The main concerns people have with EVs are as follows:
- Cost. While this is narrowing, if you want an EV with comparable options to an ICE vehicle, you will likely spend 2x as much or more.
I think I showed this is false. They are still somewhat more expensive but that gap has narrowed and continues to narrow. Again, for the average cost of what is paid for a new car in the US, there are several EV options that are often better optioned than their ICE equivalent.
- Range. EVs simply cannot travel as far as their ICE equivalents on a single charge. 250-300 miles is typical. But on the open road, an ICE vehicle can travel 500+ miles before needing to stop for a fill-up.
Range is a difference but it makes little difference for most (likely 90%) of Americans, except for maybe a couple of road trips per year.
- Range. Again. Yes, you can make the claim that EV costs are slowly coming more in-line with ICE vehicles, but only on the base, short-range models. Long-range models often cost many thousands more to gain more miles. The opposite is true for ICE vehicles. If you buy a smaller engine in a lower trim, you may actually get better gas mileage than if you opt for the bigger engine in more luxury trims.
No, the EV costs are similar even with the longer range trims. In fact, in general the short range trims are being phased out by most manufacturers, in the US (they still do well in other areas of the world), because they don't sell. Again, your EV6 Wind AWD has an EPA 274 miles of range and can be easily purchased for less than the average new car price. If you go for the EV6 Wind RWD, it is about $4,000 cheaper and actually has more range, 310 miles. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 gets slightly lower range (maybe 10 miles less) but costs roughly the same as the Kia (and they share the same battery, motor, etc). There are also VW ID4s, Tesla Model 3, the Model Y if you qualify for the $7500 federal incentive. I suspect the Ford Mach E, Toyota, Nissan, and Subaru would also work but haven't checked their pricing with incentives recently.
- Charging time. It takes considerably longer to charge an EV than it does to fuel an ICE vehicle.
Only really applicable when on a road trip.
- Charing cost. As I showed in my EV6 example earlier, it can actually cost MORE to charge your EV on long road trips.
No, you fudged your numbers a bit -- using gas prices that are closer to $2.50/gallon; at current prices it is roughly the same. And you completely ignored that since 90% of your driving is local, it is far cheaper to drive the EV (particularly if you start including oil changes).
- Charging availability. This is becoming less of a problem, but the fact that there are apps available to help you pre-plan where you can stop to charge your EV on a road-trip is a pretty good indicator that EV charging is not nearly as ubiquitous as gas stations.
Again, only when road tripping. Though it does point out that EV ownership likely isn't for people in apartments or townhouses (without driveway) currently, assuming they don't have an easy way to charge at home. On top of that, it saves you time as you don't need to go to fuel stations locally.
- Cold weather performance. It's s simple fact that batteries do not perform nearly as well in cold-weather conditions. Since this is your only source for powering your car, people in colder temperatures will experience excessively long charging times and reduced range.
Reduced range, yes. Interestingly, though, ICE cars experience a similar loss in efficiency; just with more range you tend not to really notice it. Again, at home it likely won't really affect your charging speeds that much. Also, most cars should pre-condition prior to going to chargers (and if they don't, their owners need to pester the manufacturer until they add it since it is basically a software fix), at which point they charge just as fast as during the summer. While you can point to isolated instances in the US, I'll point to Canada not having similar issues; or better yet, I'd point to Norway, with much higher adoption of EVs, and yet not having those issues with their cold winters.
- Convenience. If I am going somewhere and I forgot to fill-up in my ICE vehicle, I can stop at any gas station for 5-minutes to fuel up and go. In an EV if you didn't realize your charge was low, you might have to wait an hour or more, and that's only if you paid to have a fast-charger in your home. If you forgot to plug in and have to rely on your 110v outlet, I hope you can wait 40+ hours.
Not a "fast charger," just a Level 2 charger. It will work of any 220v outlet and costs a few hundred dollars (from about $250 up, depending on how fancy you want it, such as being able to control it with your smartphone). The "high cost" of the 220v charger is if you have to add a 220v plug near where you want to charge your car -- and there are federal and local incentives that pay for much of it, not to mention some car manufacturers will help pay when you buy their car (it was one nice thing about the low cost Bolt, as Chevy would pay up to about $2000 to get a Level 2 charger installed. And, if you have a charger in your home, you are far less likely to "forget" to the point you don't have enough charge for a local trip then forgetting to go get gas (which requires an amount of time and effort).
And your 40+ hours for Level 1 (100v) is unrealistic. Not that it doesn't take that long to charge the car but that most people don't drive that far in a day. My daughter rents a home right now and so won't invest in a 220v charger, since they aren't going to pay to upgrade the rental. She drives maybe 30 miles per day with work and literally only plugs in on the weekend. The fact is, even with a Level 1, she can put roughly 40 miles a night into her car, more than she will drive most days. In fact, the average in the US is that people drive less than 40 miles per day -- meaning most people can easily get by with a Level 1 charger. And, again, if they forget a couple of days, the still have at least 150 miles of range and can just plug in longer over the weekend (though, actually, the advice is just to plug in every time you come home -- so your car is always at full charge).
It is extremely unlikely your EV will be "empty" and you'll have forgotten to charge -- more likely it will have a half charge or so.
Read more issues here:
Home and public charging stations also place a significant strain on the electric grid, resulting in an average of $11,833 in socialized costs per vehicle over 10 years. Those costs are shouldered …
thehill.com
The issues are plenteous. They are real. And they all must be overcome to achieve a fully EV world.
I'm shocked, shocked that someone from the
American Energy Institute, started to help promote fossil fuels over alternative energy, would write a hit piece about EVs using questionable arguments. I have to love the line, "In frigid weather, fragile EV batteries are forced to drain their own power to maintain warmth." I mean, seriously, a gas car has some way to heat the car without burning gasoline? The only reason it makes any kind of sense is that
roughly 50% of the energy created from an engine burning gasoline is lost to heat -- and so if you use 1% of that heat you can use it to heat the cabin, so you only have a "loss" of 49%. But also, to be fair, that 50% is with one of the more efficient gas engines -- it is as high as 65% in less efficient engines.
Thanks for acknowledging that purchasing an EV will present "inconveniences" for people who purchase them. Now try to convince someone why they should spend twice as much for a vehicle that will present inconveniences to them.
Why, when EVs aren't twice as expensive? To give a different example, my daughter bought (and she didn't consult with me at all, and got hers before I bought mine) an EV6 Wind AWD to replace her Kia Stinger; yet is happy because she is paying less for the EV6 (better equipped than your K5 with Smart Park -- or from the Hyundai commercial "smaht pahk" -- and the blind spot camera when she uses the turn signals) than she did for the Stinger. She is loving the car, as I said, paying far less in fuel (just plugging it in every weekend to keep it charged) and even starting to plan a road trip for the summer (and having used it for road trips to her in-laws). I will say that, with a 3 year old, she can't do your strategy of driving without stops anyway, so the charging stops don't bother her. Now, if you want, you can check into me later this summer to see if she's still so thrilled with it after the road trip.
My experience is that the people who do their research, who understand the real advantages and disadvantages (not like your above article), tend to be thrilled with their EVs. It is the people who buy them because they are "trendy" and "green" without really understanding them are the ones that get frustrated (such as your example).
And I'm not claiming EVs are for everyone, at least now. There are people who drive long distances almost daily. In Houston, I knew people that lived a couple of hours from their work. There are salesmen that drive hundreds of miles in a day. Plenty of examples, though they are a relatively small minority, over all. The biggest issue, though, is that it does likely require a change of habits -- plugging it in when you go home rather than going to a gas station, doing a bit more planning before taking road trips and getting out of "get their now" mentality, etc.
As more EVs are on the road we will see more fast chargers installed along major highways. We'll see improvements in battery technology -- particularly if Toyota (and the many other companies working on similar tech) can bring their capacitive battery (they claim 745 miles) to market in a few years, as they claim. Then you actually will have a much larger range on an EV that can charge in 5 or 10 minutes. Granted, I think it will take a bit longer, but things will change a lot with EVs over the next couple of decades.
