The fundamantal reason why electric vehicles are "a good idea" is that petrol and diesel engines pollute city centres to a dangerous degree. But to say, as you will regularly read, that they are "pollution free" is nonsense - but what can you expect from people with degrees in the History of Art? "Like, yah, artists used to paint on walls but now, they can use, like, computers and things"
Currently (no pun intended), electric vehicles cause more pollution than conventional vehicles but that pollution is mainly concentrated round the power stations that actually produce the electricity. That is because on a world basis 40% of electricity is still produced by coal.
But in the long term as the percentage of electric power from renawable resources increases, EVs will become a rational way of reducing pollution and "saving the planet". So they are a "good thing" and will help to reduce Global Warming - see above.
The Tesla is an awesome car - it has astonishing acceleration because the torque of an electric motor is not dependant on the rotational speed of the engine - unlike diesel or petrol engines (don't worry about it). And they are quiet. But lugging that huge weight of batteries around is extremely inefficient. But the biggest problem of all is "range anxiety". You have thirty miles left to drive before you get home and the car is indicating that you have a theoretical range of 50 miles before the battery is flat so no problem.
But then the motorway grinds to a halt. After a while you check online and find there has been a terrible crash in front of you and delays are likely to be up to two hours. The outside temperature is well below freezing and after ten minutes or so the car begins to feel cold so you turn on the heater for a few minutes. Two hours later you are still waiting and the car informs you that your range has dropped to 30 miles and it is 30 miles home. And it is dark so even though you are stationary you still need to leave your lights on.
An hour later you are on your way but it is 25 miles home and the range is only 10 miles. Feeling amxious?
Or once a year you drive to Austria to stay in a log cabin 3,000 feet up a mountain (we used to do that every January - it was great). In a petrol driven four wheel drive that was no problem but in an EV I would be nervous about running out of charge so would inevitably be restricted to driving so as to ensure we always arrived with at least 100 miles range left - you can so easily get stuck in snow - been there done that.
That is range anxiety and until EVs can drive 700 miles on a full charge I think it will still be a huge factor in the decision as to which car to buy
The car has a battery range of about 20 miles and you can charge it overnight from an ordinary 13 amp plug. So if your daily journey to work is about 5 miles it is absolutely perfect. If you need to drive further the small engine kicks in and charges the battery so you will never run out of power.
If you can only afford one car and want an EV, then buy a hybrid. If you have several cars then a Tesla would be cool but only for relatively short journeys with no tight schedule - otherwise you will miss that vital meeting because the charging point is not working or there is a queue of vehicles waiting.
People obsess over the cost of fuel and are delighted to find that electric vehicles are "cheaper per mile". Well, maybe. The reason they are cheaper at the moment is because there is no tax on electricity whereas diesel and petrol are very highly taxed - well over half the cost of fuel is tax.
But the real killer is depreciation - if your car loses £15,000 in value over two years, cheap fuel is not much consolation. So do the sums.
Bob Cory
Modified on 30/07/2023 at 09:51:09 by ℗ Bob Cory