Old-school motoring in the West
My family and I recently drove a few thousand miles around the sometimes vast and vacant expanses of the West with an internal combustion engine. This was the first time I’ve used an ICE automobile in many years, save for brief trips in someone else’s vehicle. This experience provided a good reminder of the pain points associated with old-school gasoline-burning travel. But to paraphrase the social media meme, if I’m being honest, I’d also tell you that involuntarily ditching our all-electric vehicle made for an easier journey on the whole.
If I had my choice during the month in which our 2023 Subaru Solterra was in the collision-repair shop, I would have rented an EV. But here in Cheyenne, at least at Enterprise rent-a-car, that wasn’t an option. Since the insurer for the Amazon subcontracted delivery van that hit the Solterra back in November was only paying for a rental at Enterprise — and a basic model at that — I didn’t have the option to shop around. Had I done so, I’m not sure I would have found an EV locally.
We needed to get our son back and forth to northeastern Wyoming for a two-week summer institute. And my wife and I had previously planned a driving trip in that area while we were dropping him off. That trip took us up to Billings, Montana. A few days after we traveled back to Sheridan, Wyoming, from Cheyenne in the southeast part of the state, we had to briefly go to Denver. Because the car I initially rented could barely drive at legal highway speeds in the West (up to 80 miles per hour), I splurged and got the next size up for our trips.
In our case, we were upgraded to a Chevrolet Malibu. Which is somewhat ironic, because we’re now on our second Chevy Volt — a unique EV that has a separate gas-powered engine for longer trips that exceed the 60-mile electric-only range.
The Malibu didn’t drive as well as our Volts, and didn’t even feel that safe. We got about 30 miles per gallon with a very light foot on the gas, like what we do to extend the range of our EVs, with a lot of coasting and rolling to stops without using the brake.
Gas ‘er up
The main ease of use feature of the Malibu was that it only used gas, which is still the predominant way to fuel passenger vehicles in our country, let alone in rural areas. And my family has always had a lot of range anxiety. (Me, not so much; see my recent post about running out of range this past winter on the interstate miles away from any town).
I was also facing a possible family mutiny if we had driven across Wyoming in an EV. In a way, the timing of needing a rental was fortuitous.
In fact, even along interstate highways, you can drive 50 or more miles between gas stations. So you had better have sufficient fuel in your tank at all times. And since I’m a cheapskate about things like gas and electricity, we did have to drive with a low tank as I played gas-station arbitrage.
Especially between towns, 50 miles in one direction can make a difference in cost of easily a dime a gallon. When you’re talking about the difference between say Casper and Sheridan (approximately 150 miles apart) it was 42 cents a gallon on August 2, per the AAA. Between Casper and Cheyenne (about 180 miles apart), it was on average 23 cents cheaper in Casper as of August 2, according to the motorists association.
No charge
Had we taken our Solterra from Cheyenne to Sheridan, we would have had to stop once — and possibly twice to be safe — to charge along the way. And because many mid-size towns in our state have no public chargers, we would have had to add 20 miles and about a half-hour to our drive in order to take a longer, alternative route that included another town with a charger (Laramie). Then when we got to Casper, we would have used another plug-in point.
All this time and effort for what’s a 330-mile drive from Cheyenne to Sheridan, if you don’t go the long way. It’s understandable why most motorists don’t want to do this, and are holding off on getting an EV until the range is longer or there are more chargers.
In fact, Wyoming has the second fewest EVs of any state, according to a story this past week from Cowboy State Daily. That’s actually an improvement from when I moved here in 2022, when I recall Wyoming was dead-last in number of EV registrations. On the other hand, Wyoming is the least-populated U.S. state, so it’s not surprising it also has among the fewest EVs.
If anything, this latest report was good news. In just the two-and-a-half years I’ve lived in the Cowboy State, the number of EVs has more than doubled, from approximately 400 to over 1,000 currently. (By comparison, fewer than 600,000 people live in the entire state.)
I sure hope these numbers continue their exponential increases. But until more chargers come online along highway corridors, some people may be disappointed if they do try to take a long-distance EV trip. Or they might wind up like I did during a snowstorm in March, literally coasting off the interstate into the town of Rawlins and just barely making it to a charger after a 175-mile ride.
