Electric cars are a growing part of the cars on the street, but the myths surrounding them still seem to be persisting. Greta Mikalauskytė Jankevičius and Justinas Jankevičius’s family have been driving an electric car for some time now, and have been working on other related issues, such as a solar power plant and a charging station at home. This path, they say, began with warnings from those around them that things were going to be bad, but nobody ever explained what was bad.
G. Mikalauskytė Jankevičė says that he decided to replace his former diesel car with an electric one because of changes in performance due to increasingly stringent environmental standards: ‘Our last car was a diesel, and, as it happens, it was made by the very company that made it so horribly inefficient after the exhaust scandal. At the end of the lease, we decided to replace the turtle with something more powerful and chose an electric one.
Partly because it’s beautiful, partly because we put solar panels on the roof and wanted to employ them even more. A year ago, when we were electing, we received many comments suggesting not to buy electricity – everything is bad, but nobody has been able to explain what it is all about. So now we have an electric car.”
However, she says that not having a charging point at home has sometimes been inconvenient: pulling off the road and queuing up at a public charging facility, or, even more unpleasantly, realising that the charging point is simply not working.
This situation has changed with the installation of a private charging station in the family’s backyard by the company “Įkrautas”, which has avoided most of the misunderstandings and has also allowed the use of the solar power plant available. Nowadays, the only time you have to charge your electric car outside the house is when you are travelling and, she says, it is hard to imagine how you could live any other way.
Talking about the promised difficulties and hardships of owning an electric car, G. Mikalauskytė Jankevičė replies with a smile that one of them was the installation of a bus stop. The reality turned out to be different: “It was very difficult – one time we looked out the window and there was no bus stop, and the next time we had a bus stop. OK, maybe it took a bit longer, but otherwise, we were really surprised how smoothly it went. It was all about “when you’re very good at something, everyone around you thinks you’ve got it very easy”.
She also pointed out that another difference from a diesel car is that when driving from Vilnius to the seaside, you have to stop for a load, but it only takes 15-20 minutes, and her son and dog see these stops as more of an advantage than a disadvantage. It’s no secret that many drivers stop on this route, no matter which car they use to get there.
Karolis Kieras, Sales Manager at Įkrautas, a company that has been installing charging stations for five years now, says that they are working on the principle that the customer should take as little care as possible about the processes: ‘The possibility to charge an electric car at home fundamentally changes the experience of using an electric car. We know the myths about the difficulties and challenges, but in reality, understanding what you are doing makes things much easier. The installation of a bus stop is not measured in days or weeks, but in hours. The more complex process starts with a bus stop in the yard of an apartment block, but even so, we have already completed a number of such projects.”
For a well-known family, Įkrautas installed a VOOL-branded smart charging station, which not only has a modern, minimalist design, but also advanced features such as charging according to Nord pool electricity prices or direct integration with a solar power plant – most other stations require additional devices. It also integrates a 6.5 metre charging cable, which doesn’t restrict parking in the yard.
