Top ten reasons NOT to buy an electric vehicle (and why each one is wrong!)

in today's program I'm going to be checking out the top ten most popular reasons for not buying an electric vehicle instead of an internal combustion engine car and I'll be explaining why every single one of those reasons is wrong hello and welcome to just ever think alter ego apparently so the top 10 reasons for not buying an electric vehicle gone then reason number one not enough choice are you joking you're not starting with that one are ya alright well there's a list of all the main models available today in most markets around the world as of july 2019 there are options in every category thanks to groundbreaking pioneers like Renault Nissan and Tesla the vast majority of major manufacturers have realised that the direction of market travel is firmly away from internal combustion engines and relentlessly towards electric vehicles and as a result of that there's a whole raft of brand new models in the development pipeline all the big firms and 2020 is the year when the industry is anticipating a tsunami of models to arrive on the market at every price point and in every category there's even a couple of pickup trucks juice soon as well as an updated electric version of the iconic VW Bus so I really don't think lack of choice is a real issue anymore yeah well that's as may be but how about reason number two electric cars are far more expensive than internal combustion engine cars well it's a fair challenge on the face of it so let's dig into the detail a bit as a general rule most comparisons look at total cost of ownership which includes not only the initial purchase price but the cost of insurance servicing and maintenance and of course mileage costs those costs will vary widely from country to country but we'll have a look at Europe and North America to give ourselves an idea and for folks you don't live in those regions we'll put links in the description box below to cost comparison information sites in your part of the world in February 2000 and 19 the International Council for clean transportation published a report comparing the cost of the VW golf in four different engine types battery electric hybrid petrol and diesel over four years in five different European countries the UK Germany France the Netherlands and Norway as this chart from The Guardian shows in every case the pure electric vehicle came out as the least expensive overall is where you'll find the full report if you want to scrutinize the numbers and of course there'll be a link in the description box as well the Canadian website corporate nights ran a comprehensive cost comparison exercise in April 2019 they ston some pretty complicated calculations developed by Tom Lombardo a retired professor of engineering technology and now president of Tohoku a communication company in Rockford Illinois they compared a 2019 honda civic LX with a 2019 Nissan Leaf s and a 2019 Toyota rav4 XLE with a 2019 Hyundai Kona electric their time scale was 10 years so that they could assume a depreciation of 100% for both types of vehicle once again despite the higher initial purchase price the electric vehicles represented better value over the full period the ICCT also published a report for the United States in April of this year looking forward to electric vehicle costs from 2020 to 2030 that report showed the rapidly decreasing cost of lithium-ion battery packs measured in dollars per kilowatt hour they also show how this will affect the overall cost of buying a battery electric vehicle or bav between 2020 and 2030 and we're no longer talking about total cost of ownership here these charts are simply showing the projected purchase prices for three size categories in the United States a normal car a crossover vehicle and the SUV class so while electric cars are already cheaper to buy and run over a five to ten year period by 2023 even the sticker price of a 150 mile range electric car will actually be cheaper on the car showroom forecourt some an equivalent internal combustion engine car and even today when the average cost of a new car in the US is thirty six thousand five hundred and ninety dollars there are plenty of really great battery electric options below that price including the best-selling Nissan Leaf and the standard Tesla Model 3 and the US Department of Energy provides this great online tool called a gallon which lets you compare the cost per gallon of gasoline in your state with the effective cost per gallon of running an electric car in every single state in 2019 electric is way cheaper on average recharging an electric vehicle cost about half as much per mile as a gasoline vehicle with the biggest difference occurring in the state of Washington in Europe of course we pay far more per gallon for petrol and diesel so that per mile comparison is even more favorable towards electric vehicles over here curtis mold rich writing for a car magazine in the UK gave us this insight in June 2019 let's consider a 100 kilowatt hour Tesla Model S a typical public rapid charging point in the UK currently charges around 35 pence per kilowatt so the cost is a hundred times 35 pence or about 35 quid if you were to theoretically charge from completely empty to completely full switch to a cheaper home supply which could cost 12 pence per kilowatt hour on a good value overnight tariffs and the maths work out in a more palatable 100 times 12 pence which is 12 quid and that's a major saving over the cost of a 70 to 100 pound petrol diesel tank full for a typical executive car well all very well in good but we keep getting told how much better these electric vehicles are for the environment when we all know that the electricity has got to be generated somewhere so these things can charge up so how about reason number three most of the electricity still comes from coal and gas so you're still emitting co2 well no that one's not accurate either Bloomberg ran a report in February of 2019 looking at exactly this accusation they found that carbon dioxide emissions from battery powered vehicles were about 40% lower than for internal combustion engines in 2018 the difference was biggest in Europe in the UK where we have large renewable energy industries but the comparison still held true even in China where they're much more reliant on coal and of course as a consumer you can find out who gets their electricity from renewables for example Eco tricity in the UK we've got more than 300 charge points at motorway service stations up and down the country supply a hundred percent of their electricity from renewable sources all Tesla superchargers are either already powered by wind and solar or in the process of being converted and E Vigo the largest charging network in America announced in May 2019 that it is now contracted for a hundred percent renewable energy to power its customers so you're apparently making it easier cheaper and greener to buy an electric vehicle correct so that leads us nicely to reason number four if everyone buys an electric vehicle then the electricity grid will simply collapse and then none of us I'll have any power for anything at all have you been reading the Daily Mail there are several reasons why this is misguided information first of all grids in most developed nations even today are quite capable of handling an uplift in demand that equates to about 15 to 20 percent of the vehicles on the road being electric it's fairly safe to say that we're not going to experience a sudden 100 percent changeover from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles in the next few weeks or months it will take years and in those intervening years most countries will be accelerating the transition from fossil fuel powered grids to renewable energy power grids that transition and involve the rollout of smart meters that are able to tell the grid exactly how much energy each household is using at any given time and the transition will also involve the installation of very large amounts of energy storage and electric vehicles are basically energy storage units with a will on each corner the software in electric vehicles will be able to communicate with the grid so that the grid can either send energy to the car to recharge its battery or take energy out of the car's battery to help smooth the spikes in the demand whoa whoa well I'm going to minute think about it it's patently obvious that everyone's going to get home at the same time and put their vehicles on charge so you're clever grid isn't gonna be able to pull any energy out of flat batteries because they're all going to need charging up they're not kettles you know it won't be like halftime during the match or the commercial break at the end of your favorite TV show most people park up for the evening and don't use the car again until the morning so the grid can charge up vehicles at any time through the night and if you got any sense you'll set up your vehicles charging software to take advantage of cheap great electricity after midnight and another thing the vehicles won't all arrive at home with a flat battery you're really living in the wrong century if you think that's still the case the average daily commute in the UK and the US is about 20 miles even the smallest DB batteries of about a hundred miles of range and most of them nowadays are actually well over 200 miles or more so the griddle know exactly how much charge each vehicle has got left and therefore which vehicles to draw energy from early on in the evening to smooth out the spike in demand from kettles and ovens and which vehicles to recharge later on when electricity is cheap so just like everything else in our modern world it's all in the algorithm what about when you go on a long trip then reason number five is range anxiety well as I mentioned just now only the very small cars like vwz up designed specifically for city driving have a range as low as 100 miles nowadays the best-selling model worldwide currently is the Nissan Leaf and it's now got a range of 226 miles in fact is the top 10 so that 226 miles only puts the Nissan Leaf at tenth place right up there at the top of course of the tesla models they've always been famed for their long range it's been part of their sales pitch since inception especially coming from out there in the wide open spaces of California yeah but they all run I eventually donate and reason number six is that just isn't a big enough network of charging stations anywhere in the world to support electric vehicles yet let's start with America then his Tesla's network of charging stations across North America that will get you from coast to coast and north to south with no problem at all this is the map for Evo I mentioned earlier they're America's biggest charging Network and is the one for electrify America more are coming online every week but even back in 2018 the number stations in the US had reached 20,000 and the total number of plug outlet was close to 60,000 here's the UK we've already mentioned eco tricity then there's Tesla UK and we have a great app over here called zap map which shows the location of every single charging point in the country in total as of fourth of july 2019 there are just short of 9,000 charging stations supporting more than 14,000 charging devices with over 24,000 connectors that compares to about eight and a half thousand petrol stations all right I get the idea get out of this one though reason number 7 it takes hours to charge at one of these electric vehicles so how can that be practical well that was certainly the case a few years back and it does depend which brand you drive and how old it is but as a general rule a fast charger at a commercial charging station typically rated at 50 kilowatts I'll add about 150 miles of range to a compatible vehicle in about 30 minutes enough time for a toilet break and a cup of tea Tesla have got their new supercharged of v3 charging stations and they can charge model 3 vehicles at 250 kilowatts and Model S and Model X vehicles at 200 kilowatts at SR owner recently posted a video online showing his model 3 getting a hundred miles of range in 7 minutes an electrifying America now has a hundred and twenty ultra fast charging stations at Walmart stores in 34 states in the u.s. those charges worker and eye watering 350 kilowatts vehicles with batteries that can cope with this massive charging input I'll be on the market in the next 12 months and they'll be charging at 20 miles per minute which equates to 300 miles of range in 15 minutes all right how about reason number 8 then and a very common one in the United Kingdom I haven't got a garage or a driveway so how am I supposed to charge my electric vehicle at home well the long-term answer is induction charging you can already buy induction charging pads for the BMW i8 so you just drive over the top of it and it charges automatically no plug-in in just get out the car and walk into your home in reality of course that technology is a long way off for most people and installing one of these things outside every terraced house in Britain would certainly not be high on the priority list but let's face it you don't feel your carrot with petrol at home dear so if you haven't gotten garage or driveway space and it'll just be like an internal combustion engine car you'll charge up when you're out and if you drive to work then you'll find that more and more companies will be providing charging points in their car parks especially if they get incentivized to do that by tax allowances but then there's reason number 9 which is that the batteries by far the most expensive part of the car and you'll have to replace that with after 2 or 3 years because they die yeah that's another good one propagated by the fossil fuel industry but real world experience over the last decade tells a completely different story there are Tesla's and Nissan Leafs out there with a hundred thousand miles on the clock and still going strong with batteries at 70% capacity in fact it's more likely that the car itself will get scrapped long before the batteries fail there even schemes now to give evie batteries a second life after they've been used in the car as extra storage support for electricity grids and domestic homes look I'm just gonna level with you all right call it reason number 10 I know about internal combustion engine cars I know how they work I've been driving them for 33 years I know what to do when they don't work you know I'm comfortable with them and I don't like to change if I don't have to and I like the foresight imagination to project forward into the future to see how the world is going to work in 10 years time and some of my mates down the pub might think I'm you know less of a man if I buy an electric car rather than a proper car with an engine in it well that last point probably speaks more about their insecurities than yours but anyway I get it very few people would have predicted today's world ten years ago but the rapid changes we've seen in the last decade all pale into insignificance compared to what's coming in the next 10 years it's something you're just going to need to come to terms with sooner or later and the sooner we all come to terms with it the quicker we'll all realize how much fun electric vehicles to join how much more economical they are and how much better they are not just for the air quality of our towns and cities but for the global environment as well first electric cars are rapidly becoming the coolest gadget you'll ever own so you'll only need to show your friends a car once for them to be convinced that's it for this toy don't push it look that is it for this week do please give us a like and a share if you found the program useful and enjoyable if you haven't already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit the little Bala icon so you get notified when all the new programs come out each week I've never been happier to do this bit it's completely free to subscribe all you need to do is click on that icon there alright as always thanks very much for watching and until next time it's goodbye from me and it's goodbye from him goodbye

Channel: Just Have a Think

Views: 150,220

Rating: 4.7825561 out of 5

Keywords: Electric Vehicles, Climate Emergency, Renewable Energy, Range Anxiety, Lithium Ion Batteries, Battery Chargers, EV chargers, Smart Meters, Smart Grid, Induction Charging, Act Now, Climate Change, Global Warming

Id: VyZOLMeMYnI

Length: 16min 19sec (979 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 07 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/penkster]

YA post that doesn't need to be a video. I hate the internet.

[u/Muck777]

I'm not going to watch 16 minutes of that, but there are people who it suits, and people who is doesn't.

It's not 'wrong', it's just different.

[u/evaned]

This video has the usual EV proponent problem of taking good arguments and stretching them significantly too far, into bad arguments.

Not enough choice.

"As of July 2019, there are options in every category."

Are there? Just two days ago we had this question about options for three-row SUVs. The answers? The Model X ($81K+) and XC90 ($48K+); or Pacifica Hybrid if you're willing to compromise on the "SUV" aspect. (In fairness, the last is $41K+ plus and right on the border of that OP's price range.) Especially considering that they're focusing this video on BEVs to the exclusion of PHEVs, that means there's really one choice. I mean, I guess you can argue an $81K+ Model X is in the same segment as the $31K+ Highlander, but you can also argue that we didn't land on the moon or there's a massive serpent in a lake in Scotland.

Also, is there really an EV pickup available?

Too expensive

[From a US perspective.]

Sure, if you're willing to get a neutered car then it comes out nicely pricewise; the Golf in the first study they cited has an EV range of 125 miles. The Leaf in the second study, 150 mi. The Kona (also second study) is better, but still challenging for many road trips. (That study is also looking at Canada rather than US.) I'm also far from convinced it's fair to use the off-peak electric price just on its face; that needs something to show that switching to a TOU plan doesn't increase the cost in non-EV uses in a typical home; if it does, that eats into the savings. Also, it ignores public charging costs during road trips. Re. the third study, are you (the video authors) talking about how things are or will be? Because you say you're talking about now but then go on to talk about the future a lot... "There are plenty of really great battery-electric options below [the average US price of $36K]"... depends on what you call "really great." Not really great by my needs.

Still using coal

Video is totally on-point here, of course.

The grid will collapse

Also mostly on-point here. I'm a little skeptical as to whether V2G will be worthwhile, but that I think is a minor part of what they talk about.

Range anxiety

The video is decent here, but now you start of course running into conflicts with the earlier points like price. E.g. in this they highlight the new longer-range Leaf, but when talking about price cite studies that talk about the much shorter-range Leaf.

But considering the slow (relative to gas) charging speed, even most of those distances are still fairly short... but I guess I'll put my usual objections under charge speed, later.

No charging network

The story here is good and better than many EV detractors give it credit for, but at the same time don't act like it's perfect. My parents just did a road trip that would have been impossible in any EV. The last road trip that I did that wasn't to visit family would be possible only in a Tesla (per A Better Route Planner).

Charging takes too long

Similar to the previous point; the story is better than EV detractors give them credit for, but it's not like the problem is solved either, especially in practice. I have of course said this many times, but the drive to where my parents used to live was barely a one day drive. The only BEVs that could conceivably still do that in a single day are the LR Teslas, and even a LR 3 isn't a guarantee (would add about 45-60 minutes). And again now you continue revealing interactions with previous points... yeah there are a couple (two or three...) BEVs that could do that trip, but they start at $50K and have no chance of being cost competitive with economy cars at half or a third the price.

No garage or driveway

"Let's face it -- you don't fill your car up with petrol at home, do you? So if you haven't got a garage or a driveway space then it'll just be like an internal combustion engine car."

Except one that fuels an order of magnitude more slowly of course. Earlier they touted that the 350 kW Electrify America chargers will add 20 miles of range every minute, significantly faster than any car can now and any affordable car will be able to for a while. Great, but a fuel pump adds... 100 miles/minute?

"You'll find that more and more companies will be providing charging points."

Great, another point about where things are going looking years in the future in a video billed about why the reason to not buy an EV is wrong today.

(That's of course not to say that no one will have other opportunities to charge, but if you do you're certainly in a small minority right now, at least in the US.)

Battery replacements

Aside from the highlighting of the Leaf (which of course has also had notorious difficulties in some environs), this part is of course on-point.

[u/-twitch-]

Anyone who watched this care to give the rest of us the bullet list that this should have been?

[u/wowy-lied]

They focus a lot on theoretical solution and potential futures change and not enough on the current states of EVs choice, pricing, range and infrastructure. This is why i think this kind of video is the wrong way to talk about EVs. If you want to sell an EV to someone tell them the truth of right now when they buy it and don't make them dream about what could maybe be possible or exist in the future. Yes EVs are overpriced right now, yes charging time are too slow, yes range for small ev is not enough, yes if you don't have a parking you are in a bad spot for a lot of buyers. First you have to sell EVs to people who are willing to accept those weakness and you must focus on correcting them. If you don't do this you are admitting to selling the wrong product to your customer or lying to them. I am really getting tired of the fanatics on both side (pro-gas / pro-EV).