We went into the village last night to see a film (It Was Just an Accident). Yes, our tiny little village has a grand old movie house, now operated as a labor of love by a local couple. We had offered to drive our neighbors there. The previous day had been very rainy, and yesterday was pretty rainy. We had figured we’d take Timmy the Titan, but we got just enough sun to charge the car just enough (we thought) to get us there and back.
While on the mainland, I never found “range anxiety” to be a real thing. I plugged in the car every night, and the next day it would be charged and ready to go. On any longer trips, the car itself would plan a route along with charging stops. I actually found it much less stressful than finding gas stations all the time.
It’s different on the island. Our little village has a theatre, yes, but no charging stations. The nearest compatible charger is officially over 45 minutes away (one way), though I know of one that’s within half an hour of here but I’ve never verified that it actually works. It looks pretty sketch.
None of this would be a problem if we had grid power, as a full charge will get us all the way to the furthest reaches of the island and back. But we had several dark, rainy days in a row, and we needed to do laundry, and I wanted the hot tub to be, well, hot, and we took several trips into town. As a result, the car was deeply discharged.
It remained pretty rainy, which decreases the range, and we had two extra bodies in the car going up our steep mountain road. As a result, on this dark and rainy night, we were dropping off our neighbors with the car showing 1% charge and giving us dire warnings about our grisly fate if we didn’t charge immediately. From the neighbors’ to our place is about ¼ mile of a dirt driveway and it was a short-but-edgy drive. I have never drained the car completely (though Matson did) so I don’t know how much, if any, reserve is left when the car reports 0% charge. I’m happy to report, though, that we made it to the garage and didn’t have to haul our powerstation down a muddy driveway in the rain and charge for an hour to get ourselves home.
—2p