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Input requested: Bonnie's Top Ten List / EV Urban Legends

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bonnie

I play a nice person on twitter.
Feb 6, 2011
16,429
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Columbia River Gorge
I'm giving a talk and participating on a panel at a local college on Wednesday, the topic I said I'd cover was 'EV Urban Legends'. I thought I'd just take the FUD head on and list it, and then talk to 'why it's not true'.

Here are some of the top ten candidates - please add more if you have 'em and I'll whittle it down to the 'top ten'. Thanks!

  1. Subsidized by taxpayers
  2. Batteries don't last
  3. Batteries will fill up the waste dumps
  4. Toxic manufacturing
  5. Dirty electricity
  6. Battery fires
  7. Takes forever to charge
  8. Inconvenient
 
I think you probably have this covered under #7 and #8, but in general the whole myth of range anxiety on a normal daily basis and how EV's allow you to get rid of the "quarter tank anxiety".
 
Well...

Now, don't take this as a complaint - but am I the only owner who thinks the car does take a long time to charge (of course it's not forever)? Sure, like everyone else here - it doesn't matter 95% of the time. And I haven't had to stop by a gas station for gas in almost a year. But to hide the other 5% seems a bit disingenuous. And I have run into the 5% cases. Like forgetting to plug the car in (maybe I'm the only one who's done it more than once). Or that a trip that would take a days worth of driving isn't possible without Superchargers -- and even then that increases your time traveling. For me, that's once a year (500 mile drive to visit parents). So, the reality is it does take a long time to charge, but for most (but not all) of the time it doesn't matter.
 
Some are duplicates of above...

#9 Prefer buying GM/Ford to support American jobs
#10 How do I charge my car if I don't live near a Supercharger? halp!
#11 Where to get the car serviced? maintenance schedule?
#12 Cost of electric fillup vs. gas
#13 EVs are slow and boring
#14 The grid can't support all these EVs
#15 Can I make long distance road trips w/ a family of 4? with luggage?
#16 Teslas are only for rich people (i.e. S60 vs. S85, current loaner inventory sales, flood of used 85s due to P85D, discount loans for EVs etc.)
 
You all are AWESOME! Making this easy for me :)

I'll probably do a top ten, along with honorable mentions. I'm on the panel with Andrew Frank, who has already warned me that his talk will be why PHEVs are better than EVs. And I, of course, warned him that I'm always up for a healthy discussion :). (And told him that I recognize there are times that EVs won't work & that hopefully, he was open-minded enough to acknowledge that PHEVs weren't always the only answer ... I received a very friendly reply. Should be fun.)

Then I looked him up online ... still, I've got this one. Andrew Frank
 
You all are AWESOME! Making this easy for me :)

I'll probably do a top ten, along with honorable mentions. I'm on the panel with Andrew Frank, who has already warned me that his talk will be why PHEVs are better than EVs. And I, of course, warned him that I'm always up for a healthy discussion :). (And told him that I recognize there are times that EVs won't work & that hopefully, he was open-minded enough to acknowledge that PHEVs weren't always the only answer ... I received a very friendly reply. Should be fun.)

Then I looked him up online ... still, I've got this one. Andrew Frank

Pretty much a lightweight compared to you. Be gentle with him...
 
My favorite question is, "how often do you fill your tank twice in two days?"
Really gets the idea across of how far they drive each day.
The "I have a full tank every morning" line carries a lot of impact.

As for Andrew, we really shouldn't be arguing about PHEV vs. BEVs. We should be arguing PHEVs & BEVs vs ICE.

The right tool for the right job.
 
I volunteer with Experience Electric / The Better Ride and have shown my car and answered questions about it at public events many times. Every single time the top two questions are: 1) How far can it go? (Range) and 2) How long does it take to charge? Even in the SF Bay Area, where I've shown my car, people are surprised about the range of the Tesla. "I thought electric cars could only go 40-75 miles" is very common. Charge time needs to be explained -- overnight charging is not how most think about fueling a vehicle. The gas model is very ingrained. Most come to the conclusion: "Oh, it's like charging your phone. Plug in at night, full in morning, good-to-go all day."

After that, it goes to cost (~1/4 of gas), roadtrips (superchargers!), etc. Very few bring up the long tailpipe argument, or battery waste. Car people seem to ask about performance more than the average. EDIT: After the basics are explained: "When is the cheaper one coming? I want it!"
 
First pass on top ten:

  1. You have to replace the battery every 5 years
  2. If everyone drove an electric car, it would destroy the grid
  3. Driving an electric car is no better than gas, you’re just changing where the pollution happens
  4. You have to understand technology to drive an EV
  5. You spend a lot of time charging your car / hard to find a place to charge
  6. Range is so little, you can't really go anywhere
  7. It’s really paid for by our tax dollars
  8. Batteries are gong to clog the landfills with toxic waste
  9. Unsafe driving around with large battery
  10. Manufacturing an electric car pollutes the environment

- - - Updated - - -

And will definitely touch on the whole NADA unfair competition thing, though this is at a California college & it's not an issue in California. (But if you follow me around this forum, you know that's an issue near and dear to me.)

- - - Updated - - -

I volunteer with Experience Electric / The Better Ride and have shown my car and answered questions about it at public events many times. Every single time the top two questions are: 1) How far can it go? (Range) and 2) How long does it take to charge? Even in the SF Bay Area, where I've shown my car, people are surprised about the range of the Tesla. "I thought electric cars could only go 40-75 miles" is very common. Charge time needs to be explained -- overnight charging is not how most think about fueling a vehicle. The gas model is very ingrained. Most come to the conclusion: "Oh, it's like charging your phone. Plug in at night, full in morning, good-to-go all day."

After that, it goes to cost (~1/4 of gas), roadtrips (superchargers!), etc. Very few bring up the long tailpipe argument, or battery waste. Car people seem to ask about performance more than the average. EDIT: After the basics are explained: "When is the cheaper one coming? I want it!"

Right, those are very common questions at events. What I want to do here, though, is attack the fud first. People hear all sorts of untruths about EVs. Let's talk about that and get it out of the way.

We have tons of time for Q&A on the panel and I expect to get lots of these types of questions then. But I want to root out the distrust of EVs, what people have heard - and shoot it down. Then we can talk about what it means to own an EV and how easy it is. These are college students and they're going to be open to hearing the truth - and who better to carry the message forward? Once they *get it*, we'll all be better off. :)

Some EVs only do go 40-75 miles, so I have to be careful on that. I'm not representing Tesla, I'm talking about EVs. Tesla is the high-end. But there are a lot of other choices, too. The good news is that for a lot of people, the lower end range EV will work just fine, once they think about their real needs. I might need a large van for hauling stuff once every two years, but I don't purchase a vehicle based on that need. I shouldn't do that for an infrequent roadtrip, either.
 
My funniest FUD moment was speaking briefly at a local engineering sustainability event about driving the Model S on road trips. The next speaker was a Toyota marketing person, who immediately dismissed EVs as short-range city commuter cars incapable of long trips (Toyota's vision is hybrids). (He even dissed the Plug-in Prius as being a dumb idea... because of the plug, not because its range sucks.)

Anyway your FUD list is looking pretty good. Another FUD point is the "limited supply" of lithium and/or other "rare" metals.