Editorial Note: It is, I believe, a particularly appropriate time for me to run an updated version of an article I published on Medium about two years ago. Current attacks on those who express opinions in opposition to the current conservative administration in Washington, D.C. are intensifying by the minute, and an increasing number of reporters, editors and media outlets are keeping their heads down. Following the 2024 election, I agreed to take the orginal article down temporarily at the request of an employer, knowing I would repost it at some point. Some facts and details have been updated; my opinions remain unchanged.
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I am old enough to remember a time when going to the local gas station meant that my mother pulled up in our ’57 Chevy Bel Air station wagon (silver gray with the trademark white insets on the fins) and an attendant, usually in blue pants, shirt and cap, came out to pump the gas.
Mom and the attendant often knew each other by name, and she would say, “Joe, please, put $1 or $2 in the tank.” Gasoline then cost about 30–35 cents a gallon, and Mom rarely filled up. Her standard line was — “Oh, I only need a few gallons.”
She always paid cash, and after the gas was pumped, Joe or another attendant would clean the front windshield and maybe check the oil or the air pressure in the tires and top them up, too.
I don’t remember exactly when self-service gas stations became the norm. According to the National Association of Convenience Stores, the switch from full- to self-service began as early as the 1960s, but didn’t become widespread till the mid-1980s as convenience stores and gas stations merged into our present-day fast retail and fueling stops. About 80% of convenience stores are now also self-service gas stations, NACS says.
These baby-boomer musings surfaced on a recent morning when I pulled into the Whole Foods parking lot near my apartment and saw two electric cars — a Polestar and a Kia Niro plug-in hybrid — fueling up at the two Level 2 (L2) chargers in front of the store.
Electric cars have opened up a whole new level of self-service fueling that can be done literally anywhere a charger can be found. On a recent trip to Petersburg, Va., about 25 miles south of Richmond, I topped up the battery of my Hyundai Ioniq 6 at a bank of Tesla fast chargers at a Sheetz gas station and convenience store. It took 20 minutes.
At the LEED-certified apartment complex where I live, I charge for free at one of the four Level 2 chargers in the garage.
The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that 80% of EV charging occurs at home; so L2s, for those who can afford them, have become the modern-day equivalent of the neighborhood gas station.
The catch, of course, is that chargers of any kind are not yet available for most renters and apartment dwellers, who instead must rely on more expensive public chargers. Further, the national network of DC fast chargers that former President Joe Biden had hoped to install every 50 miles on U.S. highways never achieved the intended rapid rollout and have been slowed further by new regulations from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
Long commutes and road trips take extra planning and time, to map out the locations of charging stations in advance. For my trip to Petersburg, I downloaded three different charging apps, just to be sure I would have a range of options wherever I was.
In other words, EV charging is still widely seen as inconvenient. Concerns about the availability of charging — at home or on the highway — remain among the top factors potential EV buyers cite as a sticking point in their decisions on whether or not to go electric.
Changing the narrative
Surveys that ask such questions — and media coverage of them — have created our current narrative on EVs, which is that adoption will not be widespread until they are cheap and convenient.
Certainly, prices are edging down and will fall further — especially as the market for used EVs grows — but convenience is a matter of personal perspective, changing with time and circumstance.
For drivers like my mother and I am sure many others in the mid-80s, having to get out of their cars to pump gas or put air in their tires felt extremely inconvenient. While I can still conjure up vivid memories of my mother at the full-service gas stations of my childhood, I have only the dimmest recollection of her ever pumping gas.
She didn’t do it often or as a matter of course. My father would take her car and fill it up for her.
Transitioning from one technology to another generally involves a learning curve. That new thing we are not used to doing and will likely do awkwardly to start will be inconvenient.
It will take longer; it will require doing things differently; we will make mistakes and feel frustrated or incompetent.
Personally I am waiting for the next nerdy, 20-something entrepreneur to come up with a small, portable charger you can put in your trunk — like a spare tire or gallon container of gas — that can quickly extend an EV’s range another 25 or 50 miles.
(At the recent RE+ conference in Las Vegas, I saw some very cool fold-out solar panels, developed by a Chinese company, that can be used to charge EVs, adding those 50 miles of charge.)
Until such options are available, a counternarrative is needed. However uncomfortable or difficult it may be, inconvenience is not a valid reason for slowing our transition to zero-emission transportation, a transition that is essential if we are to have any chance of mitigating or reversing the catastrophic impacts of climate change.
President Trump notwithstanding, the imperative for transportation electrification cannot be separated from climate change. More than one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation.
Do we really want to tell our children and grandchildren that we didn’t save the planet because it was inconvenient?
Extreme weather events, drought, wildfires, sea level rise and species extinctions — all intensified by climate change — are already causing unprecedented levels of inconvenience for millions. What lies ahead is scarcely imaginable.
By comparison, spending a little extra time looking for a charger or fueling an EV is a no-brainer.