An Old Farmer’s Experience with His Electric Vehicles (EVs)

An Old Farmer’s Experience with His Electric Vehicles (EVs)

Brenda I’m done with the field work I need to pop in town for a few Minutes Hello friends welcome to the wenberg family farm with Don and Brenda on the farm and the homestead here we aim for self-sufficiency and sustainability so we grow most of our own food we raise all of our own energy along with that we choose to drive an EV now I’m about

Ready to head into the store but I know when I get to the parking lot typically somebody will stop me and ask a question say how far can you drive on a battery charge how much does it cost where do you charge your car at and where do you

Charge it when you go on a trip how do you know where and when to charge and what do you expect the life time of the battery to last are you going to have to replace it someday I’m prepared with answers of all of these and today we’re

Going to go over it uh these questions and More the first question I usually get is how far can you actually drive on one charge now most of the EVS out there now can go anywhere from about 200 mil to 400 mil in one charge this car here I can go 350 Mi um now I’m an old guy I

Drive pretty gently I typically can get more than that on the other hand Brenda your driving style is a little different I’m not quite as gentle and slow so I probably don’t get that amount probably not the other thing that impacts your uh distance driving is temperature if

It’s below about 25° or 20° uh it does impact the battery and it also uses battery power to run a heat pump to provide heat for the car so you can get anywhere from 10 to as much as 30% lower um driving distance when it’s very cold

But on the other hand if you typically Drive in cities and traffic or you drive on Rural roads most of the time under 50 m an hour your miles on a charge is going to be higher than Average before I answer the rest of the questions I did want to let you know that uh Brenda and I have been driving EVS or hybrids for the last 20 years for the last 5 years we’ve driven battery only EVs and this is our second one uh

We enjoyed both of them prior to that we had a hybrid which we still have in the family it’s almost 20 years old and still has good battery um operation so we feel very comfortable and confident in our EVS so the second question people ask is

How much does it cost to charge your EV well when we’re on a road trip and using superchargers it can cost $30 if I need a full 350 miles now the beautiful thing though is when we’re at home which is most of the time the residential electricity rates are so low it only

Cost $115 for a full 350 M charge how much does it cost to fill your car but wait a minute people say we know that you generate all of your own electricity at the farm so isn’t it free to charge well not really because there’s a lost

Opportunity cost we could have sold out electricity back to the grid and gained that $15 so $15 is a fair evaluation and I’m very happy with that the third question I get asked is where do you charge at home and how long does it take before I answer that if

You’re considering purchasing an EV I’d encourage you to do a study over a few months to determine how many days you actually drive more than 50 mil 100 miles or 200 miles that will help determine what type of charging that you need at home so really you’re not

Looking at buying a charger you’re looking at just simply buying a charging station or charging cord the actual charger and the control mechanisms are built into the car just as they are for other electronics that you buy so for example here’s a a charger that you

Would a cable that you would have for a laptop and it has the converter here that changes the alternating current that comes out of your receptacle in the wall to direct current to be used in your laptop the same with an EV this is the charging cable naturally it’s a little bigger and

Heavier because more current but it does the same thing converting alternating current from the wall into direct current and the Chargers built into your car so in this particular setup this cable has ability to change the plugs depending on if you want to use a simple setup that in your garage that plugs

Into a 110 uh it’s either 15 or 20 amp typical all around your house they have these and that will charge your car now it will only add four or five miles in an hour so if your car is parked at home for 12 hours that means you could get 50

To 60 miles added to your battery every day now if you need more than that you can still use the same charging cable You’re simply going to have to have um a different receptacle and likely go to 220 this is um a basic um for 420 amp 220 and it will

Give you much more it’ll give you up to 15 so it’s three times what this other will do give you 15 miles in um an hour added or you could go up even higher and this is a 30 amp 220 and it again it uses the same charging cables so for charging capabilities

Beyond what we’ve shown with this um basic setup we do have a charger that’s mounted on one of our agricultural buildings and it’s a 220 line um connected into a 40 amp breaker and it provides up to 30 mil in an hour of charging so it will completely charge

The battery even if it’s drained down to zero over that over night charging for 12 hours so beyond that we’re going to show you some offsite charging options including the uh destination Chargers which are at shopping centers and hotels around and we’ll also look at the superchargers which is a very fastest

Way to Charge Super easy no credit card needed the supercharger knows who I am and charges my account okay we’re fast charging and what do you do when you’re fast charging well you either go in and use the facilities to get something to eat or a lot of times what we do is just watch

YouTube so we’re going to watch our fa our family welcome back to F with Don and Branda today A beautiful fall day so we’re going to take you on a tour of the whole Farm Well in case you can’t tell we had a snowstorm overnight so this is the second part of question number three talks about where do we charge when we’re not at home so we’re going to go on a road trip an imaginary road trip here we might as well go to somewhere

Warm right Brenda sounds good to me okay let’s go um let’s go to Florida so all I have to do is push push this little button here and tell that car where to go or on the app on your phone and it will tell you where the charging points

Are and and where you go so here we go navigate to Fountain Blue Miami Beach Florida so it’s calculating it located it yep that’s the one okay and we’re going to go all the way down the East Coast all the way down to Florida and every one of these locations

Is a place where we can stop now I just clicked on that and it gives detail how many stalls are there and what are the all accommodations restaurants and um everything that we need so here we go so the car tells you everything you need to know huh that’s it and is there

A better way well your wife can tell you what to do too yeah that’s right although some sometimes the car knows better and the last question I commonly get from people is how long do you expect the battery in that car to last and are you going to have to replace it

Someday well JD Power says that the battery should last from 10 to 20 years in EVs and Tesla shows that their battery should last from 300,000 to 500,000 miles so we’ve had very good experience with our EVS well today I hope I answered questions you have about EVS if

You have additional questions we do have resources in our family to go deeper into this subject in fact our son um is an engineer and holds a patent and charging EVS today also I stayed away from political and environmental issues because there are veryy opinions on that but what I can say is

For Brenda and me and many folks in our generation it’s important for us to support the EVS because our children and our grandchildren have a stake in the future and they believe it’s important plus the fact that having an EV makes us cool they love to come over and visit

And want to take a ride in our car so thanks again for joining on the wenberg Family Farm bye-bye [Laughter] you H to turn signal Alex all [Laughter] right this the whole reason we bought the Tesla I think Chloe’s going to like that all the grand yeah love

That mission test mode yeah oh my word okay how old are you guys we’re in the we’re in the Twilight mode

Hear about the experience from a farmer who has made the switch to electric vehicles (EVs). Watch as he shares his firsthand experiences and insights into driving an EV in rural settings. From range concerns to charging infrastructure, he answers all your burning questions about transitioning from traditional vehicles to eco-friendly alternatives. Don’t miss this candid conversation with an old farmer embracing the future of transportation!