Why Anger?

 

Why do electric cars get so much hate?

It makes no sense to me. Why would you care if somebody else wanted to have one?

We have an electric, and our other car is a plug-in hybrid. This really shouldn’t bother you.

Let’s say you are a huge fan of gas-powered cars. Doesn’t our use of mostly electric transportation mean that there will be more gasoline available for other people. There is only so much petroleum out there. You should be happy that I’m not using my “share”.

People site limited vehicle range, and slow charging time as drawbacks to electrics. They also complain about the poor performance in extreme cold.

These are very real limitations. My wife is the principal driver of our electric. It is a Chevy Bolt, and has an official EPA rated range of 417 km with a full charge. Our plug-in hybrid is a Prius Prime. It gets 40 km running electric only. When that runs out it turns into an ordinary, extremely-efficient gas fueled car.

My wife’s car’s range is certainly more than enough for any driving we could do around home. Even my car’s tiny 40 km electric range is normally plenty for me.

On occasion it falls short. Even so, I very rarely buy gas. When 2024 started I had about a half tank of gas. My first fuel purchase happened in July as we were going to be putting on a lot of miles going to visit friends who live far away. When our summer travelling was all done, I again had about a half tank. That will easily last until around Christmas when we go travelling again.

My biggest issue about gas is making sure that I don’t have any that is too old in the tank.

But what about charging?

This can be a real drawback for a lot of people. For us it isn’t. We have a double garage with plenty of electrical outlets. My car takes about 7 hours to do a full recharge.

My wife’s car has a much, much bigger battery. Let’s say we pull into the garage with no juice left in it, and plugged it into a 110 volt outlet with the intention of fully charging it. It would take 80 to 90 hours.

We had a Level Two charger installed. This is similar to getting an outlet put in to handle an electric stove, or a clothes dryer. This reduces the time for a full charge to about 9.5 hours.

If we didn’t have access to our garage, we would not have gotten a fully electric vehicle.

Without easy access to power, the only option would be to use public charging stations. That would be awful. Even at a Level Three charger a full battery takes maybe 3 hours. It’s hard to find accurate numbers for this, as the sources usually only quote getting 160 km in one hour of charging.

Our electric car has never been hooked to a Level Three charger, or to any other pay charging stations at all. We do plug in if a free charging spot is available, but that is certainly not a priority. Let’s say a grocery store has one that is available and we plug in. We’ll be out again within 30 minutes. That would gain us maybe a handful of kilometres. Nice, but not a big deal. Likely the longest we’ve ever sat in such a spot was about an hour.

The latest anti-electric schtick is people who don’t drive such cars complaining that electrics don’t function well in extremely cold weather.

This should come as no surprise to anyone, but electric car batteries are just like all other chemical batteries and don’t function well in 20 degrees below zero. The cars still function, and charge, and drive around but they just don’t have anything like the range they have when temperatures are warmer. A typical Canadian cold snap will reduce an electric cars range by about 50%.

Strangely, even with cold-weather lessened range, electrics do some winter driving tasks better than gas vehicle.

Let’s say you have a prairie house with a lovely garage. Winter hits, and you want to drive to town and have a nice dinner out. If you are electric, you will drive there fine, and back. With a gas car, an hour or so parked at the restaurant will mean starting up to return home might be tricky. You’ll need to warm up your gas engine for a while before you actually head home. An electric doesn’t need warming up. Neither vehicle works as well in the cold as they do when it’s warm.

Might make sense to figure these things into which type of automobile to purchase, but why would any such things make somebody angry that the other type of vehicle exists.

For fun, let me list some cool and fun things about driving electric

The acceleration is insane. My wife’s car is the fastest accelerating car we’ve ever owned. It is nothing like a sports car, just an undersized SUV shaped kinda thing. The fast acceleration is simply a by product of it being electrically powered.

That car also has pretty much nothing to do in terms of servicing. It doesn’t ever get an oil change. There is lubricant, that never needs replacing. It is the heat of gas engines that make the oil go all crappy. Think of your kitchen blender. How often does it need an oil change?

Turns out that most of what goes wrong with gas cars is due the them running full of constant explosions, and volcano-like heat. Electrics don’t have any of that. To keep our new-car warranty fresh, we do have to do a few periodic service visits. The list of what they really do are mostly checks to cabin-air filters, and rotating of tires.

So are electrics for everybody? Of course not. They are best for folks that don’t need them for long range driving. We are a two car family, and head out sometimes on long-drive vacations. Our car that drinks gas handles all of that. We never need our electric car to go anyplace where charging might be tricky, and we fill her up in our garage.

I also hear people talk about how afraid they are about electrics bursting into flames. Really? They drive gas cars that are effectively filled with napalm, and are worried about a battery overheating. Statistically, the chance of having a fire in an electric car is between is about 25 fires for every 100,000 EV vehicles sold. In gas cars it is 1,530 fires per 100,000 petro vehicles sold. That is more than 60 times worse. (Kelly Blue Book figures)

The media tends to focus on electric car fires as that is news, as gas car fires are petty old hat. Interestingly, hybrid cars are the most fire-prone of any. That makes sense, as they have both gas and electric systems built in. For some reason, that doesn’t make the news either.

Collectively, my wife and I have owned six gas cars, one hybrid, one plug-in hybrid, and one electric. All have served our needs well.