I've told the story elsewhere but...
It began for me in 2004. Or maybe even as far back as 2001 when I returned home from overseas and got my 1986 Honda Civic station wagon out of storage. It was a great car, but did not have air bags or ABS brakes. I wanted a car with the latest safety features, but I liked the station wagon body style of my Civic. I've always thought that was far more useful than a sedan. But in 2001 Honda did not make a Civic wagon, so I delayed.
Then in 2003 I read the first reviews of the 2004 Prius. The liftback is almost a station wagon, and the technology, fuel economy, and pollution rating appealed to me. I'm a tree hugger and a gadget freak, so the 2004 Prius was a no-brainer. I placed my order in November, 2003, and took delivery in January, 2004.
The Prius would go into electric mode for short periods, and that was the coolest thing ever. So that's where it began for me. I was one of the first (and the first member of Prius Chat) to install the Coastal Tech EV switch, that operates from the cruise-control stalk. (Others had already installed the button. I was the first on PC to install the c/c version.) Then I had some control over when the ICE shut off.
Inevitably, I became disappointed by the limitations. You could only go about a mile and a half on electric, and doing that is very inefficient. You really wanted to use it only when the battery was at 6 bars or above, down to 5 bars, and only when not accelerating. I began talking on Prius Chat about wanting a full-on electric car. I learned about Tesla and I took a trip to their headquarters (San Carlos, I think?) to see and ride in a prototype Roadster.
(Digression: The woman at Tesla who I spoke with on the phone, and who promised me a ride if I made the long trip, was nowhere to be found when I got there. She didn't answer her phone and I never found out what had become of her. But I made my way to Tesla, and when I told the receptionist that I'd been promised a tour and a ride, she called out a man who agreed to both.)
Riding in the Roadster was thrilling. There existed 4 prototype cars. The one I rode in had first gear disabled because of problems with the two-speed transaxle. But it was still amazing. However, it was very loud when turned off (the Prius is dead silent in electric mode) and more importantly, the seats were ghastly: right down on the floor and leaned back at a 45 degree angle. I decided I didn't like it.
Back home, someone on Prius Chat told me about the Zap Xebra and a dealer, Grant's Pass Electric Vehicles, in Grant's Pass, Oregon. The Xebra was poorly designed and badly constructed, but Sean, the owner of Grant's Pass EV, went to great lengths to drive every unit he got in for several hundred miles, and fix every problem he could find. The Xebra was not as quiet as the Prius (in electric mode) but much quieter than the prototype Tesla. The seats were uncomfortable, but much better than the Tesla. It could only do 35 mph on level ground, but it was all electric, and with an aftermarket battery pack had a 40-mile range to empty. I didn't yet understand about battery care.
I loved the Xebra. It was as cute as a button, it got compliments everywhere, and it could (slowly) reach the speed limit on most of Spokane's roads. I avoided the 45-mph roads easily, though I'd have been legal on them. But it slowed way down on uphills, and lacked the range to make it to Coeur d'Alene and back.
So after I'd had the Xebra for a year I decided to have a Porsche converted to electric. That was a mistake that I've documented in the EV Conversions forum. The Porsche was supposed to take 4 months to convert, it was supposed to have roughly half the range of the Roadster and maybe 1/3 the acceleration, but twice the internal space, and extremely comfortable seats. The original conversion shop finally sent me the car eleven months later, and botched the job so thoroughly that I question their honesty. It's still being fixed.
In the mean time, waiting for repairs on the Porsche, and unsure whether they'd ever be done, I got on the waiting list for a Nissan Leaf. I figured I'd cancel that order if the Porsche came through. But Nissan botched the roll-out. A lot of folks got their Leafs, but not me. Nissan lost my order, then put it back at the end of the queue, then built my car and lost it (they never explained that) then assigned me a different car, then retracted that assignment and assigned me another, then left that car in port for three months while it was supposedly repaired for a recall and damaged paint and somehow never made it into the shipping queue.
Two months after my Leaf was supposedly "cleared for shipping" but still sitting in port; and after Gordy, working on the Porsche, discovered that in addition to all the stuff he had fixed, the battery pack was shot, I said "f***itall," hopped on a plane to Seattle, and test-drove a 2.5 Roadster. The seats are still not terribly comfortable (though some added padding has helped) but the noise of the cooling system is much reduced, and the two-speed transaxle is gone, and other improvements over the early models.
And so for a bit over a year I've been driving Very Orange, #1117, non-sport Roadster, and I'm still delighted with it. I sold the Xebra to an outfit in Toronto that plans on using it in a movie. I'm unclear whether this is a specific movie, or whether they'd rent it out to movie makers who just want something cute and weird in the background.
Tim, now working on the Porsche, hopes to be done with it in time for Plug-In Day. He expects it to have good acceleration, though probably only about a 20-mile range. If so, I'll have two electric cars. He'd like to put a new pack in it, and if I had a girlfriend, I'd have him do that so she could drive it. Otherwise I really don't need two EVs, but I'd lose so much money if I sold it that I'll probably keep it as a summer short-trip run-around. That is, if Tim actually does get it running. I'm not holding my breath. It's been just a few months from done for two years now, and something else always comes up. It really is a beautiful car, and much more comfortable than the Roadster.
Sorry if this post is way too long. It's been a very long journey for me, from those brief electric moments in the Prius, to a full-on freeway-capable, 245-mile electric car. I like the environmental benefits (here in WA my electricity comes from hydro) and the fact that it uses domestic energy, and the lack of noise, and the absence of the annoying and sickening vibration of an ICE, and the lack of stinky fuel and exhaust. I didn't buy my Roadster for being a sports car, I bought it for being electric. But I do enjoy the thrill of the acceleration.