EVs are amazing, but it's very important to choose yours carefully. A great EV can be frustrating or even disruptive if it doesn't fit your unique life and habits.
When it comes to buying a car, we all have different priorities. Some of us may only care about performance, while others will consider safety or styling or towing capacity before anything else. We all have different needs, but with an EV we should all start with the same question:
With gas-powered cars, we've never needed to consider where we fuel them, or how long that will take us. Gas stations are everywhere, and filling the tank is quick and mostly painless. Putting gas in a car can be annoying, but we're all so used to the routine that it's become automatic to us.
EVs are different. First let us say that if you buy an EV that integrates well with your life and habits, it could easily be more convenient than an equivalent gas-powered car. Imagine never stopping for gas again, and instead leaving your home with a full "tank" every single morning. Consider that if you can charge at home, the only times you'll ever need to stop for "fuel" are days when you've had to drive hundreds of miles at once (at which point stopping to charge may actually be a welcomed break).
But here's the risk - with an EV, it's also possible to buy a car that DOESN'T fit your life. Whether it's not enough range to get through your most normal days, or not enough compatible charging stations in the places that you need them - if your car can't get you to where you need to go when you need to get there, it's easy to imagine how that could be disruptive and frustrating.
That's why it's incredibly important we choose our vehicles wisely, and walk into a dealership knowing what our needs are and what we need out of an electric car to satisfy them.
Keep in mind that many dealerships are not well versed in EVs either, at least not yet. There's a lot of confusion and misinformation out there, even amongst sales people who might be trying to sell you a car with genuinely good intentions. It's critical to understand what you're buying, and that means you should walk into that dealership fully informed about which cars will fit your life, and why.
That's the whole reason we made EV.Guide.
In the pages that follow, we're going to cover the info you need to know before making this very personal (and exciting!) choice, so that you can be confident that you're spending all of that money on a vehicle that's going to work for you.