A diesel pickup that gets 13 miles per gallon costs about 40 cents a mile to drive. An electric pickup, charged at home, costs about 6 cents. A used electric car costs about 2. That's the whole pitch. No polar bears, no politics — just the math. In this episode of the Rural E Podcast, host Robert Wallace sits down with Steve Gutmann, program designer, grant writer, and co-founder of EV Math — a nonprofit built on one simple idea: the people with the most to gain from driving electric aren't in the city. They're the ones putting 4,000 miles a month on a 13 MPG truck to get to the grocery store, the doctor, and their kid's track meet. Robert was Exhibit A. Steve talked him into a ride to Astoria in a Tesla. Forty-eight hours later Robert bought a used 2018 Model 3 for about $20,000 and started saving roughly $850 a month on fuel. His neighbors gave him grief for years. Several of them now drive EVs. In this episode: ▸ How eFarms started as "eTractor" — two electric tractors and a hunch ▸ Why an urban messenger kills a rural program, and what fixed it ▸ The Seattle research that flipped EV subsidies on their head: stop subsidizing efficient city cars, start subsidizing the people burning the most fuel ▸ The real numbers: 40 cents a mile in a diesel truck vs. 6 cents in an electric one vs. 2 cents in a used EV ▸ Buying used — Bolts and Leafs under $10,000, and the one spec people forget to check ▸ Why Steve still steers rural buyers toward an older Tesla, even though it's unfashionable to say so ▸ 80–90% of EV charging happens at home, overnight — and why nobody believes it ▸ Towing 1,000 miles in two weeks with an electric pickup, and what route planning really looks like ▸ Broken chargers, credit card readers that won't read, and the one-in-five problem ▸ Destination chargers as rural economic development — why a Level 2 plug pulls people into your restaurant ▸ The Wasco County resiliency project: four rural charging sites and what actually happened ▸ Why the money saved on fuel stays in the local economy — and Steve's $2 billion estimate for Oregon and Washington ▸ Three farmers in their seventies, a Rivian in launch mode, and the end of the heckling One thing to take away: the barrier isn't the vehicle anymore, it's the information. Most people picturing a rural EV imagine hunting for a public charger. In reality they'd plug in at home overnight, pay about six cents a kilowatt-hour, and almost never use a public charger at all. ABOUT THE RURAL E PODCAST Real stories from real people working in rural energy. We talk to the farmers, ranchers, engineers, and program folks doing the actual work — no politics, just what works and what doesn't. IN THIS EPISODE Host: Robert Wallace Guest: Steve Gutmann, EV Math RESOURCES MENTIONED EV Math (including the savings calculator): https://evmath.org Contact Steve directly: steve@evmath.org
