I just spent my first week ever with an electric vehicle, the Chevy Equinox – this is what it was like

The funniest car I ever drove was the original Tesla Roadster.

This was back in 2011 when Elon Musk’s EV company courted the press instead of vilifying us and they offered me a test drive. I drove the car up I-280 – a beautiful, mostly deserted highway with perfectly banked curves that seemed tailor-made for Silicon Valley types to test their Speedmobiles – and was blown away by the responsive acceleration and the ease which it could handle at 120 miles per hour. (Um, did I say 120? I meant 70. Yes.)

I’ve driven fast in a few other sports cars – an ’80s Nissan Z and Fiat Spider and a ’90s Porsche 911 – but the roadster’s essential electric drive (no gears!) made for a unique driving experience, like an exceptionally powerful and aerodynamic golf cart. I didn’t care about the iPad-like controller on the dash, the door handles, or the other bells and whistles. I just loved the way it drove.

I’m not a car reporter like Kirsten, so my chances of driving new cars are very slim. Since that Roadster experience, I’ve only briefly driven a few other friends’ Teslas and have never tried another electric vehicle. My own cars were all gas burners.

So I was overjoyed when GM offered me the chance to live with an electric vehicle, the new Chevy Equinox, for a full week ahead of my onstage interview with CEO Mary Barra at TechCrunch Disrupt on October 29th.

They dropped it off at my house in San Francisco on Monday. It’s quite beautiful as you can see in the photo above.

The first thing I asked myself: how do I connect it? This was one of the biggest mental hurdles that stopped me from going electric and I’m still not sure what the answer is. I’m assuming you’ll need some sort of home adapter and then ideally increase the voltage to 220V to allow for more charging overnight. To me that sounds like an expensive call to an electrician.

Since I only drove the Equinox for a week, I figured I could get enough charge at one of the Shell charging stations outside the mall where I go to the gym every morning.

When it was delivered it had a range of about 300 miles so there was no need to worry about that.

My son had no school on Monday, so I took him out for a burrito. Like most modern cars, the Equinox unlocks automatically when you approach it with the key. However, unlike most other cars I’ve driven, it actually starts without you having to press any buttons or do anything – you just sit in the seat and it’s on.

GM has really embraced the “computer on wheels” aspect of modern vehicles, packing nearly all relevant controls into a wide touchscreen mounted on the dashboard.

Connecting my phone to Bluetooth was a bit of a mystery until I noticed the “on” button at the top of the touchscreen – the screen lit up for some basic controls, but to get full functionality you have to touch the button. (The car turns on automatically when you sit down, but the touchscreen doesn’t? Strange design choice.)

Overall, using the control system was easy and fun. I liked the built-in Google Maps, which is much more useful and intuitive than the mapping system built into my Toyota. But I couldn’t connect Apple’s CarPlay system wirelessly to use Apple Maps, for example. This is apparently intentional. It’s Google or the highway, friends.

Other quirks: If there is a physical headlight button, I couldn’t find it, which meant I had to use the screen to turn off the headlights when parking the car. (The headlights’ default setting is Auto, so they would have turned off at some point, but I’m old fashioned and have been mentally trained to turn the lights off so the battery doesn’t die.) And when you turn off the car, you have to do it manually touch another control on the screen. It’s easy to get used to – but if you accidentally put your foot on the brake when getting out, it turns back on and you have to turn it off again manually via the screen.

On the plus side, there’s that exceptionally cool anti-crash system that vibrates the driver’s seat to the side that matches the position of nearby objects. The closer you get to the device, the stronger the vibrations become. It may sound annoying, but I found it intuitive and natural, almost as if it appealed to the same part of the human brain that helps you avoid people when walking down a city street. It was less irritating than the triple beeps my Toyota makes every time I’m about to hit something.

As far as driving goes, it has great performance. I was able to quickly climb a very steep hill by my house, which normally requires a gasoline car’s “Sport” mode to burn. Acceleration on the highway was instantaneous and reminded me of the Tesla again – the way a (good) electric vehicle revs up without changing gear feels responsive and smooth. The suspension was a little firmer than I would have liked, the steering a little looser, but that’s just personal preference. (And no, I didn’t drive this car anywhere near 120 mph, but I felt like I could have done it!)

Then Tuesday morning came. Loading time.

It wasn’t as easy as I had hoped. First I had to find the connector located on the top of the front left fender above the wheel. Then I had to scan a QR code, download the Shell app, connect it to my Apple Pay account, plug it in, and wait for confirmation. While charging, it made a cute little beep and a blue light on the dashboard turned green.

Not nearly as convenient as going to a gas station where you just show up, fill up and pay. However, the price was much better – it was $0 for the whole week. I estimate that if these rates applied, I would save about $1,500 per year on gas. (We don’t drive much, live in a compact city with mostly good public transportation.)

My charging routine worked well until Friday morning. All the charging stations near the gym were full, so I continued driving down the mall parking lot, stopped at an empty lot, scanned the QR code and… nothing. The Shell app couldn’t find the charger and instead kept redirecting me back to the other stations, which were listed as “unoccupied” despite the stalls being full.

I got a call with support – at 5:30am in a mall parking lot, which no one wants to do – and they couldn’t figure it out either. But I was told if I created an account they might be able to charge it for me remotely. (No thanks. I had to get to the gym and start my day.) I finally found a charging station about a 7 minute walk from the gym entrance that was both unoccupied and properly listed on the app.

This is not a knock on GM. But relying on partners for such an important function — especially for novice EV users who, like me, were afraid of charging — is a risky strategy and underscores that Tesla’s decision to build its own Supercharger network is an expensive but necessary investment was. Maybe it’s a good thing that the Equinox has an adapter that allows you to use Tesla’s network.

Tesla’s core business has always been electric vehicles, and the company has never had a fallback strategy. To survive, the EV experience had to be better than any gasoline car. GM is preparing for the future with electric vehicles, self-driving systems and breakthrough software. Nevertheless, the company builds millions of gasoline cars every year and has to operate in all market segments.

One final side note that will sound strange to car enthusiasts or people who evaluate cars for a living, but which I think is more typical of the average car buyer’s experience: I don’t really want to spend a lot of time learning , how to use a car car.

The purpose of a car is to get to your destination quickly and efficiently, preferably with some fun along the way. As the industry has aggressively embraced the “computer on wheels” concept pioneered by Tesla, I would argue that they have made cars a little overcomplicated. Do we really need new ways to go from parking to driving? Do we really need to learn a new control system for every brand of car we drive? I may display a bit of an “old man screaming at the cloud” mentality, but sometimes I just want to drive along the coast and feel the freedom of the road.

The Equinox showed me that GM is a credible player in the market and worth considering if I’m ready to take the plunge. But it also convinced me that I’m still not ready for an electric car.