Having been in the world of electric vehicle adoption for some time now, it is no surprise that EVs have become a polarizing political football.

  • President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests $7.5 billion in EV charging, $10 billion in clean transportation, and over $7 billion in EV battery components, critical minerals, and materials.
  • Biden’s Federal Sustainability Plan requires federal agencies to transition the largest fleet in the world to all electric by acquiring 100 percent light-duty ZEVs annually by 2027 and acquiring 100 percent medium- and heavy-duty ZEVs annually by 2035.
  • California passed the The Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Program is designed to achieve the state’s long-term emission reduction goals by requiring manufacturers to offer for sale specific numbers of the cleanest car technologies available, which include: battery electric, fuel cell, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

These are all deeply Democratic policy initiatives and have been targets of the right.

But the fact remains that electric vehicles are just better products than internal combustion engines. A conservative on Reddit (Not_Leaving_LV) shared his experience about converting to electric vehicles. Here is his story…

Until last month I was ardently against EV ownership.

I won’t go on about it too much but forcing people to buy only electric by a certain year sits in a sour spot with me.

Read further below for how to better talk to someone like me. Many of us are willing to listen.

With that, last month my views on electric vehicles changed. A lot.

I was at CarMax and as the agent was showing me options, I noticed a car in my price range that claimed to have CarPlay.

I noticed it was an EV (2019 Nissan Leaf) and because there were only a few options for my budget with CarPlay I decided to test drive it.

I instantly fell in love with everything about it.

The car is as quiet inside as many higher end Mercedes Benz models (measured by Car and Driver magazine)

It is relatively speedy off a stop, it turns well.

And to top it all off, it costs 1/4 the cost to run. Probably less because the regenerative braking means I likely won’t ever need a brake job over the time I own it.

The negative is that there was no CarPlay. They mislabeled the car in their inventory and I ended up negotiating a $200 price reduction and getting an external dash system for that.

Yet even after driving gasoline cars with CarPlay, I stuck with this little leaf.

Once I sat in it and drove it, felt no vibration from an engine, no shifting through the transmission, and how cold the AC gets so quickly (I’m in Vegas, this matters) I was hooked.

Next up is something much better with larger range. This only has 150 mile range. Better credit, trade in, new EV?

Likely yea.

There are things I don’t like.

I am nearly over range anxiety. I haven’t driven it in the winter with the heat on and that bothers me to think of what the battery may do.

Because I’m in Nevada and we don’t have many intra state highways to begin with, long trips are nearly impossible, and since many of them are over steep grades, and the charging stations sometimes don’t work, I won’t even try them.

So my tune has changed. I’ll tell anyone to look in this direction.

I’ll leave you with this if you’re trying to sell people like me on the idea:

It isn’t so much about the environment to people like me.

I believe in global warming. I also watch billionaires scream about it and take private jets.

You’ll not win that position with many conservatives but we all feel the crunch of the economy, and this helps a great deal.

We all like nice stuff. If I knew how practically silent this thing was inside and how fun it was to drive, I would have actively looked at an EV as an option.

Is this the future? Yes.