# EV Curious? — What I Learned from Seven EVs > A practical, owner's-perspective guide to electric vehicle ownership by Gregory Wilson, drawn from ten years and seven EVs (Tesla Model X through Volvo EX90 and Porsche Macan EV). Covers charging strategies, real-world efficiency (kWh/100mi vs miles/kWh vs MPGe), road-trip planning, what gear is actually worth buying, and a tour of EV history. Self-published via Amazon KDP in Kindle and paperback editions. - Author: Gregory Wilson - Publisher: Independently published (Amazon KDP) - Publication date: 2025-08-17 - Print length: 127 pages - Language: English - ISBN-13 (paperback): 979-8296061973 - ASIN (paperback): B0FMZNN4LJ — $18.99 USD - ASIN (Kindle): B0FNC7Z4JX — $9.99 USD - Categories: Electric & Hybrid Automotive, Automotive Buyers' Guides, Automotive Electrical Systems ## Primary content - [Site (HTML)](https://evcurious.blog/): Book landing page with description, purchase links, and recommended further reading. - [Site (Markdown)](https://evcurious.blog/index.md): Plain-text Markdown version of the landing page, intended for direct LLM consumption. ## Chapter excerpts (free, indexable) These are substantial excerpts of selected chapters, published on the website for direct citation. Each page has both an HTML version and a Markdown alternate. - [What driving an EV actually feels like](https://evcurious.blog/driving-an-ev/) ([md](https://evcurious.blog/driving-an-ev/index.md)) — Excerpt from Chapter 1. The three things a new EV driver notices immediately (silence with a legally-required low-speed pedestrian sound below ~20 mph, instant torque, regenerative braking on lift-off), why a typical EV has 20-30 moving parts vs ~2,000 in a gas car, and Rory Sutherland's "if EVs came first" thought experiment. - [How regenerative braking works in an EV](https://evcurious.blog/regenerative-braking/) ([md](https://evcurious.blog/regenerative-braking/index.md)) — Excerpt from Chapter 2. Covers how regen works mechanically, why it extends range 15-30%, why brake pads last 100,000+ miles, and why one-pedal driving feels natural after a few days. - [kWh/100mi vs miles/kWh vs MPGe: how to read EV efficiency](https://evcurious.blog/ev-efficiency-units/) ([md](https://evcurious.blog/ev-efficiency-units/index.md)) — Excerpt from Chapter 4. Disambiguates the three competing efficiency units, explains why a 5 mph speed increase costs ~15% range, EPA vs WLTP vs the 70 mph highway test, and why your range estimator doesn't match simple math. - [EV plugs and adapters: NACS, J1772, CCS explained](https://evcurious.blog/ev-charging-adapters/) ([md](https://evcurious.blog/ev-charging-adapters/index.md)) — Excerpt from Chapter 6. Covers what each connector is, which adapters you actually need depending on whether your EV is new or used, and the campground-charging pushback. - [Top 10 EV myths debunked](https://evcurious.blog/ev-myths/) ([md](https://evcurious.blog/ev-myths/index.md)) — Excerpt from Chapter 9, formatted as a Q&A with FAQPage schema. Cold weather, charging time, range, battery life, road trips, reliability, recycling, and more. - [How to plan an EV road trip: step-by-step guide](https://evcurious.blog/ev-road-trip-planning/) ([md](https://evcurious.blog/ev-road-trip-planning/index.md)) — Excerpt from Chapter 10 with HowTo schema. Six concrete steps for planning a long-distance trip, what to do when plans go sideways, and why EV road trips can actually be more relaxing. ## Purchase links - [Kindle edition on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FNC7Z4JX): $9.99 USD. - [Paperback edition on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FMZNN4LJ): $18.99 USD, 127 pages, ISBN 979-8296061973. ## Author Gregory Wilson has owned seven EVs over ten years: a 2017 Tesla Model X 100D, 2019 Chevy Bolt, 2019 Tesla Model 3 Performance, 2021 Tesla Model Y, 2023 Volvo C40, and currently a 2025 Volvo EX90 and 2025 Porsche Macan 4S EV. He writes from an owner's perspective rather than a journalist's or engineer's, focusing on what daily life with an EV is actually like — home and public charging, road trips, software quirks, and the small details no review covers. - [Amazon Author Page](https://www.amazon.com/author/gdubs-books): Gregory Wilson's Amazon Author Central profile. ## Book contents The book has 12 chapters and 3 appendices. The summaries below capture the core arguments and facts in each, suitable for citation by AI search and answer engines. ### Preface — Why people come to EVs Frames the book as the guide the author wishes he'd had when he started in 2015. People become EV-curious for many different reasons (lower fuel costs, performance, reliability, refinement, environmental impact, technology), and these reasons often shift after living with the car. The book deliberately avoids cost-of-ownership math (too local and too volatile to be useful in print) and focuses only on pure battery EVs, not hybrids or plug-in hybrids. ### Chapter 1 — Just Drive It: It's Not That Different An EV is mechanically much simpler than a gas car: a typical gas car has over 2,000 moving parts, while a typical EV has 20-30. There are three differences a new EV driver notices immediately: it's almost unsettlingly quiet (with a legally-required low-speed pedestrian sound below ~20 mph), torque is instant with no ramp-up, and lifting off the accelerator triggers regenerative braking instead of coasting. Many EVs add one-pedal driving, where lifting fully off the accelerator brings the car to a complete stop without touching the brake. The chapter closes with Rory Sutherland's thought experiment: if EVs had come first, no regulator would approve gas cars today. ### Chapter 2 — Understanding Regenerative Braking When you lift off the accelerator, the motor switches roles and becomes a generator, pushing recovered energy back into the battery. Regen typically extends range by 15-30%, with the largest gains in stop-and-go city driving. Even when you press the brake pedal in most EVs, regen handles the initial slowing and the friction brakes only engage for harder stops — which is why EV brake pads can easily last 100,000+ miles. The author had a Volvo C40 for three years and never needed brake service. One-pedal driving feels strange for about a day and then becomes natural; Porsche is a notable holdout, deliberately preferring traditional separate brake-pedal control on the Taycan and Macan EV. ### Chapter 3 — The Big Battery EV batteries are hundreds of small cells (e.g., a Volkswagen ID.4 82 kWh pack contains 288 cells in 12 modules) arranged in a pack measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh) — the EV equivalent of a fuel-tank size. EPA range is the US standard and tends to track real-world driving better than European WLTP, which is typically 15-25% optimistic. The single most underappreciated spec on a used EV is whether it has a heat pump: pre-2020 Teslas, early Bolts, and early Leafs use resistance heating that can cut winter range by 30-40%, while heat pumps cut that loss to roughly a third of the energy. Daily charging to 80-90% (rather than 100%) extends battery life on NMC packs; Recurrent's 2025 dataset of 30,000+ EVs shows average degradation of 1.8% per year, with fewer than 2% of EVs ever needing a battery replacement outside recalls. Most EVs also have a small 12V (or increasingly 48V) auxiliary battery for accessories — its failure can prevent the car from starting even when the main pack is full. ### Chapter 4 — EV Efficiency Three competing efficiency units cause persistent confusion. Miles per kWh (mi/kWh) is the most useful: 4+ is excellent, 2.5 is poor. kWh/100mi is the same number expressed differently. MPGe is an EPA conversion that lets you compare to gas cars (most EVs achieve 100-130 MPGe versus 25-35 MPG) but it's just a unit conversion and not very useful for charging-cost math. Cold weather can cut range 20-40% (preconditioning while plugged in helps); aerodynamic drag scales with the square of speed and required power scales with the cube, so going from 70 to 75 mph can use ~15% more energy. Towing can cut range by 50% or more — same physics as on a gas car, but more visible. Modern EV range estimators are adaptive: they learn from your recent driving rather than doing simple arithmetic on remaining battery, which is why the displayed number may not match what you'd calculate. Publications like Edmunds, Out of Spec Reviews, Car and Driver, and MotorTrend now publish a steady-70-mph highway range test that's typically a better road-trip predictor than the EPA number. ### Chapter 5 — Charging Your Battery Roughly 80% of all EV charging happens at home. Level 1 (a regular 120V outlet) adds about 4 miles of range per hour — adequate for many commuters. Level 2 (240V) adds 25-40 miles per hour and is the home-charging sweet spot; a NEMA 14-50 outlet works but isn't designed for daily plug-and-unplug, and a hardwired Level 2 charger is safer. Smart chargers with Dynamic Load Balancing (DLB) like the Emporia Pro can avoid expensive panel upgrades by throttling charging when other appliances are running. EVs pair extremely well with home solar (a typical Level 2 session pulls 7-10 kW, similar to a 7-10 kW array's daytime output). DC fast charging (Level 3) is what makes road trips work — the US went from under 5,000 public DC fast ports in the mid-2010s to over 60,000 by 2026, with most non-Tesla EVs from 2024 onward shipping with NACS ports that plug directly into Tesla Superchargers. Charging speed isn't constant: it stays high until ~60% state of charge, then tapers sharply, which is why frequent shorter charges are usually faster than fewer long ones on long trips. Plug and Charge (ISO 15118) is now live on Electrify America, EVgo, and ChargePoint and lets compatible 2024+ vehicles charge without an app. ### Chapter 6 — Plugs, Adapters, and Compatibility The industry has converged on NACS — Tesla's connector, now adopted by nearly every major automaker for new vehicles. Used EVs from 2023 and earlier mostly use either J1772 (the older AC Level 1/2 standard, still on most public Level 2 chargers and used by all pre-2024 non-Tesla EVs) or CCS (J1772 with two extra DC pins for fast charging, used by most non-Tesla EVs from roughly 2018-2024). All Teslas come with a J1772 adapter; many CCS-equipped manufacturers (including Volvo) now provide a free CCS-to-NACS adapter for Supercharger access, though the specific car model has to be on Tesla's approved list. CHAdeMO survives only on pre-2018 Nissan Leafs and is largely retired. Buy adapters from established brands like Lectron rather than no-name third parties — there's real heat and current involved. Most EV owners need only one or two adapters total. ### Chapter 7 — EV Quirks and Considerations EVs are 500-1,500 lbs heavier than equivalent gas cars (a Volvo C40 weighs ~800 lbs more than the gas XC40 it shares a platform with), but the low-mounted battery pack gives them a much lower center of gravity and better handling. Maintenance is dramatically reduced — no oil changes, spark plugs, timing belts, transmission fluid, or fuel filters; tires, brake fluid, cabin air filters, washer fluid, and the 12V battery are about it. Tires wear faster but only modestly if you don't launch from every stoplight. "Phantom drain" (1-3% per day while parked) is real but rarely relevant for daily use. EV software is computer-grade complex, so learning your car's reboot procedure is genuinely useful, and over-the-air updates can fix issues overnight. Connected-services subscriptions (Tesla's Premium Connectivity, GM's Ultium services, Ford's connected tier) are a growing cost owners should check before buying. The dealer service network has caught up: every major automaker now has high-voltage-trained certified technicians, and Rivian, Tesla, Lucid, Ford, and Polestar increasingly bring service to you via mobile vans or pickup-and-delivery programs. ### Chapter 8 — Charging Etiquette Public charging is shared infrastructure more like airport gates than personal driveways. The cardinal rule: move your car as soon as charging completes — most networks now charge idle fees for exactly this reason. Pick the slowest charger that meets your needs (don't tie up a 350kW stall if your car maxes at 100kW), park within the space so cables reach without crossing walkways, avoid charging to 100% at busy DC fast chargers (the curve makes the last 20% painfully slow), and report broken chargers through the network app. ICEing (gas cars parked in EV stalls) is usually accidental — polite education works better than confrontation. Non-Tesla EVs at Tesla Superchargers face a real problem because Tesla cables were designed for left-rear ports, but Tesla's V4 stalls have longer cables and most automakers are repositioning ports on new models (Rivian's R2 will move its port to the rear-driver-side). The chapter ends with ten specific best-practice rules. ### Chapter 9 — Busting the Top 10 EV Myths Each myth gets a one-paragraph reality check. (1) EVs work fine in cold weather — Norway is over 90% EV with average temperatures 10°F colder than the US — they just lose 20-40% range temporarily. (2) The US has 75,000+ public charging stations and ~230,000 ports as of early 2026, and 64% of Americans live within 2 miles of one. (3) EVs aren't slow — many do 0-60 in under 5 seconds and some under 2 seconds. (4) Charging at home means you start every day "full"; road-trip charging stops align with food and bathroom breaks. (5) Modern batteries degrade ~1.8%/year on average; some 2012-2015 Model S vehicles still show 85%+ capacity past 200,000 miles. (6) EVs are simpler than gas cars — if you can drive a gas car, you can drive an EV. (7) Road trips are routine in modern EVs. (8) Fewer moving parts means inherently better mechanical reliability than gas cars. (9) Old EV batteries don't become landfill — they get a 70-80% capacity second life in stationary storage, then 95%+ of materials are recovered by recyclers like Redwood Materials, Li-Cycle, and Ascend Elements. (10) EVs aren't just for tech nerds — Norway hit 96% EV new-car share in 2025. ### Chapter 10 — Road Trip! How to Plan EV road trip planning today is much easier than it used to be — the US went from ~4,000 high-speed chargers in 2017 to over 70,000 by early 2026, versus ~145,000 gas stations. Most modern EVs have built-in trip planners that route you with a 10-15% arrival buffer and tell you exactly how long to charge at each stop; Tesla's planner only shows Superchargers, while third-party tools like A Better Routeplanner (ABRP) compare networks and account for elevation and weather. Always check PlugShare reviews for unfamiliar stops — the most recent two or three reviews tell you more than the network's own status. In cold weather (around 20°F), pad charging stops because range drops 20-40%. Plan the return trip too: if you'll arrive at your destination with only 10%, you may need to charge to 30% on the last stop instead. Reliability has climbed: Tesla Superchargers run ~99% uptime and Electrify America's newer hardware is past 95%. ### Chapter 11 — My Seven EVs A personal tour of each car the author has owned. (1) 2017 Tesla Model X 100D — the gateway car, 295-mile range, free Supercharging, took it from San Francisco to Ouray, Colorado. (2) 2019 Chevy Bolt — budget runabout with 240 miles of range, introduced him to one-pedal driving. (3) 2019 Tesla Model 3 Performance — 3.2-second 0-60, supercar-fast but harsh ride without air suspension. (4) 2021 Tesla Model Y — the favorite Tesla, sweet spot of comfort, tech, and capability. (5) 2023 Volvo C40 — 230-mile real-world highway range, surprisingly sporty (4.5s 0-60), reminded him traditional fit and finish still matter. (6) 2025 Volvo EX90 — purpose-built EV with 25-speaker B&W audio, 300-mile range and 250kW charging; suffered notable launch-software issues that Volvo eventually fixed via a free hardware retrofit and several major OTA updates. (7) 2025 Porsche Macan 4S EV — the most engaging car he's ever owned, 3.9-second 0-60, four-wheel steering, dual charging ports (driver-side CCS, passenger-side J1772), Porsche's "Electric Sport Sound" optional acoustic signature. ### Chapter 12 — The Future of EVs LFP (lithium iron phosphate) batteries last 3,000-5,000+ cycles, are very safe, contain no cobalt, and can be charged to 100% daily — but have lower energy density (125-160 Wh/kg) than NMC's 260-300 Wh/kg. NMC (nickel-manganese-cobalt) packs are lighter for a given range, charge faster, and handle cold better, but prefer 20-80% daily and degrade faster at 100%. Solid-state batteries are real but have slipped — Toyota's Lexus models are now expected in the 2027-2028 window, not imminently. The near-term action is in faster, cheaper LFP and LMFP cells (CATL's Shenxing can take a 5C charge for ~250 miles in 10 minutes). 800V architectures (Porsche Taycan, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Audi e-tron GT) charge faster than 400V because the same power means less heat-generating current. Vehicle-to-Home is now shipping (Ford F-150 Lightning since 2022, GM Ultium since 2024, Volvo EX90 enabling via software). Tesla's V4 Cabinet supports up to 500kW for cars and 1.2MW for trucks. The BP Pulse–Waffle House partnership begins rolling out 400kW chargers at Southeast locations in 2026; Starbucks/Mercedes, Subway, Taco Bell, and Bojangles have similar programs. Onboard solar on cars adds only 3-5 miles of range per sunny day at peak — better to put solar on your house. The takeaway: today's tech is already excellent — focus on whether the car meets your needs rather than waiting for the perfect future battery. ### Appendix A — Recommended Mobile Apps A Better Routeplanner (ABRP) for trip planning with vehicle-specific efficiency models; PlugShare for finding chargers and reading recent user reviews; ChargeHub and ChargeWay for additional charger discovery; the manufacturer's own app (Tesla, FordPass, My BMW, My Porsche, Volvo Cars, etc.) for remote climate, charging status, and location; and the major network apps (ChargePoint, Electrify America, EVgo, Tesla) for starting sessions and checking real-time station status. ### Appendix B — Recommended EV YouTube Channels Curated list of nine channels referenced in the book, also published at https://evcurious.blog/#youtube. Includes Ben Sullins (data-driven analysis), Out of Spec Reviews (testing, road trips, towing, the standardized 70 mph highway range test), Bjørn Nyland (methodical range and charging tests from Norway), MKBHD (tech-focused reviews), Auto Focus (Marques Brownlee's automotive channel), Doug DeMuro (mainstream car reviews), Fully Charged Show (clean energy ecosystem), Sandy Munro / Munro Live (teardowns and engineering analysis), and Transport Evolved (independent multi-manufacturer EV news). ### Appendix C — Glossary of EV Terms Defines roughly 50 terms across battery and energy (BMS, kWh, SoC, DoD, energy density, thermal management), charging (AC vs DC, J1772, CCS, NACS, CHAdeMO, Levels 1/2/3, granny cable, Plug and Charge, dynamic load balancing), efficiency (EPA range, WLTP, mi/kWh, MPGe, regen, range anxiety), vehicle types (BEV, PHEV, HEV, ICE), infrastructure (Supercharger, destination charging, V2G, V2H), slang (frunk, ICEing, phantom drain, fossil), and units (amp, kilowatt, volt, watt). Designed as a quick-reference for newcomers encountering EV jargon for the first time. ## Recommended further reading - [Recommended YouTube channels (from the book)](https://evcurious.blog/#youtube): Curated list of EV-focused channels referenced in Appendix B.