The San Francisco Chronicle thinks I’m a paradox, but I think I’m just being sensible.
The Chronicle reported that California has a “split personality” when it comes to car buying habits. On the one hand, Californians are buying SUVs. On the other, Californians are buying electric and hybrid cars.
What Californians aren’t buying is old-fashioned, gas-powered passenger vehicles.
Excuse me, but I don’t see the paradox. Take my family, for instance.
Three years ago, we decided to shuck off the old paradigm—”his car” and “her car”—for a family-based car-buying approach. We wanted an electric car for in-town driving, and a gas car for long distance and for doing things like moving the kid into his college dorm. We leased a VW eGolf which had a range of 90 miles, and in three years, we only drove our van on longer trips.
We also hardly ever had to charge our car during the day.
It’s really not a paradox: when people actually consider their driving needs and habits, they respond to choices that fit those needs. And sometimes they change their habits.
Having a limited range electric vehicle changed my approach to driving. When we bought the car, we went to a PG&E plan that rewards nighttime use of electricity over daytime use. Our major concern was planning our driving so we didn’t have to recharge the car during the day. Also, we came to love the electric car so much, we started to plan our days so that our driving times wouldn’t overlap or we’d plan joint trips out in the car.
This summer we decided that the old van had done its service to the family, so we replaced it…with an SUV. Yes, the family that tries only to drive our electric car got an SUV. We did get the most fuel-efficient one on the market, but we recognize that we got this big car not for daily driving, but for specific functions: hauling a bike, moving a piece of furniture, or driving a bunch of people comfortably.
The lease on our eGolf came up, and because the available electric cars didn’t suit our needs (inexplicably, VW isn’t planning to put out the new eGolf until the end of the year), we got a plug-in hybrid. In the few months we’ve owned it, we’ve used the gas engine once.
I don’t call our family a paradox; I call us the new paradigm. Americans had a good, long love affair with the gas engine, and that’s coming to an end. We used to think of driving as entertainment, and that, too, is coming to an end. What starts in California almost always hits the rest of the country eventually, and I have no doubt that this wave will eventually make its way into the heartland as well.
