7 Questions for Houston Drivers Figuring Out If an EV Fits their Life

Octopus EV is all about making sure an EV fits your life, then finding the best model and bringing it to you.  We’ve boiled it down to 7 questions.  You can read our blog post here, or take the EV Readiness Quiz right now and it’ll give you an instant score from 0-100, plus an explanation of why you got the score you did.

What kind of driving do you do on a daily basis?  

If you drive less than about 30 miles a day and park in your own driveway or garage, you’re golden.  You may not even need to install a home EV charger - you can get enough juice just from a regular outlet.

If you drive more than about 30 miles per day, a regular outlet won’t cut it. You’ll want to make sure you have a home EV charger so that whenever your battery gets low, you can fully recharge it overnight and have a full battery.

Don’t park in your own driveway or garage?  We’ll get to that soon.

How many cars are in your household?

If you’re a one-car household, an EV needs to cover all the bases, including longer drives.  We can help you estimate how much range you’ll need.  If you’ve got multiple vehicles, you could save hundreds of dollars a month by optimizing your driving. Use an EV for daily driving around the city to save on gas. Use your gas car on longer drives if you’re not sure your EV has the range you’ll want.  This opens up more options for EVs of all ranges and lower costs.

How often do you go on road trips or to remote areas?

The more road-trips you do, the more you’ll want to consider an EV with range and fast charging.  We recommend up to 300 miles of range if you regularly travel across Texas or get far off the interstate.

If road trips are infrequent, you may save a lot of money by choosing an EV with a shorter range.  When you’re on a rare long drive, you can spend the extra stop or two looking at your bank account balance to count your monthly savings.  

If you go to remote locations, more than 100 miles off the highway or for multiple days at a secluded hunting or fishing spot, an EV might not be the right vehicle for that.  

Do you live in a single family home with a garage or driveway?

If you answered yes, the path to EV is pretty wide open to you.  Whether via a standard outlet or a home EV charger, you may never have to charge anywhere but home in your daily driving. Just park, plug in, and come back in the morning.  

If you’re a renter or live in an apartment complex, it may be more complicated.  Public chargers in Houston are sparse and could require a special trip to fill up your battery on a weekly basis.  If this is your situation, the best option is a Tesla to take advantage of the more widespread (for now) Supercharger network.

If you live in an apartment building, does it have EV chargers?

If your apartment complex has installed chargers, that’s great!  It’ll become increasingly common.  Just consider how frequently you’ll need it and if it’s easy to do so.  If you drive 30 miles per day, you’d probably want to charge up about 1x per week for about 8-12 hours.  If you can do that, you’re in great shape and it’ll be nearly as convenient as having a charger at a single family home.

If you’d need to install a charger at your parking spot, check with your building management before purchasing an EV.  It’s not always straightforward to do this given how your building’s electrical system could work.

Does your workplace have EV chargers? 

If yes, you may be set, especially because sometimes workplace chargers are free as an employee amenity.  During a typical workday, you’ll be able to charge 75-100% of your entire battery.  So you may only need to plug in once per week if you choose.  However, make sure that you’ll have access easily enough that you won’t get stuck - including with an empty battery on the weekends. 

Are there public EV chargers near you?

If yes, you may have a good option close at hand for daily driving.  You’ll want to investigate carefully though, because not all chargers are created equally.  Resources like PlugShare provide ratings of charging station speed and reliability.  A larger station will be accessible most or all the time but a station with a single port may be busy all the time.  An Octopus EV Specialist can help you figure out if the public charger in your neighborhood will be a viable option for you.

Putting it all together

Here’s the equation to see if you’re EV ready:

• If you’ve got charging options for daily driving (at home, work or at a public station) and you either rarely take road trips OR you’ve got multiple vehicles, you’ll wonder why you ever drove a gas car as your daily driver.
• If you’ve got charging options for daily driving but you do a lot of road trips in the same car, you’ll want to invest in a long range EV so you can enjoy it fully. (A long range also helps if you charge at public stations, so that you can go less frequently).
• If it’s hard to charge on a daily basis or you go to remote places without charging options, an EV may not yet be the right choice for you, especially if it’s the only car in your household.

Want us to run the equation for you?  Try the EV Readiness Quiz!

Ready to discuss the finer points of EV driving?  An EV Specialist is ready to help.