, but desperate times/desperate measures.

Boston is in the process of making "it a ticketable offense for a non-EV to be parked in an EV charging space." So there's that. But that won't solve the problem of lack of infrastructure. And that problem is only going to get worse before it gets better. 

The Biden administration wants half of all new vehicles to be electric by 2030, and an analysis by PwC, the global accounting firm, found that the charging market needs to grow nearly tenfold to satisfy the needs of the estimated 27 million EVs that will be on the road by then.

A tenfold increase, you say? 

Think I'll stick with Uber and public transpo.