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)

@Alexandra2001

What puts me off EV's is the rate of improvement

That is an excellent point, and one that very few have made. It is a definite risk, but perhaps overblown depending on circumstances, which I think I can explain.

It is 8 years since we first bought a 2015 model Nissan Leaf, which still is an amazing car, but suffers from poor range and battery management technology.

And yet that same Leaf is still running in our family, and its main driver is still very happy with it. It was bought very much just to do local journeys (the kind that killed our diesel Volvo, and shortened the life of our petrol one). It has been charged to 100% nearly every day since 2018, because it is used daily, and shows little sign of the batteries degrading beyond where they were in 2018

On that basis I expect it will run for many more years. And members of my family that have seen that (and test driven the Leaf) have chosen at various times to decide that currently available secondhand EVs meet their needs and have made the switch and been very happy.

But we waited until last year to go further than the Leaf because we drove multiple rented Teslas and Polestars over several years to understand how we could manage the much longer journeys we used to do in those old ICE Volvos. And we listened to my BIL who had a not great experience with an ID.3 in winter, and realised that the kind of heat-pump that Teslas have is not available in every EV (even now)

So when it came to getting a new one, the heat pump was non-negotiable. And we waited until it became a standard feature of the Polestar 2 long-range single motor car we now own.

And it’s not as if better cars are not round the corner. We switched when the car that suits our needs became available when we could afford it.

I fully understand that there are millions of people for whom a currently available EV doesn’t fit their needs, particularly secondhand, but this thread is about whether they are the future or not. As an engineer I can see the kinds of progress that is being made (as you’re pointing to) so I’m confident that they are.

Good luck in switching, whenever you choose to do so. But do your research. I’m an EV enthusiast for sure, but the vast majority of EVs that are available now could never satisfy what we need, so you are wise to watch and wait.

I've checked a review on a pro-EV site of the car we'd be likely to consider.

"The Volkswagen ID.7 Tourer Pro Match 77 kWh 286 PS has an impressive WLTP combined electric driving range of 373 miles (compared to 383 miles for the fastback). After a week of mixed driving in winter the average real-world range was 310 miles..." Though I bet that was with just a driver, not with two passengers and the rest of the space loaded to parcel shelf level and a roof box on top, which is how we use the car on regular longer journeys. So I bet we wouldn't even get 310 miles, never mind 373.

"The ID.7 has a maximum DC rapid charging rate of 175 kW. Volkswagen claims that a 5% to 80% charge can take just 28 minutes, and a 10-minute charge can add 126 miles of range.
Using an 11 kW 3-phase AC electricity supply, a charge to 100% can be completed in 8 hours."

The nearest chargers to us are 7kWh, so to be ready to set off with an 80% charge we would have to charge the car for 12 hours. Or charge it for less time and put up with two stops on most journeys, potentially adding anything from half an hour to an hour to the journey time. Whereas with our diesel car, we take ten minutes to fill up on the way out of the city and stop for 15 minutes for a loo break on the way.

you don't need to walk around at midnight to get a cheap charge. You can plug your car in at a normal time and simply set the time to start the charge on your app. Easy peasy.

Also, Ayebrow has stated many times they're aware the charging infrastructure is lacking still in many places and therefore that EVs are not indeed for everyone at this stage. Like similar posters in your situation, you just happen to be someone who currently has an ICE car in great condition and intend to keep them going for a long time and are therefore not interested in getting an EV - which is absolutely fine, also as stated many times, and also NOT the subject of this thread, which is about the pros and cons of EVs, and not whether Scotiasdarling should buy one and how could we possibly force him to.

Doesn't that stop anyone else using the charger during the hours between you plugging it in and the timer starting your charge?

Bit selfish, no?

All this thread has proven is that there is a long way to go, some people are happy with their EV and think they are helping the environment, maybe they are a little bit but until the likes of India. Etc change over the world will not benefit it has also shown that some people do not want to change yet despite the evangelical cries of you must who seem to be ignoring what people believe and their particular circumstances. I will not be going full EV even though I have a plug in Hybrid because I do not want to have range anxiety or have to faff about on a trip. And having lived through the change from leaded to unleaded and then how we must all have a diesel car I suspect that another must have will be along before I need to worry about it. Instead of preaching about the need to change let it happen slowly and naturally do not try and force people to change because it won’t work and will cause a backlash.

Not if there are plenty of chargers around and you plug your car in at 8pm. If there is only one in a 1-mile radius, then potentially it would be rather crap. But chargers in my experience are most often made unusable for others by ICE cars parked in front of them, rather than by other EV drivers hogging them.

Good news - no one is trying to force anyone to drive EVs, so you can rest easy.

@Chersfrozenface

Or charge it for less time and put up with two stops on most journeys, potentially adding anything from half an hour to an hour to the journey time.

I could be wrong, but it sounds like you’re genuinely considering an EV as possible, rather than just dismissing it out of hand.

Those WLTP/real-world comparison figures are pretty close to our Polestar’s, so I think I can help put them into context. The real-world range won’t change much with people and luggage in the car - what will drag it down is towing a heavy load.

We drive our car locally with the battery somewhere between 40% and 70%, so that if we need to set off on a longer journey we don’t have to fill up for more than 6 hours on a 7kW charger (or 8 on a 5kW one), so mostly off-peak (kicked off on the car’s timer, so we don’t have to plug it in at midnight or anything). And when you go on a journey, there is no harm in filling to at least 90% or more (The battery is ok being filled to 100% as long as it’s not sat for days on that, but the regen braking may be reduced for a few miles, so we don’t tend to do it that often)

So you could perhaps drive for 200-240 miles in one go, from 90% to reach 10%, and then stop once for around 25-30 mins to top back up to 80/90% and then do another 200-240 miles or so. I think that lines up pretty much with your 10 mins refuelling and 15 mins wee break, at least for the first 500 miles.

That has been our experience - we don’t do the kinds of trips that I know some people do, where they drive for 12-18 hours and do the absolute minimum of breaks so they can cover 1,000 miles in a “day”, so a real-world range around 300-330 miles suits us perfectly.

And we only know that because we hired EVs for multiple long journeys over several years so could prove it to ourselves. And believe me, the smoothness and quiet power, together with single-pedal driving, means we have enjoyed those kinds of 500+ miles trips in a way that was not possible with a petrol or diesel car.

In theory they are good, but we've had electric cars for years now and I wouldn't do it if I couldn't charge at home. The infrastructure is shockingly bad. There's not, generally, enough fast chargers and the ones that there are are often broken. Plus I am not sure it's any cheaper than petrol if you are reliant on fast chargers.

@Chersfrozenface

I think @Ayebrow might have mentioned it elsewhere but another feature of our EV is the adaptive cruise control. No idea if that's available on new ICE cars but it basically means that you set your cruise control speed and then how close you're comfortable getting to the car in front, and the car will slow down and then accelerate back to the set speed depending on that gap you've set. Apologies if you know already and I'm womansplaining what ACC is 😂

It's been amazing on the long motorway journeys we've been on - I found it took a lot of the stress off, even if I pay as much attention as I ever did. But you might not mind that aspect of motorway driving as much as I do.

@Chersfrozenface

Doesn't that stop anyone else using the charger during the hours between you plugging it in and the timer starting your charge?

An excellent point, and I have thought that when I have done it. Three things make me feel ok with it.

One is that these are not special “EV only” parking spaces. They are spaces frequently blocked with ICEVs, and sometimes with EVs that aren’t using them. So having one’s car parked at 8pm, and not actually charging until midnight is no different from someone parking there for any other reason.

The second is that we only plug in to one every 2-3 weeks (sometimes longer), so “blocking” a charger for 4 hours in that period is not too bad.

And thirdly, the point of these low power chargers is that they are for overnight use on a first-come basis. By parking up and plugging in, people know you’re going to be there all night. They’re not thinking “they should be finished by 2am and I’ll pop out and take their place then” - that makes no sense.

So whilst it feels a little “selfish” not letting any electrons in the car until they’re 39p/kWh ones, it’s only a tiny little bit.

I think because you can charge at home you maybe haven’t seen how good the public rapid charging network has become.

All you say was true 4 years ago, and some of it even 2. But now Tesla have opened up many of their sites to non-Tesla drivers and many more hubs have opened with > 10 chargers, with prices responding to Tesla’s competition, I would say little is now.

Some places are not as well served as others, for sure, but we don’t have the ability to home charge and we would never go back to an ICEV.

Just this weekend we were at the inlaws and therefore couldn't charge at home. We visited 4 different sites of various kinds before we found one that worked. This involved driving around on a low range (I know ideally you don't let it go low, but that's the reality of long journeys). It wasted a lot of time and had the 5th one not worked we would likely have run out of charge.

I do agree that some places the provision is very good. But many many others, not so much.

@Paulrn

let it happen slowly and naturally do not try and force people to change

This.

Literally no-one is being forced to change.

No-one is being made to buy an EV.

The sense I have is that a lot of people loudly proclaiming that an EV is not for them feel that is the case, when it is not. They can drive their current diesel and (assuming things remain) buy a brand-new one up to 31 Dec 2029, or a new one with a small battery up to 31 Dec 2034.

And even after those dates secondhand ones will still be available, so I don’t see pure diesel cars off the road until I’m long dead (way past 2050 anyway)

The question was, are EVs the future?

That is very different. People advocating for EVs here are mostly trying to correct misinformation that has been aggressively promoted by the fossil fuel lobby, and trying to reassure people with doubts that they may be misplaced.

At the end of the day, I was wedded to ICEVs until I test drove a Nissan Leaf with an open mind as to whether it could meet our needs for a daily driver doing short trips. I was utterly blown away by it - the single pedal driving particularly was a revelation.

To drive 10 miles on a hilly and winding stretch of UK A-road, with awesome power and quiet acceleration, not pressing the brake pedal once, and yet end up with exactly the same range as at the start* was just astonishing. We bought the car that night and it’s still in the family. It wasn’t quite the future at that point (80 miles real-world range never will be), but I can see what is happening in China and Norway and the future isn’t too far away now, even for Wales

• It must have been a slightly downhill stretch - I do know the first and second laws of thermodynamics

You don’t have the ability to home charge, but don’t you have the ability to charge on the streets where you live? i.e. you can charge where you would normally park the car overnight, or at least within a minute or so’s walk of there?

@adlitem

It wasted a lot of time and had the 5th one not worked we would likely have run out of charge.

That is a nasty experience for sure. We’ve had to plug in to more than one charger to get a working one on several occasions, and the most nervous I have ever been was our first trip to Scotland in a hired Polestar and not being prepared to use the ChargePlace ones (Electroverse says they are now available, but no idea if that covers the ancient one in St Andrews which we failed to get working)

My closest run-in with range anxiety was in a petrol car though - complacency and lack of awareness meant I hadn’t seen the M3 was going to be shut down at 10pm, so I spent too long diverted off it with the reserve light flashing before a petrol station appeared. That’s not to say that EV range and charging are perfect, because they’re far from not being, it’s just that ICEVs aren’t perfect either.

Yes, we do. And I know that many can’t. We couldn’t have an EV if it weren’t for the lamppost chargers in London (and a growing number of places) being an affordable alternative to home charging at standard rates.

So I have said many times that EVs are not right for everyone now, and that no-one is being forced to change at all.

But the question is are they the future?

For that, all I can judge with is how fast things are improving and how fast places like China are adopting the technology (forcing other manufacturers to compete). And with the fact that everyone I know that has made the switch loves it, and won’t go back.

I am positive that there will always be a few people that will cling to their ICEVs as long as they can, even when charging facilities and ranges have improved beyond anything we can see today, but by that point the market will have moved, and it will be increasingly hard to find fuel for them, particularly in remote and rural places.

One is that these are not special “EV only” parking spaces. They are spaces frequently blocked with ICEVs, and sometimes with EVs that aren’t using them. So having one’s car parked at 8pm, and not actually charging until midnight is no different from someone parking there for any other reason.

And there we have a major disadvantage of relying on public chargers for local travel or to get to a rapid charger at the start of a longer journey. In our case, if the nearest two are inaccessible, you're talking about trying a third or a fourth and then about a mile walk back home, possibly in the rain (this is Wales). Or driving round at regularly intervals to see whether one is free. That's all time-consuming and a faff.

We normally fill up at supermarket fuel stations, pay at pump. We might have to wait a few minutes for one to become free, but no-one already using a pump is going to be long.

Even if we fill up on the road at a filling station where you pay at the attached shop, and there's a queue to pay, and one of the people parked at a pump is dithering about what choccy bar to get, we'd be unlikely to be there more than 15 minutes.

Where I live in the midlands, finding public charger is a non issue.

Most supermarkets, gyms and shopping centre car parks have 5+ of the things. There are even chargers on industrial estates, so you can take your pic of where, when and at what cost to change the car.
So cars can easily be plugged in & charged while people go about their business... what's not to like?

Adaptive cruise control has been available on automatic ICE cars for some time

Exactly. EVs are OK for low density housing.

For high density housing you have all the problems of congestion and competition for parking space with the additional nuisance / hazard of cables over the pavements. Moreover, at the moment congestion and parking problems are eased by the number of little cars on the road. With the move to EVs, the little cars will disappear, making congestion and parking worse.

In fairness, EVs work for about 60% of households. But for the rest, the forced move to EVs will make life more difficult.

"So I have said many times that EVs are not right for everyone now, and that no-one is being forced to change at all."

People ARE being forced to change as petrol cars will be phased out. For some this is fantastic, ie if you live in low density housing and can charge at home or at a lamp post where there aren't 50 cars parked between each lamp post. But there are many people who this won't work for, and not just because they want to 'cling to their ICEs'.

But we rarely park anywhere long enough for other purposes to charge a car. I don't think we're that unusual for city dwellers.

I agree. As I said we both have EVs and got the second one after the first so knew the deal. I just am of the view that if I didn't have the ability to charge at home it would logistically be enough of an inconvenience to not want to make that choice based on my experience of infrastructure vs petrol station. It might be specific to my area to an extent (and where my in laws live too!), but where I live I wouldn't have the ability to plug in overnight anywhere, without it involving a 20 min walk home. With work, kids, life etc, it just would not be convenient for me.

@5MinuteArgument do you really believe that as the number of EVs on the road increase, the charging network will not grow to match the need to charge them? I know governments have been known to get things very wrong but given the damage it would do to the economy if people are unable to get to work, I highly doubt it will be an issue.

Which is why, if anything, I’m more inclined to believe that there will be some relaxation of the 2030 deadline or amendment of conditions, if it is judged that for whatever reason the infrastructure is not there to support EVs.