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Brian Six powers up his Tesla before heading on the road toward St. Louis. He said he’s done 15-hour road trips to Texas and hasn’t experienced trouble finding a place to charge the vehicle.
Brian Six powers up his Tesla before heading on the road toward St. Louis. He said he’s done 15-hour road trips to Texas and hasn’t experienced trouble finding a place to charge the vehicle.
A glimpse of the automotive future involves a quick cat nap in the parking lot of Hy-Vee.
Brian Six is able to close his eyes for a few minutes while charging his Tesla Model Y for the trip back to St. Louis. Six anticipated a 35-minute charge to get him to Columbia.
“I was always fascinated with electric cars,” said Six, a data storage architect. “I was just doing the math in terms of cost of driving. At about $2.50 a gallon, now gas prices are a little higher, at $2.50 a gallon is about break-even.”
But the future isn’t here yet. On a Monday morning, Six was the only person to plug in at Hy-Vee’s charging station, although another Tesla with New Jersey plates pulled up just after he left.
The automotive present can be found just a few blocks away, where Rick Simmons still does a brisk business at the muffler and exhaust shop he’s owned for 35 years.
He’s more than a little interested in what’s in store for the industry.
“Electric vehicles don’t have exhaust,” said Simmons, owner of Rick’s Custom Exhaust on the South Belt Highway.
Electric vehicles, or EVs, account for about 1% of the 250 million cars, sport utility vehicles and light-duty trucks on American roads, according to Car and Driver magazine. The market is moving toward electric vehicles — the EV share of the domestic sales market hit 4.6% this year — but the question remains how fast a wider conversion will happen. Americans will jump on the latest advances in mobile phones or televisions, but many have been more reticent about electric vehicles.
“It’s probably a little more in the future,” Simmons said. “It might be 10 or 15 years. The mileage you can travel on a battery, that’s a major drawback.”
Now the question is whether electric vehicles will get a significant boost from the taxation and climate legislation that President Joe Biden signed into law last week. The bill creates a tax credit of $7,500 for the purchase of new electric vehicles. A $4,000 credit on the purchase of a used EV is designed to make electric vehicles, often seen as a niche product for higher-income elites, more affordable for the middle class.
But some of those credits might be harder to claim in future years because of the law’s requirements for domestic sourcing of vehicles, batteries and raw materials. In order to claim the credit, 40% of the metals used in a battery must come from North America. That requirement goes to 80% by 2027. Right now, lithium for vehicle batteries often comes from China and cobalt is mined from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The law also requires that the vehicle itself be manufactured in the U.S., which would exclude some imports. “No vehicle will qualify ... over the next few years,” the Alliance of Automotive Innovation told the Associated Press.
But that won’t stop automakers from producing more electric vehicles. The most popular vehicle in America is the Ford F series pickup truck, which now has an electric version called the Ford Lightning. One dealership in the area has demo versions of the Lightning priced at $70,000 or more, compared to $35,000 to $45,000 for a new gas-powered F-150. (Managers of most dealerships in St. Joseph did not return calls for this story).
Sticker price is an obstacle to widespread EV use, but Al Pugsley, a retired TWA pilot who has owned several electric vehicles, believes costs will come down as EVs become more popular.
“Your first computer was fairly big and fairly expensive,” he said. “Basically, an electric car is a computer on wheels.”
Pugsley, who lives in the Kansas City area, said electric vehicles can be cheaper to maintain because there are no oil changes, water pump, fuel pump or tune-ups. Six spent $64,000 (with a full self-driving package) on his Tesla. He has driven 40,000 miles in two years and spent about $230 on maintenance, mostly on rotating tires and changing the cabin filter. He said the real savings come if you’re able to charge your vehicle overnight with a utility incentive for using off-peak hours.
“One month I drove about 800 miles and it cost me eight bucks to drive that 800 miles, just charging from the house,” he said.
An electric vehicle does change the experience of driving.
“If you’re someone who wants to drive for five hours straight, this is not the option for you,” Six said. “I usually drive for an hour and a half or two hours, stop for about 20 or 25 minutes and move on to the next supercharger. And for me, I like the way that breaks it up.”
Simmons said the future may even sound different, with the roar of an engine replaced by quiet acceleration. “A lot of old-timers like to hear the sound of the exhaust,” he said. “That’s what they remember from their younger days. Younger kids, they don’t care one way or another.”
Dodge is working on an electric version of a muscle car that makes an exhaust noise, sort of like the cell phone camera that gives a fake sound of a clicking shutter.
Greg Kozol can be reached at greg.kozol@newspressnow.com. Follow him on Twitter: @NPNowKozol.
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