Ever since I read "Electric Vehicles" by Sheldon R. Shacket around age 10 I knew I wanted an electric car. When it came time to get my first car that wasn't an option, as at the time the most common way to get an electric car was to replace the gasoline engine in a regular car with an electric motor, and I did't have the money to do that.
When I got my first full-time job I was planning to move to Madison and Saturn was planning to bring an electric car to market. I was totally ready to lease (they were only going to lease them) one of those beauties but we all know what happened next.
I have been pining for an EV ever since, and in the last decade or two there's been a growing number of them becoming available as well as gradually expanding charging infrastructure that makes owning one far less of an adventure than the second book I read about EV's. I've tried many times to procure one of these easy EV's but each time something expected or unexpected got in the way.
Yesterday the planets aligned and we brought-home a Kia EV9. We've only put about 100 miles on it so far, but it's been a lot of fun. There's still a little "EV adventure" to be had (it took some tweaking to get the L1 charger to cooperate with our garage wiring and we spent a solid 20 minutes figuring-out our first public charging station), but it's a lot like a gas car in all the ways that you'd want it to be.
I'll probably write more about it after we've spent more time with it.
I'm very excited to have finally found a way to get my hands on an electric car. Aside from all the practical reasons, it's really given me some hope that even after 40 years I'm able to accomplish this simple dream. It really makes me feel like some of the others I've had might still happen, even if they're taking far more longer than I ever could have imagined.
Jason J. Gullickson, 2026