Charged Conversations - Pros and Cons of EVs

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to charge conversations, and I'm your host to
bring them account on this podcast. EV's are getting cheaper,
but they're not exactly flying off the shelves. What's going on.
First of all, some days I feel like I may
be perceived as anti EV when I talk about all

(00:20):
their drawbacks, but that's not exactly the case. First of all,
for anybody that doesn't know me, or the fact that
I've been an EV early adopter for over five years now,
meaning I was one of the first people to run
out there and buy an EV in twenty nineteen, and

(00:40):
I still have it. I've driven it coast to coast.
I've even driven it in the Arctic up in Alaska.
So I'm not anti EV, but I sometimes feel like
we don't really have or we're not having a realistic
conversation about the pros and the cons of EV ownership.

(01:01):
And that's what we're going to explore in this podcast. Recently,
a family friend decided to rent an EV from one
of the big places who's sensed decided it rid of
most of them. The problem is that she'd never driven
one before, and I don't really think she had an
appreciation for what she was getting herself into. Moreover, she

(01:23):
wasn't just driving around town for a few days as
her you know, it's not like her car was in
the shop and she just needed something. She was going
to drive it from the Midwest down south, like you know,
one of these ten twelve hour drives. And I think
she was surprised at before she even got into it.

(01:44):
When I started to explain that driving an EV is
very different driving normal car. It's not a normal car.
It's not like you just get in and go. I said, well,
it's the same as a hybrid, right, I said, no,
not at all, not at all. A hybrid is are
less like an ordinary car. But EV is a different animal.

(02:06):
And that goes for plug plugging evs as well. It's
one pedal driving, right you Your goal is to stay
off of the break to allow the car to slow
itself down by using a process called breaking regeneration, which
is automatic to restore power back to the battery. And

(02:31):
you know, I guess there is one hybrid car that
is most similar to an EV. It would have to
be that traditional Prius which has been around for a
long time. Right to breaking region, you can recharge the battery.
You could see our flowing back into the battery. But
it's a lot more than that because, Uh, in this case,

(02:54):
the tesla, how do I charge it? Do I pay
to charge it? How long will it take to charge it? Well,
it says I can go three hundred miles? Right, Ah,
that's just it. No, no, and no you can't. So
here are some things I've looked up about EV's and

(03:15):
I think when we hear about them on the news,
we hear about Oh, EV sales are through the roof.
Oh my gosh, everyone's buying an EV. I see more
teslas each day, I see some forwards, I see some
other cars. Gosh, VW, Audi, Mercedes GM. Everybody's making an
EV now, right. EV sales in the US have seen

(03:37):
pretty dramatic increases over the last several years, right, I
mean when you go from nobody buying them to people
willing to snap them up as early adopters, Yeah, you're
going to see a pretty substantial trend line. And from
twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three up to that point,
we've been seeing an increase of about sixty percent year

(03:59):
over a year. We sold or bought one million new
evs in twenty twenty two, and in twenty twenty three
that number jumped up to almost one point six million.
The US, Europe, and China represent the three largest global
markets in EV sales, and although there are many myths
about how eco friendly evs really are, the overall carbon

(04:21):
footprint of an EV is still smaller than of gas
powered cars, even accounting for the pollution that results from
the manufacturing process and charging needs. Now there's some disagreement
about the true long term costs because disposing of a
normal car we call it an IC or ice car

(04:42):
means internal combustion engine. Disposing of an ice car is
pretty easy. Disposing of an EV is not. It's filled
full of hazardous materials. It has to be recycled properly,
and there is a cost to that. I do believe
that we have not accounted yet for cost of disposing
of an item, which would represent its full life cycle

(05:07):
emissions cost. By the time that's necessary. I think people
assume there will be a battery recycling industry that really
doesn't yet exist. Detractors of EV say, oh, gosh, after
three or five years, the battery is dead, you have
to buy a No one that that's not true, and
I've heard some of my friends repeat that as well. Personally,

(05:30):
I've lost about one percent of battery power each year,
So at five years in I have about ninety five
percent of the original battery power. Not a huge decrease,
but it is still a decrease. And at the same token,
I've seen people that have driven their cars one to

(05:53):
three hundred thousand miles and still have eighty five percent
of their battery left. So particular, my battery warranty is
like a powertrain warranty. It goes. It's an eight year,
one hundred and twenty thousand mile warranty on the car.
But yeah, if you have to replace the battery, that's
ten fifteen thousand dollars, not cheap, far more expensive than

(06:18):
a regular engine. When I leave my car parked at
the airport, I come back, it has less battery in
it than when I left. That doesn't happen to your
ice car. The gas tanks still has the same amount
of gas. So there are a lot of nuances to this,
but one more I'm looking at my notes, I should

(06:38):
mention electric vehicles tend to have higher car insurance rates.
You reckon ev It's expensive, especially if you get into
the battery pack or the electric motors. The electric motors
are small, but mine has two of them because it's
all wheel drive, one front, one back. It's like having
two engines. And one of the reasons we have all

(07:01):
seen our car insurance rates go up is that the
cost of new cars is in an all time high.
Cars are expensive, and while it's true that evs are
becoming less expensive, crashing an EV very expensive. So now
we have millions of these things on the roads. It

(07:22):
seems like a lot, but is it. For example, just
how many cars and light duty trucks? Yes, a four
to one point fifty or a Silverado is called a
light duty truck, even though it's monstrous. How many of
these are actually cruising around the USA? Well, we have currently,

(07:43):
and some of the numbers vary, but this is going
to be very close. Two one hundred and ninety million
registered vehicles on US motorways, and that number is going
up each year by about three to five million. Last
year we purchased almost fifteen million new cars, and the

(08:09):
average age of a car that is still out there
running around the streets and highways is older than it's
ever been. The fleet average of all cars in America,
including trucks and vans, SUVs twelve point two years of age,
So we already know how many Well, no, we don't

(08:29):
know how many evs were sold last year, do we?
But let's ask that question how many have been sold
this year. What we do know is that electric vehicle
sales in the US are now slowing down. That's according
to Kelly Bluebook. In the first quarter of twenty twenty four,
Americans bought about two hundred and seventy thousand new electric vehicles.

(08:52):
The EV share of total new vehicle sales and first
quarter twenty twenty four, and we don't have the second
quarter numbers out yet, was seven point three percent seven
point three percent of all new cars sold. That's a decrease,
by the way, from the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three.
And I think most experts and I feel that the

(09:13):
decrease from twenty twenty three is because people that were
snapping up and taking advantage of the added subsidies, including
the ability to get the tax credit upfront when you
purchase the car, upfront if you lease part of the car,
and upfront when you buy plug in hybrids, and other

(09:35):
things that didn't qualify in the past drove that. But
the point is we're now seeing a decrease of the increase.
So while annual EV sales continue to grow in the
US market, this growth rate has slowed notably. For example,

(09:55):
sales from Q one twenty twenty four versus Q one
of twenty twenty three, actually he rose by two point
six percent year over year. Ah but when we compare
Q one twenty twenty four with that fourth quarter of
twenty twenty three, it's actually down fifteen percent, and the
increase last quarter was well below the previous two years.

(10:19):
Stephanie Valdez Streety, the director of Industrial Insights at Cox Automotive,
says that if these numbers remain fairly flat, we're on
track to sell one point oh seven million evs this year.
That's a decrease from last year, where we sold one

(10:42):
point six million. That's a pretty big decrease. So for
a little over one point oh seven million out of
about fifteen million total new cars and trucks, that drops
down to seven percent, down from about seven point three percent.
That is far below the twenty percent previously forecast and

(11:04):
well below the Biden Harris EV mandate that would require
tasks a full fifty percent or more of all cars
and light duty trucks to be EV's by twenty thirty two,
in seven years from now. So this brings me to
evs in general. Why are people nervous about evs? Well, first,

(11:30):
most people are leasing evs, not purchasing them. There's concerned
about long term reliability, costs and repairs, the technology changing,
over thinking that a car will be far different than
three or five years than it is today. And what
we're seeing is that unless the car is being used

(11:50):
in an urban environment only, and we know on average
Americans travel almost fifteen thousand miles a year, a lot
of that is rural driving. Either not buying them or
they're leasing them as a second car. Now, some people
love evs. And what really got me thinking about this
earlier today was in when I popped open the morning

(12:13):
Wall Street Journal, I see Joanna Stearn's article I've been
driving an EV for a year. I have only one regret. Okay,
so I thought, I can't wait to read this. I
wonder what her impressions are, And to be quite frank,
I was a little surprised. It's a fine article for
a specific type of the EV driver, somebody that has

(12:34):
a garage, that has a charger in their garage and
typically just drives around town. I'm disappointed because it really
paints an overly optimistic picture of EV ownership, and it
omits the clear hurdles faced by a sizable percentage of
drivers who don't just drive around the New York Greater

(12:57):
metropolitan area. She comes out right away and says that
range anxiety isn't a thing, and I kind of chuckled,
because it is a thing, especially for anyone venturing away
from their home garage charger. And she presumed that most
people have a home charger and come back to the house.

(13:18):
And you know, I think for those people. And I
have a garage, and I have a garage charger. Yeah,
it's great. I'm plug it in at night. It's ready
to go in the morning. I never go to a
gas station. I don't have to pump gas, I don't smell,
I don't spill fuel everywhere. It's just ready first thing
in the morning. And I can even set it up

(13:39):
that it's warm and ready whenever I normally depart. And
that's great. If I only drive around town, put thirty
fifty miles on it. Reports say that most Americans drive
less than fifty miles a day. But man, when we
decide to drive, especially for vacation, we drive. And I'll
come back to that point. But presuming most people have

(13:59):
a home charger isn't necessarily true because many urban residents
do not. They park on the street because they don't
have a garage, they don't have a place to charge it.
And her point was that she didn't buy a Tesla,
she bought a Mustang and emoc I think it's called
She excited that Tesla is opening up seventy five hundred

(14:21):
chargers to non Tesla vehicles by the end of the year.
Been seventy five hundred chargers. That sounds like a lot,
yet it's not. It's really a drop in the bucket. So,
first of all, Tesla operates twenty two hundred supercharger locations.
More than one supercharger at a location, there're gonna be

(14:42):
anywhere from six to twenty five or more. And so
these twenty two hundred locations around the country house about
twenty five thousand fast charge reports. That's the good news.
The bad news is twenty eight percent of them are
all in California. So if we take California out, suddenly

(15:02):
you're down to fifteen hundred or so charging locations for
the entire country. Contrasts that to the more than one
hundred and forty five thousand traditional gas station locations, and
you'll see that unless you've got time on your hands,
fast charging isn't everywhere. Even supercharging itself requires some patients,

(15:25):
as it can take between twenty and forty minutes to
charge back up to eighty percent, and just like a
new iPhone, charging to one hundred percent is not recommended
for daily usage. Also, getting from that eighty percent up
to one hundred percent almost takes as long as the
first eighty percent thanks to the laws of chemistry. So

(15:47):
Tesla has also deployed another version. We call it a
destination charger or a level two charger. You'll see these
at restaurants, hotel hell shopping malls, but it can only
charge thirty to forty four miles per hour, and it's
really meant just to top you off while you're in

(16:08):
shopping or eating. It is not meant to fully recharge
unless you're in a hotel and you've got all night,
because otherwise that's a really extended coffee break. I think
Tesla is wise to dribble out sharing, given that I've
had to wait for a charger to open up and
hide demand areas, and that's just that's before other people
could show up. I mean, after all, gassing up in

(16:29):
an EV is not a five minute process, and even
when EV chargers are generally available, the point I'm making
about these fifteen hundred or so stations not located in
California is that they may not be along your route
of travel, especially if you are away from major interstates
or major cities. This can add substantial time to traveling.

(16:53):
She talked about being concerned about winter and how it
wasn't a thing well, but yet she did admit that
her range suffered pretty dramatically. That's true when there is
another issue. And I've talked before about my EV limping
into a charging station with the heat turned all the
way down and driving fifty five miles an hour after

(17:14):
seeing my range estimate shrivel by thirty to forty percent
anytime the temperatures dip into the twenties. Oh, keep in mind,
your battery uses itself to heat itself, so it can
even accept a fast charge because of the volts and
amps required, you can't shock it with that much electricity
and not damage to the battery, So there goes another
five to seven percent warming itself, even if you have

(17:39):
your warmth turned off before it gets to the supercharger.
Speed and elevation changes also disproportionately affect range in a
way not generally encountered with an internal combustion engine car.
This isn't to say that evs are bad, and on
the contrary, I enjoy driving mine, especially for local trips.

(17:59):
But it isn't as rosie as people believe, and we
shouldn't kid anybody about the logistical challenges that are real.
So there's a reason why the second car my garage
runs on gasoline. I've also been asked about hydrids and
plugin evs, as I mentioned early on. Stay tuned as

(18:20):
I'll pick up that thread in an upcoming episode. You've
been listening to Charged Conversations at Joe Strucker Production, and
I'm your host, rickham mccount. Be sure to let us
know your thoughts in the comment section below or send
them over to us at Charged Conversations at bamaccount dot com.

(18:40):
That's Charged Conversation is at BA mcc own dot com.
You can also reach me on Twitter at BA mccount.
Thanks for listening and i'll see you next time.