A diesel van is a vehicle that runs on diesel fuel instead of gasoline. Diesel engines are often more efficient and can go longer distances on a tank of fuel.
EV charging is how you refill the battery of an electric car. It usually takes longer than filling up a gas tank, and there are different types of charging stations that can affect how fast it charges.
The Dodge Charger is a big car that looks sporty and can go really fast. People like it because it has a strong engine and a cool design, making it fun to drive.
EVs stand for electric vehicles. These cars run on electricity instead of gasoline or diesel, which can be better for the environment since they produce fewer emissions when driving.
Battery manufacturing is how batteries are made, especially for electric cars. Making these batteries can use a lot of resources and energy, which can harm the environment.
An internal combustion engine is what most cars use to run. It burns fuel like gasoline to create power, but this also releases harmful gases into the air.
An electric vehicle is a car that runs on electricity instead of gasoline. It uses batteries to power the motor and doesn't produce exhaust fumes like regular cars do.
Recycling battery materials means taking old batteries and getting the useful parts out of them so they can be used again. This helps reduce waste and is better for the environment.
Price per mile tells you how much money you spend for every mile you drive your car. It's a way to see which cars are cheaper to run based on fuel costs and other expenses.
Petrol pricing is how much you pay for gasoline. It can change based on different factors like where you are and what's happening in the world. Sometimes, prices are higher at certain places like service stations on highways.
Public charging is when you recharge your electric car at places like charging stations instead of at home. The price can change a lot depending on where you are and what time it is.
A high powered charger is a fast way to recharge your electric car. It can fill up the battery much quicker than regular chargers, which is helpful when you're on a long drive.
Ionity is a company that builds fast charging stations for electric cars, making it easier for people to travel long distances without running out of battery.
The Polestar 2 is an electric car made by Polestar, which is a brand that focuses on performance and sustainability. It's known for its modern look and tech features.
The Volkswagen ID.3 is an electric car made by Volkswagen. It's designed to be practical and efficient for daily driving, with a good range on a single charge.
Charging infrastructure is the system of places where electric cars can be charged. It's important for people who drive electric cars to have enough charging stations available.
The Mitsubishi i-MiEV is a small electric car made by Mitsubishi. It's designed for city driving and is one of the earlier electric vehicles available.
Public charge points are places where you can plug in and charge an electric car. They are important for people who drive electric cars and need to recharge when they're away from home.
Rapid charging is a way to quickly charge an electric car's battery so that you can get back on the road faster. It's much quicker than regular charging, which can take a long time.
A Battery Management System is like a computer that keeps track of how well the battery in an electric car is doing. It helps make sure the battery doesn't get damaged and lasts a long time.
The supercharger network is a series of fast charging stations made by Tesla. They help Tesla car owners charge their cars quickly, especially on long trips.
The Porsche Taycan is a luxury electric car that is very fast and has many high-end features. However, it's also very expensive compared to other electric cars.
The Ford Ranger is a smaller truck that can carry things in its bed and is good for driving on rough roads. It's popular because it's tough and can be used for many different tasks.
The Renault 5 is a small car that was made in France and is known for being easy to drive and affordable. It was popular because it was practical for everyday use.
The Renault 4 CV is a small, old car from France that was popular a long time ago. It was designed to be affordable and easy to drive for everyday people.
The Porsche 911 is a fancy sports car that many people dream of owning because it looks great and drives really fast. It's famous for being well-made and fun to drive.
The Hyundai Ioniq 5 N is a sportier version of the Ioniq 5, which is an electric car. It's made to be more fun to drive while still being eco-friendly.
Horsepower is a way to measure how powerful an engine is. The higher the horsepower, the faster and more powerful the car can be.
LIVE
Hi, I'm Gary and this is episode 284 of EV Musings, a podcast about renewables electric vehicles
and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners.
And on the show today, we'll be looking at what they don't tell you about EVs.
The EV Musings podcast is sponsored by Zatmap, the go-to app for EV drivers helping you find and
pay for public charging with confidence. Zatmap is free to download and use with subscription plans
for enhanced features such as using Zatmap in car on CarPlay or Android Auto and discounted
charging across thousands of charge points. Now our main topic of discussion today is EV problems.
And when I say problems, I don't mean I've just switched on my EV and there's a warning light on
the dashboard. What can I do about that? I'm talking about all those things that we regularly
get told are the problems with electric cars, the things we're accused of ignoring or glossing over
or just plain lying about. Now usually if you're ever in a discussion with someone
who's against EVs, they'll come up with one or more of these issues and accuse you of not being
open and honest about EVs. I want to address them each in turn and tell you why they're usually
ignored or why we aren't actually ignoring them. Now I've got a long list of them to go through
today and they include the following. They take too long to charge, they have a large environmental
impact and they're not green, they're more expensive to run than petrol cars if you can't
charge at home, they can't do long distance journeys, chargers don't work or there's no
infrastructure, there's not enough power if everyone goes electric, the cars themselves
are too expensive, they're not real cars because they don't have engine noises. Now I'm sure I've
missed one or two but we'll go with that as a list. So let's start with they take too long to charge
and this can manifest itself in several ways. I can refill my diesel van in three minutes and
be on the way for another 500 miles of driving or I can't afford to waste time charging during the
day I need to be on my way or the last thing I need when I've done a full day's work is to spend a
couple of hours recharging my car. Ain't nobody got time for that, well I agree, ain't nobody got
time for that which is why seldom if ever happens. Now I've talked about this before but filling a
vehicle with wet fuel is a bit like a prostate examer or cervical smear, it's something you don't
want to do too often and when you do do it it needs to be done as quick as possible. So that's
why you head into the petrol station of which there are a dwindling number and more on that later,
you pump the fuel you pay in to go five minutes if you're lucky. Longer if there's a queue which
there usually will be because we don't have enough petrol stations. Now EV charging isn't like that,
for one thing you don't need to stay with your car while it's charging, you can plug it in,
go off and do something else. Filling with petrol is a serial activity, it needs to take a shorter
length of time as possible because you can only fill your car when you're filling your car. Charging
is a parallel activity so you can leave it to do that while you're doing something else and in most
people's case these something else is sleeping, working or you know living their life. Now most
people charge while their car is parked up doing nothing else and they're not using the car so it
might as well charge. Now of course there are instances where this won't happen, when I head
up to my parents house I generally do a stop just to give me some driving around range when I get
there as they have no charger. For the last time I head in north I stop for a grand total of, check
to non-teslas. On my way back down I did a longer stop for 25 minutes because as I said there's no
charging at my parents and a volt and bolt of nine minutes just to ensure I could get home if there
was a diversion. So that's almost 500 miles of distance travel for a grand total of 52 minutes
of public sit and wait charging spread over three different sessions. Now for those who think that's
onerous then I ask you how long you sit in traffic on your daily commute over a cumulative distance
of 500 miles. Furthermore the majority of the sit and wait charging wasn't actually sit and wait
charging it was plug the car in and do something else. I was with my siblings so we caught up on
the news, watched some youtube and at other stops I went to the loo and grabbed a drink not things
you can do while you're refuelling with wet fuel remember. So let's move on now to the next one
which is you're glossing over the environmental impact of building EVs they damage the environment
more than fossil fuel cars well yes they do. Battery manufacturing is a resource intensive
process it takes a lot of energy and it can create some nasty bits of pollution. A new ice vehicle
internal pushing engine vehicle comes off the production line with a lower carbon footprint
than a similar electric vehicle but as I've said before on the show if we just drove them off the
production line and parked them up for the rest of their lives the EV would be worse for the environment
but we don't do that we drive them and every mile you drive an internal pushing engine car
is more polluting and worse for the environment than an EV even if the electricity from an EV comes
from 100% coal power plants which very few do. Furthermore as we heard from Robin Brundle in
last week's episode we can now recycle 99% of battery materials with a 40% reduction in carbon
footprint and put that material right back into checks notes more batteries as Robert Llewellyn
is fond of saying show me a thimbleful of recycled diesel now the next one I seem to hear a lot is
they're more expensive to run than petrol cars if you can't charge at home now again that's correct
in many circumstances but the key thing to do is to look at the price per mile you're paying
and at the time of writing diesel works out at around 14 pence a mile petrol works out at about
15 pence a mile although this will change after the unfreezing of the fuel duty in september of
the year 2026 any public charger that costs more than around 48 pence a kilowatt hour works out at
around 15 pence a mile so you can do the math especially with public rapid charging being
up at an average of 10 pence a kilowatt hour with some cpo's much more expensive so why would anyone
go electric if they couldn't charge at home because public rapid charging pricing is something
that's a smorgasbord of different costs and it doesn't matter where you live in the UK the price
of petrol is not going to be radically different within a few pence per litre regardless of where
you get it from the exception of course is somewhere like the motorway service areas who
tend to add a premium because you're a captive audience you're never going to go to a petrol
station in the UK and find petrol at a pound a litre or less if the average is a pound 40 it
just doesn't happen if it does you can guarantee there's something else happening here of which
you aren't aware I would also remind you that petrol pricing is prone to the vagaries of international
conditions it wasn't too long ago the petrol was hovering around two pounds a litre which
is nine pounds 10 per gallon or 22 per mile on average but public charging is much different
for a start there's a huge range of prices depending on where when and how you charge
and hot charging with a payment card at a high powered charger during the day
can cost you 89 pence a kilowatt hour or you can elect to go later in the evening using an app or
an RFID card with a subscription and pay as little as 39 pence a kilowatt hour tesla offer app based
charging to non tesla drivers for around 53 pence a kilowatt hour kilowatt hour during the day in
about 39 pence a kilowatt hour off peak and with a subscription it's even cheaper some companies
drop their standard rate down to a low overnight rate automatically for those who want to charge
using a relatively slow ac unit and charge while they sleep chargey has a 39 pence of
kilowatt hour rate this hope to all with no subscription and there are others now the issue
at the moment is that many people charge from a convenience point of view they'll drop in at
the motorway service areas and pay the grid serve rate of 79 pence a kilowatt hour rather than getting
an ionity power passport subscription to allow them to use the ionity units for 43 pence a kilowatt
hour now if you want to check out the relative prices of charging there are two resources I
recommend one is lecky.net which allows you to compare by charge speed and cost per mile
and the other is charge net dot code at uk which gives you lots of information about charging speeds
subscriptions and other related topics if you want to know what real life examples of people who can
only charge with public charging alike I have two examples in the back catalog with a discussion with
bob murphy a high mileage public charging only driver who lives in scotland and patreon supporter
ron gov free who has a tesla but no home charging both of them are paying under 15 pence a mile
for their charging often substantially below that now the next issue that we don't talk about
apparently is they can't do the distance and there there seems to be a perception amongst
non EV drivers that electric vehicles are limited to short range in fact when I told my neighbor in
2018 that I was getting an electric car her first thought was how are you going to be able to visit
your parents 200 miles away and that perception still seems to be prevalent amongst many non
EV drivers for some reason but the simple matter is that EVs can do exactly the same distances
as non EVs there's nothing in the design of electric vehicle that means you can't do long
distances will they have to stop sooner than an internal combustion engine car to reveal their
fuel source sometimes although I've told the story before on this show of my father's jaguar xj6
which had two 10 gallon fuel tanks and averaged 12 miles per gallon and that's a maximum range of
240 miles which is less than I can get on my current Polestar two and less than I did get
on my id3 but even in the case of petrol and diesel vehicle you'll always hit a limit of
distance after which you'll need to fill up the distance is not limited by the car it's limited
by the refuelling infrastructure whether that's fuel or electricity and that's why in episode 234
when I talked about driving long distances in an EV we heard from Julie Ramsey who alongside her
husband Chris took an electric vehicle from the north pole to the south pole thus proving that
distance is not a problem now I said several times on this program already that in the past I've done
Amsterdam to London Paris to London Geneva to London in an EV in a single day way back prior
to the pandemic when the world was slightly less crazy I've taken taken two different 1000 kilometer
journeys which is 600 miles in a single day one in a low range slow charging BMW i3 the other in a
larger range faster charging vw id3 now in neither of these cases was there an issue with the distance
or the infrastructure which brings us nicely to the next big problem that people talk about which is
chargers don't work and there's no infrastructure there it's quite possible that when people talk
about this then mines harken back to the day of the old top gear episode when Clarkson May and
Hammond took three early electric vehicles I think there's a Nissan Leaf and an AMEV
possibly can't remember exactly and they took them on a journey across the UK and naturally
they had issues because they ran low on charge and they ended up not finding chargers and having
to run extension cables out to their cars from cafes and things like that made great television
love the show myself but the problem is that that has now stayed as a perception now also on this
very show the late Quentin Wilson told the story of the first time he picked up a Mitsubishi AMEV
and on the way home he ended up stopping at a random old lady's house and asking if he could
plug in for a couple of hours because he also had run out of juice now these are all great stories
the more so for being true but they have one thing in common that people tend to forget
their old stories these things happened 10 years ago at least back then the infrastructure wasn't
motorway service areas had one maybe two charges if you were lucky and they might not work in your
car if it wasn't an Nissan Leaf but things have moved on since then according to the industry
body charge UK public charge points now number over 75 000 the network grew by 37% in the last
year alone now for comparison there are only around 8400 petrol stations in the UK to serve
a car park of 30 million plus fossil fuel cars currently there are fewer than two million
EVs on our roads zap map have a whole page on their site dedicated to breaking down the split
of charges by speed and location are there some areas where coverage is lower than other places
yes i mean my parents village face out plus a couple of seven kilowatt units at local supermarket
and a single gd point in the main car park and if that's out of order which it is about 50% of the
time it's a trek to the nearest big town six miles away now five different cpo's have installed
nine rapid charges between them not great but not as bad as it was only three years back now
the main issue with a lot of these charges though is that they're complex devices that rely on
hardware and software from multiple manufacturers to work seamlessly to get hardware providers
card reader providers payment providers charge point management systems grid supply hardware
and software vehicle bms systems all of this needs to work seamlessly together to ensure that you
can get a charge i know that only recently my pulse start had a software glitch and decided it
didn't want to take a rapid charge from any of the devices i was nearby it would slow charge at
four and a half kilowatts due to my poorly specced charging cable that was limited to 16 amps and
that's a different story but nothing higher than that a total shutdown of the car followed by a 30
minute cooling off period sorted that problem but at the time i didn't know if it was an issue with
the charger the payment the car or what i had to try three different charges at two locations
to determine that the problem was actually the car if you're a company like tesla who provide
all the hardware in the payment processing and the car it becomes so much easier to deal with
charging and that's why their supercharger network is second to none for reliable fast charging
but as soon as you introduce other manufacturers to the flow that's where potential problems arise
and arise they do the internet is rife with people talking about issues they had
tried to charge at this site on that site failed payments hundreds of pounds of pre-authorizations
on their credit card charges the error etc it happens and i think pretty much everyone with
an electric vehicle will have a story about something like this happening but a lot of
these issues are actually user error things like downloading an app for every charge point
operator just because the charger tells you to you don't need an app for every charge point
use a rome car like that map or similar and you'll avoid most of these errors i've told this story
before on the podcast but i have three nibblins which is two nephews and anise the boy's dried
but my niece doesn't even though she's almost 20 but i ain't pull up at any charger with them in
the vehicle handle my zap map card and the car will be charging within seconds it's the easiest
way to do it and if you always choose the reliable cpo's with hardware that will usually work you'll
have fewer issues now does this mean that all charges are bulletproof and never fail
well absolutely not but as i like to remind people regularly see how many petrol pumps are broken
the next time you go to a big petrol station look for the black and red tape or the card over the
handle petrol pumps are mechanical and breakdown too now on the topic of charging another claim
i hear is that there's not enough power if everyone goes electric if we all went electric
tomorrow the grid wouldn't cope well yes that's absolutely right if all 33 million vehicles on
uk roads suddenly went electric there wouldn't be enough grid capacity to handle this but we aren't
moving all cars over to electric overnight we're transitioning over a period of years decades even
as wet fuel usage declines the need to refine wet fuel declines and by various accounts this
uses huge amounts of energy most of which will be freed up to charge electric cars now very early
on in the life of the podcast we spoke with graham cooper who was at the time very high up in national
grid and i asked him whether the grid could cope and he told me yes they've planned for this and
there won't be an issue now remember it wasn't that long ago that we were using more energy
without electric cars to run the country because we had inefficient light bulbs that used lots of
electricity etc now our energy usage dropped over the last 20 years by about a third so what's the
next one on the list that we've told to avoid cars are too expensive now again i think a lot of this
is historic and it dates back to when evs first came onto the market now back then a cheap nissan
leaf was well above the price of a cheap ford toyota or even a bmw battery costs were high and
the retail price of electric cars was much higher than similar fossil fuel cars but that was 10
years ago the price of electric cars has dropped considerably now are there still expensive evs
absolutely you try getting a portion of carna or a top of the range Audi electric for reasonable
money you'll be out of luck i will also remind you that the base model ranger over retails
at 106 000 pounds and that's a diesel so expensive vehicles are not the domain of electric cars
now over the last few years manufacturers have started to radically reprice electric vehicles
we now had the Dacia spring at under 15 000 pounds on the road the fantastic Renault 5 at 21500
the Renault 4 at 23400 and the NG4 at 27245 now just for reference the best selling car in the
uk is the Ford Puma the all-new Ford Puma gen E cost 29995 and that sounds like a lot but remember
the base version no frills petrol four Puma is 26500 but to get one that matches the performance
spec of the gen e you'd be paying 33 800 pounds now my final problem is the one i find most
interesting it's that old chestnut of evs aren't real cars because they don't have engine noises
they're just iPads on wheels i always find this one a bit bizarre now i know there are people out
there who equate them manliness to the car that they drive and that car has to make brum brum noises
or it isn't a real car now remember remember i drove Porsche 911s for 10 years i understand the
appeal of a nice throaty roar when you blip the throttle but if noise is what you're after you
should probably consider going back to steam powered vehicles because those things were very
very noisy and they had all the vibration and everything fantastic the fact is that for the
vast majority of the driving population noise is something they want to reduce having a nice v12
engine that can spew fumes waste petrol and kick out a great noise when you floor it is
hardly going to be of any use if you're stuck on the m25 in the friday rush hour or if you're waiting
outside the school to pick up your children now if you're a racing driver and you need the scream
of the engine to tell you when to change up or change down then fair enough although the
formulary drivers seem to be able to do that without too much trouble but there are lights on
the steering wheel but if you absolutely positively have to have noise and gears on your ev there are
options try the Hyundai Ioniq 5n or the 6n fabulous car both of which have integrated
software to manage gear changes and engine noise now i tried it at everything electric north and
whilst i originally thought it would be a bit of a gimmick i was very surprised with how well the
gear changes have been modelled and how realistic the engine noise sounded now it felt real it
sounded real and it drove like a demon irony of course is that using the car in this mode is
actually slower than using it in full electric mode where the red button on the steering wheel
will give you 600 horsepower for about 10 seconds something my 911 couldn't even hope to achieve
so we've looked at lots and lots of different excuses about why people don't want to get an
electric vehicle did i miss any let me finish by saying that there are still several reasons
why you might not benefit from going electric if you don't have home charging and regularly do
miles a day need to tow two tons in a trailer and live in the sticks where there's no public
charging infrastructure then there is a case to say you can probably wait for the ev world to catch
up with you other than that well anyway i hope you enjoyed listening to today's show the ev
musings podcast is sponsored by zap map the go-to app for ev drivers helping you find and pay for
public charging with confidence zap map is free to download and use with subscription plans
for enhanced features such as using zap map in car on carplay or android auto and discounted
charging across thousands of charge points if you have any thoughts comments criticisms or other
general messages to pass on to me i can be reached at info at evmusings.com and on the socials i'm
on blue sky at evm musings dot b sky dot social i'm also on instagram at ev musings where i post
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supports me through patreon on the monthly basis and through coffee.com on an ad hoc one if you
enjoyed this episode why not buy me a coffee go to coffee.com slash ev musings and you can do
just that ko-fi.com slash ev musings takes apple pay too now regular listeners will know about my
two ebooks so you've gone electric and so you've gone renewable first one of those has had a recent
update you'll see with a bright red image on the front just like i'm showing on the screen here
both of those are at 99p each or equivalent and you can get them on the amazon kindle store
check out the links in the show notes for more information as well as a link to my regular
ev musings newsletter and associated articles now i know you're probably driving or walking or
jogging or in the shower or washing the car but if you can remember and you enjoyed this episode
proper review in itunes please really helps me out i did go out and go in and have a look recently
as some of the most recent reviews thank you very much for those who took time to do that for me
if you've reached this part of the podcast and are still listening thank you why not let me know
you've got to this point by messaging me at musingsv.be skies dot social with the words no
problem hashtag if you know you know nothing else and thanks as always to my co-founder Simon he
of course has no problems thanks for listening bye bye now
About this episode
Exploring common misconceptions about electric vehicles, this episode tackles the criticisms often levied against EVs, such as charging times, environmental impact, and costs. Gary discusses how charging can be more convenient than traditional refueling and addresses concerns about the carbon footprint of battery production. He also highlights the capabilities of EVs for long-distance travel and the evolving charging infrastructure. With insights from personal experiences and data, the episode aims to debunk myths and provide a clearer understanding of the realities of electric vehicle ownership.
In this episode of the podcast, Gary addresses common misconceptions and criticisms surrounding electric vehicles.
He discusses various issues such as charging time, environmental impact, running costs, long-distance travel capabilities, charging infrastructure, grid capacity, vehicle pricing, and perceptions of EVs as 'real cars'.
Throughout the conversation, he provides insights and counterarguments to these concerns, aiming to clarify the realities of owning and operating an electric vehicle.
Takeaways
Charging an EV can be done while doing other activities.
The environmental impact of EVs is less significant over time.
Running costs of EVs can be lower than petrol cars in many cases.
Long-distance travel is feasible with proper planning and infrastructure.
Charging infrastructure has improved significantly in recent years.
Grid capacity is being planned for the transition to electric vehicles.
The price of electric vehicles has decreased over time.
Perceptions of EVs as not being 'real cars' are outdated.
Public charging costs vary widely and can be managed effectively.
EVs offer a quieter and more efficient driving experience.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to EV Problems
01:02 Charging Time Concerns
01:31 They take too long to charge
03:48 Environmental Impact of EVs
04:53 Cost of Running EVs vs Petrol Cars
08:02 They can't do the distance
10:17 Charging Infrastructure Issues
15:15 Grid Capacity and Power Supply
16:11 Cars are too expensive
16:27 Cost of EVs
17:46 Perceptions of EVs as 'Real Cars'
The EV Musings Podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the go-to app for EV drivers, helping you find and pay for public charging with confidence.
