Nineteen Reasons You May Regret Owning an Electric Car – Part 1
Automologist MAC makes his case…
My doubts about Electric Cars as the future of personalised transportation are well known, so much so that some of my friends oft attempt to mock me about them. Thus, I have decided to end the argument once and for all and clearly highlight why I truly think that the Internal Combustion engine will NOT gentle into that good night go. As the deep-state government tries to convince you to give up the personal freedom of individual travel, here are 19 things that you may want to know about Electric Cars.
1. Range Anxiety. Without a doubt, this is the number one concern when owning an EV. Right now, there is not a battery available that has the energy density to overcome this and most cars have a usable range of little more than 200 +/- kilometre range. If you want more than that, you have to seriously go up the price ladder. Consider that most Internal Combustion Engine Powered Cars (ICE) will go more than 600 to 800 kilometres, you may start get it. Sure, most people drive less than 25 kilometres per day on their daily commute but it is still the #1 turn-off. Sure, batteries are getting better but they ain’t here yet!
2. Extended Charging Time. To get a full charge in your batteries currently, you need to physically connect to a power point. Most EVs presently take more than 40 minutes to get to a 70-80% charge and some hours to get to 100%, although Porsche and Tesla advertise 20 to 30 minutes; this is in one of their super-duper 800kWh stations and they are about as common as rocking horse poo. Against this is the couple of minutes to pump petrol into the tank. Now, if we could just pull up to a charging station and swap batteries…
3. Planning Your Trip. In an ICE car, the infrastructure is already there. You want to go on a road trip, zero planning is required—just get in and go. With an EV, you really have to gauge the location, the distance between recharging stations and of course the time to recharge. You may also want to consider the amount of luggage and passengers you are carrying as these will also reduce battery life. Wouldn’t it be much better to consider a future in which the existing infrastructure could be adapted to suit our needs, you know like the use of Hydrogen power with the gas sourced from renewables like that little project in Namibia.
4. Mostly for Urban Use. Well, this is the popular view right now, as there is a greater number of rechargers and trips are shorter. Heck, most supermarkets have free charging stations to attract customers, but they only have a few of them and if you live in an area where you only have on street parking, you cannot run a cable out from your house to recharge your car, so then what? I suppose that if you do run out of juice in an urban setting you can always get a bus home and they can easily be electrified.
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5. They are not really Environmentally Friendly. True, when they are on the road, they are zero-emission. But in truth, all you are doing is moving the ‘point of pollution’. Making heavy ol’ Li-ion batteries and shipping them all around the world is not good for global warming. Then there is the generation of the electricity. China is currently building masses of new coal-fired power plants and of course Germany is planning to turn some of theirs back on due to a lack of Russian gas this winter. Most experts estimate that it takes seven years before an EV is more Environmentally Friendly than an ICE vehicle, which coincidentally is about the time when you can expect your batteries to go kaput!
6. They are way too expensive. New tech always tends to be more expensive and this is the case for EVs right now, but I do not see this getting much better. Scarce resources and governments forcing increase in demand will see this as a seller’s market for some time to come and cost will remain relatively high.
7. How to get and EV repaired? Forget about getting a cheaper backstreet garage fix for you car when it goes wrong. All current EVs are being designed to be serviceable ONLY at an authorised garage which we all know will pry the last cents from your wallet. But in a way this is good because Li-ion batteries are exceedingly flammable and burn at really high temperatures so you need specialised fire extinguishing capability.
8. The batteries are way to heavy. Battery packs weigh in at about 200+kgs in a smaller model—this is like carrying 2 or 3 extra adult passengers, and a primary reason why the halfway house of Plug-In Hybrid cars will never get off the ground. All this extra weight will result in increased wear and tear.
9. The weather will impact your driving. This is because the batteries are really temperature sensitive and do not perform well in really cold weather. This may not be too much of a problem when it comes to us living in the tropics but freezing weather will drain batteries and this will only add to the owner’s range anxiety and no one wants to run out of juice in a blizzard.
10. Lack of speed. Okay, I know that there are some blisteringly fast EVs out there, you know the sort whereby the acceleration can pull the skin from your face, but most are in fact quite slow and many actually have factory speed limiters on them. Mostly this is done to protect the range the vehicle can achieve.
