Editor’s note: This article was first published in August 2021. Its figures are from 2021 or earlier, including an average range of about 400 km, fast charging in about 30 minutes, a price premium of around 9,000 euros and few models to choose from.
There is great interest in selling us electric vehicles, with supposed advantages for both the user and the environment. Electric cars are the future, because they are better than cars with a combustion engine. But how much truth is there in these claims?
Those who are thinking about buying an electric vehicle today might come to regret that decision.
Of course, electric vehicles are clearly excellent for people who only drive close to home, and if you ask many electric vehicle owners, they will tell you that electric vehicles are far superior to internal combustion vehicles. But are they really?
To find out, we need to listen to the honest opinions of thousands of users who have been driving electric cars for some time. And to whet your appetite, let’s just say that one in five people who bought an electric vehicle in California ended up abandoning the technology and going back to internal combustion.
Once we set aside biased opinions, strip away the exaggerated benefits of the electric car and forget our illusions to focus on reality, electric vehicles today are inferior to their internal combustion counterparts, which are often underrated and unfairly maligned.
Reasons not to buy an electric car
1. Range… or the lack of it
Thanks to technological improvements, the average electric vehicle can travel about 400 kilometres (250 miles) on a full charge. That is fine for short trips or short-distance journeys, but if you are thinking about your holidays and a long road trip, the hassles begin.
2. Charging time
It only takes a couple of minutes to fill the tank of your diesel or petrol vehicle (as long as you are not driving a lorry). Charging an electric vehicle takes much longer. Depending on the charging station, with semi-fast charging an electric car could take up to 2 hours to charge 80% of the battery.
Today, with high-speed level 3 charging stations, 80% of the battery can be recharged in a little under or a little over 30 minutes, depending on the model. We will probably soon see 15-minute charging arrive.
The problem many electric vehicle owners complain about is that when they find a high-speed charging station, it is usually occupied, so charging ends up taking much longer.
So if you need to recharge your electric vehicle and you are second or third in the queue, that “high-speed” charge could take you 2 or 3 hours.
3. Options are limited
While the internal combustion vehicle industry has existed for more than a century, modern electric vehicle production lines are much more recent. That is why there are far fewer models to choose from. Right now we are also paying much more for something that has not yet been perfected. Let me explain: as with any new product, prices tend to be higher.
Take the DVD, the revolution that was going to kill off VHS. The first DVD players were rubbish, but they sold for a fortune. Over time, a dirt-cheap DVD player was 100 times better than the first ones and had many more features. This happens with practically every modern piece of technology, and the electric car is no exception.
4. Electric cars are not very efficient in hot climates
As an article in The Verge showed, electric vehicle performance degrades on hot days.
With high outside temperatures and the air conditioning on, an electric car’s range can fall by 17%. Again, this is no problem if you are driving from home to work in July, but if you are travelling 600 kilometres from one province to another in the middle of August, that 17% may cost you two charging stops. And that is with a new electric vehicle, because, as we know, batteries lose capacity over time.
Add to that the chance of ending up second in the charging queue, and you may well turn a 6-hour trip into a 10-hour one.
5. They are not efficient in cold climates either
The advantage of internal combustion vehicles is that they can heat the interior with waste heat. An electric vehicle depends only on its battery, so turning on the heating also reduces its range.
During a cold snap, Tesla Model 3 owners told CNBC that their battery range dropped by as much as 50%, which is crazy.
In other words, electric car batteries are not designed for cold snaps right now, nor for heatwaves. Tesla, we’re waiting for you down in Andalusia (southern Spain) 😁
6. Electricity costs will rise
This is a fact. The cost of electricity will rise as demand increases. As the number of electric vehicles on the road grows, so will the demand for electricity, and this will push operating costs up.
And this happens because the infrastructure to support electric vehicles does not exist. California’s grid operators began asking users to ease the pressure on the power grid by charging their electric vehicles during off-peak hours.
The curious thing is that if this is already a problem when electric vehicles are only a very small share of all the cars on the road, what will happen when the number of electric car users grows?
We could give many answers, but however much the infrastructure were improved, someone would have to pay for it, and all of this would end in a considerable rise in electricity prices. But hey, anything for the environment. Oh, wait! Maybe we have been sold a bill of goods about the environmental benefits of the electric car.
Are electric cars better for the environment?
7. They are not environmentally friendly
It takes about 3.75 kW of power to dry an average load of laundry. Now compare that with the roughly 50 kW of energy needed to fully charge a standard Tesla Model 3. That is the equivalent of drying more than 13 loads of laundry, not to mention the significant load on the power grid.
Electric cars can have batteries weighing more than 500 or 600 kg, loaded with toxic heavy metals. Having such a big, heavy battery sometimes means the car spends a large part of its resources just moving itself.
Worse still, these batteries have a limited lifespan, in some cases far too short, although work is apparently under way to extend battery life.
8. Do electric cars really pollute less?
Any energy used to power electric vehicles that does not come from clean sources such as solar, wind or hydroelectric power generates more CO2 emissions. Contrary to what people believe, any electricity generated from fossil fuels to charge those electric vehicles has already released its CO2 (pollution at the power plant).
According to the famous study by Jonathan Lesser in 2018, widespread adoption of electric vehicles across the country would probably increase air pollution compared with new internal combustion vehicles.
9. The price of electric cars
Electric vehicles are expensive, and their maintenance is also more expensive than that of an internal combustion vehicle. On average you can end up paying around €9,000 more for fully electric models than for their petrol equivalents.
Right now, electric vehicles become even more expensive when you realise that their batteries, in the best case, have to be replaced roughly every 8 years. Still, don’t forget the example of the early DVD players.
10. Government incentives for electric cars
To encourage the use of electric cars, governments around the world have launched their own grants and subsidies. This might look like an advantage at first, but the reality is that electric vehicles need government subsidies to be competitive with internal combustion cars.
And once again, remember that when the government hands out grants and subsidies, the money comes out of the pockets of all citizens, and that, one way or another, governments look to recover that money in whatever ways a government can.
Disclaimer: I am neither for nor against electric cars. In this article we have simply drawn on a number of sources that give us these figures and this opinion, which in some cases contrasts with the supposed benefits of electric vehicles. Always do your own research and draw your own conclusions.
Featured image: RG72, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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