In a series of blogs, Miel Horsten, Group Regional Director at ALD International, describes his experiences as an EV driver. Get acquainted with the daily practice of using an EV in his international field of operation.
Is driving an EV so very different? Does it require a different mindset? Miel shows you how he and his Audi e-Tron became one with each other.
Blog 1: Dealing with relevant and irrelevant questions to an EV driver
It must have been in autumn 2018, at the Belgian Renta event, that I finally decided to switch from a traditional fuel car to a beautiful, state-of-the-art Audi e-Tron. To be honest, it had less to do with leadership by example than most will think. There were two reasons that motivated me to go electric. Firstly, my 11-year-old son’s refusal to ride in a ‘CO2-emitting machine’ any longer. Secondly, my own curiosity: I wanted to understand the challenges and opportunities that this new world would bring to our customers and to our business.
Although I think I lead a fairly normal life, my mobility behaviour is not exactly EV territory. While my initial commute involved a triangle between my hometown of Hoogstraten, my office location in Brussels and my children's home on the Belgian coast, things got out of hand pretty quickly. First of all, I was appointed to a Benelux position, which meant that I also regularly travelled to Amsterdam and Luxembourg. Then in 2020, I finally moved to Paris for the next step in my career.
Twenty-two months later, my EV and I completed a 100,000-kilometre road trip through Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Luxembourg, involving around 500 charging sessions in four different countries and about 28,700 kWh of energy consumption.
New generation EVs are superb
Over the past 22 months, my car and I have become true soulmates, developing a mutual understanding of each other... I think. I learned to adjust my driving style, learned about how the outside temperature affects our range, and most importantly, I learned all about planning ahead. I admit that I slept in my car a few times in the early days due to dreadfully slow charging stations, but this inconvenience was more than offset by a sharp decrease in speeding due to a more disciplined driving style. There have been no surprises as far as the car is concerned. After 100,000 km, the car still feels just as it did after being delivered by the dealer... brand new. Like the EVs built by Tesla, Polestar, Ford, BMW and other manufacturers, the new generation of EVs are superb quality and fantastic to drive. As Lindsey Buckingham used to sing: ‘Never going back again.’ Probably ;-)
The main surprise for me, however, came from the number of conversations and questions that the EV world prompts. Of course, I’ve become accustomed to believers and non-believers on LinkedIn combining fact and fiction to support their polarised positions or commercial agendas instead of providing real content. These days, LinkedIn seems more like a commercial billboard than the networking tool that was originally developed to make its users more productive and successful. However, I was especially surprised by the number of irrelevant questions I received in the ‘real’ social world.
The most frequently asked questions
The No. 1 question, and the easiest way to recognise a traditional driver, is of course ‘How far can you get in that car?’ Personally, I think the range discussion is mostly irrelevant. No one asks you about the tank capacity of a diesel or petrol car and how far you can get in it, because it only takes a few minutes to fill it up. The right question, of course, has to do with the charging speed. The more relevant question for me would be ‘How fast can you charge your car?’ Because as long as there are limitations on that time, the range doesn't really matter. Oh, and we EV drivers don't usually ‘fill up’ completely – instead, we calculate what we need depending on charging costs and our schedule, rather than going from full to empty and back again.
A car equipped with virtual exterior mirrors naturally prompts the question ‘Can you get used to that?’ Given that we’re in the middle of a period of digital transformation, I imagine I’d be in big trouble if I couldn't tilt the angle of my head down three degrees to adapt to the screens in my doors. So yes, they’re a great invention, especially at night, and the blind spot is gone for good.
But the list of questions is very long: ‘Have you ever had a dead battery?’ – Yes, of course! But I like living on the edge, and I also have an empty fuel tank at least once a year. ‘Has anyone tried to steal or disconnect your cable?’ – No, the cable locks itself, you know. ‘Has anyone ever peed on your cable?’– No, I think we boys learn very early on to avoid electrical wires. ‘Do you need specific insurance?’ – Why would I? ‘How do you go on a winter sporting holiday?’ – I borrow a car from a friend. ‘Can you reach Paris in that car?’ – So far, so good... except for that one time that made me the laughing stock of my colleagues.