South Dakota is the land of Chevrolet Impalas and 3/4 ton pickups. Oh sure, you'll find a BMW here and there and a Honda Civic or a thousand here and there, but when I stumbled across a nationwide list of charging stations to plug in your electric car, I started wondering, can you even do that in Sioux Falls?

Turns out you can.

Leave it to the folks at Billion Automotive. They have a charging station at their Nissan dealership on West 12th Street. The second location within 30 miles surprised me. It's actually in Hills, Minnesota at J&R Housing.

So if you just purchased a Tesla Model S for $68,000 or a Chevy Bolt for about $30,000 you do have a place to plug them in. It's coming. Chances are our children and grandchildren might find them to be more common. For now, charging stations are few and far between.

Speaking of Tesla. If you drive one, chances are you could make a summer pilgrimage to Mt. Rushmore as long as you stick to I-90.  Mitchell, South Dakota has a plug in called Mitchell Super Charger at County Fair Plaza and the hometown of South Dakota Senator John Thune has a charging station in Murdo.

Murdo doesn't even have a stop light or McDonald's  but they have a Tesla charging station. Yep, when you stop off to see the Auto Museum you could grab a charge.

After that, your next charge location for Tesla is in Rapid City.

So, how much does it cost to run an electric car?  I asked Google and she told me:

If electricity is 12 cents per kWh — the national average — it would cost $3.48 to go 100 miles. Another way to calculate cost is to use the number of kilowatt-hours it takes to recharge the EV's battery. If an EV requires 20 kWh to fully recharge and the rate is 12 cents per kWh, that's $2.40 to fill up the car.

It's coming. We may not see it, but our children most likely will. Who knows, our grand daughter Harper's first car could be an electric.

For right now, it's probably gas or diesel.  Until they can just make one powerful enough to pull a stock trailer full of cow calf pairs.


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