Electric cars are NOT the future, are they?

[Isometimeswonder]

I am genuinely torn. I need want a new car but really don't want electric.
But so few smaller petrol cars are made now.
I haven't got a place to charge a car at home.
AIBU I should accept electric is the future.
AINBU I should get petrol. (Please recommend a small city car)

I’m not at all interested in electric and will hold out as long as I possibly can, I also didn’t want a big car. I will stay petrol for as long as I can. I got an Audi A3, it’s the perfect size for me, doesn’t feel unnecessarily big but still fits everything we need. Much prefer the sound and feel of petrol.

HATE those massive, silent Chinese ones.

People mainly buy them through work tax efficient schemes, usually in salaried white collar jobs. As a retired person these are not open to me, even if I did want an EV so it would be expensive.

Exactly. They're fine for people who can park right next to their houses. For anyone who can't, they're hopeless.

I live in a neighbourhood of terraced houses. One day soon all the pavements will be criss crossed by cables charging up EVs. It's starting to happen already and for anyone walking down those streets, it's an accident waiting to happen.

Yes, they tend to be huge, manufactured in China with lithium mined by children in Africa.

No wonder environmentalism and green policies have such a bad name.

EVs ARE the future. They're just a divisive and dysfunctional future.

Yeah I find it so odd these huge cars are supposed to be environmentally better, but I’d love to see a side by side comparison not just of emissions but the whole process of building, running, maintaining these vehicles compared to something like my little A3! As well as the impact to the road network and towns now vehicles are getting so insufferably big.

But the hundreds of thousands of houses that have no driveways and share a communal car park won't have chargers. All the ex council estates with shared parking will not be given a charger per space.

We are getting two chargers for two hundred houses. And the local scum will steal the charger space as a normal parking space and there won't be a thing anyone can do about it. No one will care, the parking enforcement team won't waste their time on it and the councillors requests for it to be sorted will be ignored.

Climate change not EVs are driving a dysfunctional future and we are probably too late to avoid some cost and horror

I have to say I have one and it’s the best car I have ever driven

on balance EVs are preferable environmentally and since climate change ( not mineral mining ) the existential threat to humanity, that tips the balance strongly in their favor

remember to dig out all old phones and get them properly recycled to reduce the lithium and other rare elements problem

Yes. And having to redraw car parks as the EVs are too big to fit in a standard space.

Aye, a comparably sized EV car is around 25% heavier than its petrol equivalent. If EVs are the future i am sure we will see regeneration and reinforcement of the roads...along with charging points for every home and conviniently placed all over the country and some seem insistent we already have (which we don't).

Exactly. All this 'Aren't EVs great' stuff is complacent and elitist.

They are for people that can buy with tax efficient schemes, have a driveway, most likely own their house, who can then say look how green and privileged we are. As seen on this thread.

I live in a terrace with no offstreet parking. I charge at an onstreet public charger. It's no drama, unless you a drama queen.

Can't speak for all EVs but none of that applies to me.

This is going to play out like mobile phones and the internet. The type of people who wrap fear in scepticism will snipe and jibe until they realise the world moved on, everyone is happily running an EV and the sky didn't fall down, and they quietly get one and run it quite happily without comment.

Exactly. As I posted before the government is throwing a great deal of money towards public EV charging for those without drives
If it doesn't suit you atm due to your house or long distance driving then fine. But the vitriol about it is just petty really

That’s a crap comparison. There wasn’t much of an alternative to mobiles and the internet, most people embraced these pretty quickly due to the profound impact on our lives. There is no immediate need to move to an EV unless you choose to do so, EVs
don’t offer anything new that a petrol car can’t offer in terms of the main purpose of a vehicle.

I’d hate that. I like to leave when I choose, not on a pre arranged schedule.

You wouldn’t need to be ‘scum’ to park there if I’m coming in after dark and the on,y parking space 9n my street is by the EV charger I’m not parking further away just so an EV driver can come in even later and charge. It’s not reasonable.

How are we all supposed to afford one? And some
people keep their cars for many years, so we have many years of petrol/diesel ownership ahead of us.

Or you don’t have any on street charging places near you. Or more than a few of you need it. Of course it’s more difficult. You only find it easy because most people in your situation don't have an EV

LoL 😂😂

Were you around then? I was.

The alternatives were landlines and the yellow pages/tv/letters.

Plenty of people didn't see any point in mobiles or the Internet. They thought what they already had was fine, because of course it was fine, to do what they were already doing. They hadn't been able to make calls on the move, or have all that convenient info to hand, so they didn't really miss it.

Mobile adoption was pretty slow, easily 10 years or more. Mass intenet maybe a little faster but still years. And trust me, the people who had such things had plenty of digs and snipes from the man in the pub (we had proper community pubs back then too 😄)

It's only when they finally actually tried the new thing and found all the things the old things didn't do, or did but the new thing did so much better, that they got it.

Plenty of my terraced neighbours have EVs.

It's so obvious people are just trying to find problems without actually having any experience of the thing.

Auto cars will be all over the place. It'll get to you between you washing your coffee cup and walking out the door, probably after just dropping a neighbour off.

Might pay a bit more for an unscheduled ride but that's the beauty of having a choice 👌

it’s nonsense to say people who oppose EVs are not otherwise environmentalists - I for one. Electricity production needs to be taken into account, not just emissions.

Yes I was! And everyone I knew jumped at mobile phones and the internet when they became financially viable, the reason mobile uptake was slow was because they were too expensive for a long time. EVs are more financially now but I don’t think we are seeing the same kind of acceptance. There has been no where near the level of uptake of EVs as there were those things, the difference between a landline and a mobile phone is vastly different to the difference an EV offers a petrol car.