A Truck Story: Driving Into The Yonder

     At the end of 2023, I was invited to join my friends Geoffrey Abraham and Greg Veerman for my third appearance on their Yonder Boys podcast.  Our topic of choice for the episode was the state of EV sales and adoption.  During the discussion, we called ourselves out for not putting our money where our mouths were. You can watch the full podcast here: Yonder Boys 12.21.23 

The Yonder Boys podcast was focused on branding for renewable energy and sustainable mobility.  When the conversations were specifically EV industry related, I was invited to provide some insider perspective.  The three of us all agreed that EV adoption is critical to sustainable mobility, even if our motivations were slightly different.

We called out in this episode the fact that, despite our collective belief in hybrid and EV adoption being a path toward sustainable mobility, none of us actually owned a hybrid or EV.  Greg put forth the challenge for at least one of us, if not all three of us, to make the move and buy a hybrid or EV by the end of the following year.  At the time, I had taken at least a small step toward that goal, having just place a deposit on the (still) forthcoming Volvo EX30.

I liked the EX30's design, a minimal Scandinavian object that promised to have exceed expectations for vehicles in its class.  After checking it out in person, I wasn't impressed, canceled my order, and kept driving and refueling the very thirsty SUV I was driving at the time.

Later in the year, when considering a new car for my wife, we test drove just one new car before deciding to keep her current car.  The one car we drove was a Ford Mach-E, and while we both really liked it we had some reservations that kept us from pulling the trigger, one of which was home charging. We had been told that the electrical panel at our home would not support Level 2 charging, and the public charging options weren't convenient enough to make that a viable solution. So we waited.

Many months later, I learned that our electrical panel could indeed support Level 2 charging at home, and on a work trip, I rented a RAM 2500 4x4.  Two events that separately would seem unrelated but together sparked (EV pun intended) the plan that brings me full circle to that Yonder Boys callout.

On an earlier episode of The Yonder Boys, I said that I thought the most significant EV on the market at that time was the Ford F150 Lightning.  I believed then, as I do now, that normalizing the EV experience will be the key to adoption across a broader consumer demographic.  And at the time, nothing was closer to a "normal" car than the Lightning, a battery electric variant of one of the world's best selling automobiles.  Knowing that I could now charge at home and after the experience of driving, and more importantly parking, a full-size truck, I connected all the dots and decided that the Lightning would be a great way for me to make the transition to an EV.  The added bonus is that I get to fulfill my dreams of having a big pickup truck, without the compromise of having to fill one with gasoline.

I just barely made the Yonder Boys deadline, taking delivery in late December of last year, but one of the Yonder Boys does finally have an EV.  I'm just sorry Greg is no longer with us to celebrate, I know he would have appreciated the fact that it's both an EV and a full-size truck.  

Tipping my Yonder Boys cap to my first EV.