So I decide to spend a little of my free time to fight the FUD (Fear Uncertainty Doubt) About EV cars and how they are actually a starting point of trying to fix the mess where in, in terms of the climate change. But even if you take Climate impact out of the debate, there are other reasons to switch, I mean look how much money and corruption the oil / fossil fuels industry has done. Country that control these resources get to set prices and policies. There are health befits, eliminating fossil fuel cars will really clean up the air quality in urban areas. The ability to maybe power your house visa your car when their power cuts, and you can maybe go off grid if you have enough solar, that can power your house and car, being complete energy independent. Now it's not a perfect solution, is this going to really save the planet, not on it own, no, but its a starting point, but unfortunately there a lot of crap about them, and I've gotten so annoyed, I decided to create this page I can point to.
Cost
The cost of electric cars continues to be one of the major issue. But the simple fact is prices have come down significantly over the last few years due to advancements in battery technology, the second hand market is increasing in its amount of EV choice and owners of EV are starting to complain about the increase speed of deflation of the value of their EV, this is bad news for them, but great news for people who want an EV. Basically, eventually, I can see EV being nearly as cheap as Ice cars. Plus the cost of service and running cost have been proven may time to be less than ice cars.
( https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/latest-fleet-news/electric-fleet-news/2023/05/30/used-ev-prices-predicted-to-fall-imbalance-between-supply-and-demand / https://insideevs.com/news/672100/ev-prices-reduce-14-percent-tax-incentives/ )
Range Anxiety
So a lot of people will complain about the range of EVs and suffer from Range Anxiety, this was largely true for the early years of EVs, where most could only do 100 miles, this might be ok for some, but even I will admit I think this is too little, specially when you add battery degradation. But now in 2023 battery tech has improved, most EVs can do 200 miles plus. Now I don’t know about you, but I would want a break after driving 200 miles, I think this is an acceptable distance. Now for some this still might not be enough, well already we're starting to see EV that can do 450+ miles and this tech and range is likely only going to get better. So again I feel this is issue is slowly getting address.
( https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/best-cars-vans/108345/top-10-longest-range-electric-cars / https://www.thecarexpert.co.uk/how-ev-battery-range-has-improved-over-the-years/ )
Charging Time / Location
So like the above point on range, the next problem people like to point out is the charging time it takes and the lack of charging points. Again this is something that has only improved, so more and more EV can support 120Kw charger points, in 15 mins charge time you can usually add 100 miles to your range, like I said above if you drive 200 miles you going to want a 15 min break likely anyway. Then you can carry on for another 100 miles before needing another stop. If this is not fast enough, 350Kw charges that can add 217mile of range in 10mins are now on the market, so people who really can’t hang around, I feel that this issue again can be addressed. Locations, reliability, and the amount of charges is only improving every year. Plus there an extra ability of EV that if you have a driveway at home you may never have to spend any time at a petrol pump/charging station as you can just leave you car to charge up overnight and have a full tank so to speak every time you hit the roads, something you can’t do with an ice car. For people who don’t have access to charge point at home, hopefully employees / company’s will put in charge point so when you're at work you can charge up, or even more sensible more restaurants, cinemas, shopping car parks or basically places you're likely to visit once a week will have charging points location so you can park your car and leave it to charge up, when you're done your business its fully charged.
(https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/in-depth/power-surge-uk-s-ev-charging-rollout-gathers-pace/ )
Weight / Tyres Ware
So EV cars are heavy, they can be about 19% heavy than most Ice cars, but again thanks to advances in battery tech the weight of EV are starting to fall and there not the outline vehicle that are heavy, many Ice cars and SUV can be even be heavier than EVs. Articles have tried to point out the risk to infrastructure and car parks due to the extra weight, but there is little evidence that this will be a big problem. Also Tyre ware, due to the weight, tyres ware increases, right? Wrong in actual fact due to many EV drives not using their breaks as much, and they use regen to slow their car down. So tyre wear is actually 30% less on an EV compared to ice cars.
( https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/tips-advice/360607/heaviest-cars-sale / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mYDV4Tfse0 / https://www.kwik-fit.com/blog/electric-car-tyre-wear )
Colbot / Child Labour
Yes in some battery Colbot is used, people often point out the damage to the environment mining for these materials make and the child labour that could be involved in securing it. This is all bad, but often they miss that newer battery tech is using less and less Colbot. They also seem to forget that Colbot is used to refine oil, and the amount of child labour that involed in Fossil fuel industry world wide is very disappointing, but that ok right? . So basically the whole industry needs to get better and to just say it a EV problem is laughable.
( https://www.chargesmart.co.nz/post/cobalt-mining / https://www.vice.com/en/article/j54dwp/syria-s-oil-industry-uses-lots-of-child-labor )
Electricity grid won’t be able to handle the increase in Evs, Wire will melt, the Grid will collapse etc
According to the National Grid (you know the ones who run the UK grid and should know). 2002 was the highest demand in the UK grid experience, this was 62GW. Thanks to advances in technology, demands have fallen by 16%, even if we switched all public transport to EV, the demand would go back up by 10%, so as you can see (if you can do maths?) the grid should be able to cope. Plus also on this pages from National Grid, for every gallon of petrol, 4Kw is used to refine oil to petrol so the switch to EVs would also free this up to. ( https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/electric-vehicles-myths-misconceptions ). The only area of concern is if lets say 10,000 EV cars all needed charging in the same area at the same time, then yes maybe if all customers and users demanded fast charge, the Grid might struggle, more cable need to laid or more likely at worst in these cases is you might have to wait just a little longer to charge your car.
EV are charge by Oil / Gas / Coal Power plants anyway, what's the point?
Firstly, even if somehow you only ever charge your EV with Fossil Fuel power plant, your EV car as long as it on the road for 10 years is still less carbon impacting as a ICE car. But this is unlikely, most country have renewable in their energy mix and the amount of renewable energy is only on the increase, more needs to be done, but as the grid gets cleaner so will EVs.
( https://www.iea.org/energy-system/renewables / https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths )
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So i hope this clears up some of the main FUD and issue people have with Ev cars