Why I Don’t Have An EV Right Now, & When I’ll Get One Again

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I know that not everyone who writes about EVs owns one, but I’ve had one in my driveway for a long time. My first one was a 2011 Nissan LEAF, followed by a Chevy Volt, a 2018 LEAF, and then a 2022 Bolt EUV. While I’ve also usually had a backup ICE vehicle in the driveway, I figured that I’d never be without at least one EV in front of the house.

What Happened? Changing Transportation Needs

As much as I liked my Bolt, I just didn’t drive it that much. The average driver in the United States goes 12,500 miles in a year, but I found myself driving only about 8,000, and most of that mileage was road trips. At home, I was only driving maybe twice a week to run errands or visit family, and many of those trips were only a mile or two.

You know what’s a lot more fun than driving a mile or two? Riding a bike. I found myself needing the exercise, and it’s just nice to get some fresh air. So, the Bolt was seeing less and less use. Even though my town’s infrastructure sucks, the urbanists were right.

Road trips changed for me, too. The Bolt was never a great road trip vehicle (50 kW charging sucks), but then I started to want to pull trailers. 50 kW charging sucks twice as bad when your range gets cut in about half. The plan was to buy a tiny A-frame camper and pull it around with the Bolt, but driving across the country and back last year pulling a trailer largely cured me of that desire.

The obvious EV answer to this is to get a better-towing EV — something like an F-150 lightning with the larger pack option, a Rivian R1s, or a Silverado EV would be fantastic for pulling trailers. The last option (the Silverado) is just about perfect, with 450 miles of range, which would translate to around 200 miles even pulling a decent-sized travel trailer. 350 kW charging would eliminate a lot of the pain, too.

But, the sad truth is that I just can’t afford a $100,000 truck. I can’t even afford a used Lightning right now, as the ones with the larger packs are a g00d bit out of my budget.

To do what I want to do on road trips, I ended up buying a 2001 Suburban with low miles. It needed a lot of work to overcome 25 years of entropy, but now I’ve got a decent tow vehicle and no car payment. When I get to my destinations and park the camper, I pull the bikes off the tongue and do a lot of my local “driving” on those.

This left the Bolt with not much of a job. Bikes took care of much of the local driving, and road trip duty fell to the Suburban. So, it just didn’t make much sense to keep it in the driveway anymore.

What Needs To Happen For Me To Get/Need Another EV

In some ways, it’s just a waiting game. I’ve seen that used rental fleet Silverado EVs are going for around $50,000 now. If they could drop by about another $15,000, I’d be able to pick one up without challenging household finances too much. It’s just a matter of time until the second owner decides to sell those, so we’re probably looking at 2–3 years.

As I said above, the Silverado (even the work truck trims) would solve a lot of the problems with EV towing. With my 5,000 lb travel trailer, I’m probably looking at getting about 200 miles of range, which is over 3 hours of driving at reasonable trailering speeds. 350 kW charging means not having to spend too much time at those charging stops, and when you’ve basically got a little house to go chill in during charging sessions, that’s not a huge deal anyway.

The Other Hold-Up (& Not Just For Me)

But there’s one big problem with many of the charging stations. They don’t look like this:

When you’re pulling a trailer, especially one with an equalizer hitch, it’s a big pain in the butt to unhook. When I’m only stopping someplace for one night, I often just focus on leveling, drop the stabilizer jacks, and then sleep. At gas stations, you can refuel without unhooking, so it only makes sense to unhook if you’re staying somewhere for a few days.

Most EV charging companies make the mistake of thinking they needed to reinvent the wheel. Sure, there’s no reason to duplicate the ICE refueling experience with EVs, but gas stations are the way they are for good reasons. Canopies keep the rain and sun off (and give a good place for fire sprinklers). Pull-thru arrangements mean that few people will need to unhook a trailer, even if most people aren’t towing. Having a convenience store within spittin’ distance that caters to drivers and truckers is essential on the interstates.

Instead, “futuristic” charging stations that were put in during the 2010s and early 2020s were almost all single-space stalls. Many (especially Tesla stations) were designed to only work for backing in, and had short charging cables. This worked when nobody was towing.

But electric pickups weren’t an unimaginable thing prior to 2022. And there have been factory electric pickups and towing-capable SUVs for 3 years (and even longer if you count the Model X).

What’s extremely sad is that many new charging stations in 2025 are opening without pull-thru spaces. People saw the Tesla monkey do something stupid, and the old “monkey see, monkey do” thing happens. Even truck stops, which are increasingly trying to cater to RV drivers, are still putting in stations that require you to unhook to charge.

With a little 10-foot trailer behind a short Bolt EUV, I was able to cross the country without unhooking by getting creative about how I parked, but when you’re talking about a 24 foot trailer and a full-size truck, it’s a LOT harder to get away with.

I really wouldn’t mind driving 2–3 hours and then charging for 30–45 minutes (trucks have big batteries), or even driving an hour and a half and then charging for 20 minutes. But when each of those stops requires going out in the heat, the cold, or the rain and doing manual labor to unhook the trailer, I’m far from the only one who wouldn’t be on board.

We really need to get serious about improving interstate charging infrastructure and making sure every station has at least two pull-thru stalls (in case one breaks or is busy), if not four. Companies putting in stations in 2025 that don’t have at least one should be mocked endlessly for poor decision-making.

All images by Jennifer Sensiba.