2010 in Review: My Worst Driving Experience

[svgallery name="2011_Smart_Electric_NYC_pics"] By John LeBlanc Range anxiety. It’s a term you’ve probably heard about if you’ve been reading Wheels recently. It’s the stress electric-vehicles owners experience due to the lack of real-car range from their EV’s batteries, and the lack of proper recharging stations. In the few EVs I’ve driven, their makers have limited seat time to only a few kilometres. A writer running out of juice in a newfangled EV doesn’t make for good press. During a Mercedes-Benz media event in New York last summer where the automaker let us drive its forthcoming Smart ForTwo Electric Drive for the first time, me and my driving partner decided to shirk the flatter, battery-friendly routes around the gentrified Prospect Park area of Brooklyn Smart officials prescribed. Instead, we drove onto Manhattan Island — a16-km roundtrip. Fully charged, the ForTwo Electric Drive has a range of 135 km. With its battery charge gauge reading 90 per cent, I had no worries of being stranded. The problem was, the three other production electric cars I’d driven before had delivered well below claimed ranges when they were driven normally in everyday traffic. Nervously, I kept one eye on the Smart’s battery gauge, and the other on the Big Apple’s maniacal cabbies, aggressive bike couriers and wayward pedestrians. In the end, my “range” anxiety was uncalled for. Despite its motor screaming like an electric toothbrush as I traversed the bridge back into Brooklyn, the ForTwo Electric Drive’s battery metre still had about 75 per cent of its charge left, which backed up the 135 km range claim. But driving is stressful enough. I’ll skip the anxiety of worrying about my vehicle’s range and keep on driving gas-burning cars, thank you very much.

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