Real adventures require one thing: a bold, true frontier. It's the difference between riding "Star Tours" at Disneyland and actually strapping yourself atop a rocket and being hurled into space, or the difference between watching a movie about the western pioneers and actually covering the continent in a Conestoga.
Today, driving is rarely an adventure. Short of crashing, not much bad can happen. Run out of gas? Walk a block to the Shell station. Flat tire? Call AAA. Blow a head gasket? Use the 50,000-mile warranty. All that is thrown out the window, however, with GM's brilliant EV1 electric car now available for purchase (well, for lease) by Mr. and Mrs. America.
But just how user-friendly is this brave new world of clean-green transportation? Will you and your friends soon be trading in those gasoline-powered daily commuters for the plug-in "refueling" of the EV1?
As good as the EV1 is, when fully charged it has the equivalent energy of only about a gallon and a half of gas on board-past the point in most cars when the little fuel-gauge light flashes in panicky thirst. If the EV1 runs out of zap, it's gonna take hours to get the silent creature charged. If a tire blows, Wal-Mart doesn't stock the exotic 50-psi Michelins the EV1 requires. And if something breaks, you'd better pull into a major university's electrical engineering department. For these reasons, merely driving the EV1, as comfortable and satisfying as it is, is a true adventure.
Young Feature Editor Jeff Bartlett and not-quite-so-young Editor-at-Large John Pearley Huffman were recruited to follow up MT's driving impression of the EV1 (June '96) with a real-world adventure. The Generation X, cyberpunk Jeff and lead-footed, Oscar Madison-wannabe John each would put an EV1 through his arduous daily routine to assess its livability and answer the question that matters most: Can an electric car cut it in the real world?
Jeff''s Electric HomecomingAs the first staffer to drive the EV1 home, I inhaled all GM's available literature, searching for pearls of wisdom to ensure a successful commute. The EV1 we drove last year went only 37 conservatively driven miles (albeit through steep hills in energy-sapping cold weather)-and my one-way commute is 36. Traveling the most heavily trafficked roads in the world, passing through ganglands, and knowing that the drive typically takes an hour and a half, I had some trepidation. John patted me on the back as I left the office and asked, "Do you have your AAA card?"
Yeah, right, what would they do-jump start it?
The EV1 is more high-tech than a conventional car in virtually every way, so naturally there's no ignition key; a numbered keypad on the B-pillar unlocks the door and one on the center console starts 'er up. Once inside, I entered the five-digit vehicle code, pressed "Run," and brought the car to life, noting a slight hum from the ancillary systems. Once the dazzling display of warning lights finished their check cycle, I put the shifter into Drive and began my trip. Ignoring my desire to crank the air conditioning and pop a Kraftwerk CD into the deck, I sacrificed hedonistic comfort to squeeze every possible micro-joule from the batteries, determined not to be stranded on L.A.'s Freeways of Fear.
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