Hollow Victory
November 4, 2005
Remember the Ranger EV lottery I wrote about back in July? Well, we won. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean we’ll soon be driving an electric vehicle again. After considering the pros and cons of the particular truck available to us, Mr. Karen and I decided not to buy it. The biggest issue was the battery type–the EV on offer to us had a lead acid battery pack, not the nickel metal hydride we’d been hoping for. The latter has a longer range and longer life. With the uncertainty about being able to get a replacement battery pack and the high cost even if we could, we weren’t willing to risk the lead acid, especially since the EV we leased before needed a new pack after a couple years and we have no way to know how old the pack in the lottery EV is (though pretty certainly it’s more than two years, since the EV program’s been dead for at least that long).
If they were giving them away, sure, we would have taken it, even with the lead acid battery pack, but they weren’t. Adding to the expense was shipping–the EVs are in California and it would be $1800 to get it shipped here. Can’t just fly out and drive it back, you know? It just didn’t make sense to spend eight thousand dollars on a used vehicle that might not be operational very long when we already have a paid-for car that’s running just fine, no matter how cool the new used vehicle might be. So now someone else will get a shot at that white Ranger EV with the dent in the door and the missing tonneau cover. I’m a little disappointed even though I know it’s the right decision.