Nineteen Reasons You May Regret Owning an Electric Car – Part 2
11. Real range is often much lower than advertised. Particularly if you do a lot of highway driving. How manufacturers calculate the range of a vehicle is by calculating what they call the energy consumption circle which has a lot of urban driving involved. With ICE vehicles, they are less efficient in towns, so this is a good thing, but for EVs they are less efficient on highways and you may well end up with no more than 50% of the advertised figure, and this will be down to the lack of braking which in a town sends juice to the battery via the Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS).
12. Excessive loads are even more power hungry. It is true once you load your EV up regardless of the size of your personal package, and I am talking about a battery package here, energy drain becomes excessive regardless of the big torque you can wring out of an EV system. True, the same is the case for an ICE vehicle, but at least with them, there are lots of available gas stations.
13. They are watching you. Nearly all EVs have advanced infotainment and driver aid systems, which apart from having caused a fairly high number of accidents and a few fatalities, are designed to track your driving habits. Are you comfortable with the ‘MACHINE’ knowing where you go, when you were there, how you drive, etc etc etc…All sounds a little Big Brother-esque to me and I do not like it. (Strangely, my mobile phone does all of those things and I do not object to that.)
HOW ABOUT JUST IMPROVING FUEL ECONOMY OF YOUR ICE WITH X-1R OCTANE BOOSTER:
14. Very few of them are anything but butt-ugly. Okay, I will give you the Taycan as an example of a real beauty and proof that poetry can be in motion, but when you start to look at the likes of the BMW i3 or the Nissan Leaf and all of the Teslas that just do not look finished…Even when you look at the Golf E or Mustang Mach E, both of which exist as ICE vehicles, neither look good in their Electric versions. Perhaps it is having to adjust to the hemp trousers…
15. We are not sure that Electric is the way to go, which is a view shared by a lot of the major car companies, which are not particularly convinced, even in territories that have stipulated no more sales of new ICE vehicles after 2030. There is so much invested in current technology and manufacturing and such a high cost for converting over that there is also a concern that elimination may be enough to wobble the world order and create some form of global crisis or even catastrophe.
16. EVs are really not that well-suited for underdeveloped markets. Sure European countries are forging ahead with EV ownership and infrastructure, but still have less than 2% of cars on the road being fully EV. China, with all of its central control, has experienced a similar wall of inertia when it comes to sales of EVs.
17. Potential owners consider them to be a passing fad or gimmick with their limited usability and strange driving style. They are not suitable for everyday people and certainly not really for the family looking for reliable transportation.
18. You need a second car, which is a strange feature of the EV market. Many families that could happily have but the one car will have to have two cars to overcome the limitations of the EV; this is particularly true if you need a car that you have to rely on.
19. Electric Vehicles are really hard to sell. In fact, the depreciation on an EV far outstrips that of an ICE vehicle. Sure, you can go back to your local dealership and trade it in for a newer model but still the residuals are governed by market demands even there. In part this is because the tech in EVs is developing so fast, but it is also due to the life in the batteries. Most battery packs will have reduced capacity after just a few years so the range will be reduced and the batteries are darned expensive to replace, making the car practically worthless by the time it is seven to eight years old.
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