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)

Hrft but there was an interesting Daily Telegraph article about Evs this week.

Imo great if you have charging space, dont travel more than 200m in one day, though I know you can do fast charge, I saw the queue I the M5 Cumbria services last summer, not pretty.

They are also blimmen expensive and wasteful on repairs I'm told.

Wow. Is it dark in your rabbit hole

not sure telegraph isn’t a teeny bit biased
services and repairs are cheaper as less mechanical problems
rtft to read about investment

@TheEarlgreygirl have you looked into the actual range of reasons for tye cost of energy. Not just the headlines?

@Sadworld23

great if you have charging space, dont travel more than 200m in one day, though I know you can do fast charge, I saw the queue I the M5 Cumbria services last summer, not pretty.
They are also blimmen expensive and wasteful on repairs I'm told.

Mmmm, let’s see.

• We don’t have a personal charging space, but manage fine - currently paying around 2/3 of the cost of fuelling an ICE car with almost 100% public charging (we did get a few kWh from a family home charger when visiting)
• The most we have driven in one day was 560 miles, charging once while we ate
• We have never queued at a rapid charger. It’s funny, but there’s something called an app that you can use to get live notification of how busy sites are and simply go to a different one. The one time there was a fully occupied bank of chargers, we moved the car… 5 metres to the bank next door
• The car we drive now is around the same price as an equivalent ICEV, and yet multiple times nicer to drive. We are never going back to a technology where preheating/cooling and one-pedal driving don’t exist
• The one major repair on the 11 year old Leaf we have in the family was a broken suspension link. That can happen on any car, and we had lots of similar maintenance issues with the 18 year old Volvo petrol and 10 year old Volvo diesel before they died
• There has never been any fault with the Leaf’s EV components, and its current main driver still loves it

And we absolutely love our EV. I fully expect it to run until I die.

So that’s all the Telegraph sourced bunkum debunked. RTFT if you want to see actual evidence, including a photo of our EV charging at a lamppost and some charging receipts and maps of actual charger locations. And please go post this kind of trite hand-me-down trolling in another place.

If you have off street parking so can install a home charger, then it's no bother at all and actually much less hassle than heading to a petrol station every week, unless you do a lot of very long journeys. It's almost unheard of for us to do more driving in a day than we can do in one charge. We drove to the south of France in the summer and that was a minor hassle, but really only a minor one. We did most of our charging on our overnight stops, and a bit of a top up at lunchtime. Other than that pretty much the only time we have had to charge away from home is when we have gone to pick up our DS from Uni 4+ hours drive away. Again, we can get there in one charge, but just need to charge it over night.

However, I can see that if you can't charge at home it is a trickier decision. But soon it will be the only option.

Well everyone i know apart from one person who has one hates them and regrets buying them! I don’t have one so i can’t say either way.

😂😂😂

Aside from us, I now have six people in my close family and friends’ circle with EVs and another four in the wider group (colleagues of that group, typically). None have said they want to switch back. All have said they love their car.

There are also many EVs parked around near us that have been there years (so owners clearly haven’t swapped them), or households that have clearly upgraded (one had a Leaf outside, then had a Tesla and the Leaf, now has just the Tesla), suggesting no great desire to get rid.

Many posters here have said the same: “I love mine, I would not switch back,” or words to that effect. With reasons why in many cases.

All of which aligns with the surveys that have shown very low desire to switch back, e.g:

94% of BEV owners would never go back to ICE

And yet anonymous posters on the Internet come out with “everyone I know hates theirs and wants to go back,” or similar, without ever providing any evidence as to why. Typically they are like you - they have to say they haven’t actually got an EV, because we might expect some actual reasons then, which you cannot provide because what you are saying simply isn’t true, is it?

I can't usually read Daily Telegraph but this was an open view, as they are Conservative or conservative, its hard to say whete their bias would lie in EV world v global warming..

I believe people that are against EVs when they have the means to be a bit mad. EV owner myself and love it. However surely it's not beyond your comprehension that there are very very occasionally queues for chargers? I have queued at South Mimms, Baldock and Corley in the past. Less than 5 queues in EV ownership but they do happen.

You can be an advocate for an EV without making yourself sound silly

Ah yes the telegraph is famous for being foward thinking and progressive in its views....

Wow talk about take it personally 🙄. Im just stating what I’ve been told and the reason I’ve been told it was because i asked for recommendations because i was considering getting one! They absolutely detest them and wish they had never got one, all without exception moaned about the hassle of charging on long journeys and how it takes longer to get there.

We find it takes 15 minutes after a 2-3 hour drive and that is the time after driving you need a break so great we grab a coffee and it charges - £15 ish to do a 300 mile plus journey.

What puts us off is the cost of a new battery. That is what needs to come down. I don’t want a car for 10 years! I want it for 20

Sorry, don't really see what me knowing the difference between one pedal and one foot driving has to do with you . I know how far away chargers are from me and my neighbours. I also know how monumentally rude you have been to me and anyone else who dares to disagree with you.

It's a nice day, perhaps you could find yourself some sort of anti car demonstration to join.

All the evidence so far suggests that EVs will not need new batteries installed.

Long experience with Li-ion cells has given manufacturers confidence to build them directly into the structure of the car in some cases, reducing weight and improving stability and thermal control in turn. There are already EVs with a million miles on their clocks, and newer chemistries (LFP, Na-ion) have even longer lifespans.

People worry about batteries because their phone or toothbrush becomes less usable over time, but the charging and thermal
management systems on a modern EV ensure that the battery is most likely to outlast the car.

You would not see battery warranties of 8 and even 10 years if there was anything other than total confidence that only a very small number of batteries will fail in that period.

Why shouldn't they be taxed? buyers already get £4k in subsidy and EV users pay no fuel duty, the new charges are very modest and don't come in until 2028... if they ever do...

But as always, people want more for less tax, so in this instance, better roads but begrudge paying for them.

My friend chose a Buzz as his company car perk, they hate it, too many driver "aids" and its huge, as in very heavy.

Don't fabricate. I categorically did not say that I drive 600 miles without stopping. I said I didn't have to stop as often as an electric car.

@rememberingthem

They absolutely detest them and wish they had never got one

Ok, that’s not my experience of having a lot of EV owners in my family, friend and acquaintance circles, but whatever.

Did these people that “detest” what they have give a reason for why they got one in the first place? Do they normally buy (extremely expensive) things like cars without finding out a bit about them first?

My BIL isn’t quite as happy with their VW ID.3 as my sister is, but that is partly because they set off in winter on a long trip without quite enough time to reach their destination (and he has a heavy right foot at the best of times) so needed to charge twice on a journey that would normally only take them a single meal break stop.

But he does at least accept that it might not be quite the right EV for his needs - he knows we have a Polestar 2 with almost double the range of the ID.3, that has a heat-pump to manage winter driving better, so he’s not condemning EVs in general.

Those mileage claims are done on batteries optimally charged, stored at the best capacities/temperatures, not fast charged and never run down below 30% & are estimated or done on rigs that dont mirror real world use.

They are also based on capacity wont drop below 80% but on an EV with an effective range of approx 250 miles, 20% less is significant, cold weather drops that 250miles quite a bit too.

This "evidence" is provided by the vehicle manufactures but as we ve seen with mpg and vehicle emissions, they are often not the most honest of people.

What puts me off EV's is the rate of improvement, an EV bought today will very quickly be superseded by a new improved model with more power/more range/quicker charging, maybe even cheaper... EVs are not a mature product like an ICE car is.

This thread has descended into a dick-waving competition.