Writing about electric vehicles is often like playing whack-a-mole with skeptics.
Discuss why limited range isn’t a big problem and you might be hit with concerns about price. Point out that EVs are cheap to operate and you’ll face criticisms about battery life. Address battery longevity and you could find yourself defending prices again.
That’s why I’ve assembled the top unwarranted complaints about EVs into one convenient space, in an attempt to knock them off one by one.
EVs are for the rich.
I’ve seen electric Porsches and top-end Teslas, and I have to assume these owners are doing okay. But, really, there’s nothing rarified about all EVs.
My EV, a Hyundai Ioniq 5, had a sticker price of $50,000 in 2022. That’s a lot of money, and it certainly gave me pause initially.
But the price was in line with the average new vehicle sold in Ontario that year, according to figures from AutoTrader.ca. More importantly, the price looks considerably more attractive after I factor in gas savings and the $5,000 federal rebate.
With my modest driving routines, these offsets can whittle down the operating cost – when compared with an ICE vehicle – to about $35,000 over 10 years. That’s comparable to a gas-burning Toyota Camry or a Ford Escape, hardly rides reserved for the elite.
Drive a lot? It’s possible to get the operating cost of an EV down to the price of a Civic.
The problem is that the typical upfront cost of an EV is high. However, EVs should get cheaper as more are produced. Goldman Sachs estimates that battery-pack prices will decline by an average of 11 per cent a year through 2030, driving cost parity with ICE vehicles by the middle of this decade.
The charging infrastructure is terrible.
There are fast chargers and slower chargers, public chargers and home chargers, making it difficult to deliver a blanket statement about charging infrastructure. I’ll do it anyway: It works quite well.
The dream is home charging, where you can plug in your vehicle overnight and wake up to a fully charged EV each morning. Admittedly, that dream is limited to anyone with a house and designated parking spot.
But before you say, “See? EVs are for the rich,” consider the many alternatives. Some condos, offices and parking lots offer convenient charging. On-street charging options – my own preference – are proliferating in urban areas.
Fast chargers, designed for on-the-go charging when you need a boost in 30 minutes or less, are where your options are more limited. But the network is growing at a brisk clip.
In Canada, the number of fast chargers expanded by 1,036 ports – or nearly 27 per cent – from March, 2023, to March, 2024, according to Electric Autonomy Canada. That’s in just one year. And more are coming.
EVs are only useful in cities.
EVs are perfect for cities, where clogged roads are screaming for cleaner cars, and you don’t have to worry about range. But any commute that begins and ends at home – say, an under-300-kilometre round trip – offers the same upside: a cleaner journey using a cheaper, more convenient source of energy.
There are even some advantages to driving EVs outside of cities.
Larger rural lots beg for garages, and a garage offers a convenient location for a home charging station that can take advantage of cheap overnight electricity. And if rural commutes involve longer trips, perhaps from one town to another, the extended journeys will translate into larger gas savings.
I can’t afford the time to charge an EV on my way to …
I get this one a lot. You need to drive 400 kilometres, a trip that takes about four hours, and you simply can’t stomach the thought of spending as much as 30 minutes to charge an EV once along the way.
You don’t use the bathroom. You don’t buy snacks. You don’t take breaks. You do, however, buy 32 litres of gas, which costs over $50 at $1.60 a litre.
Now consider the EV alternative.
During that 400-km trip, you stop once at a fast charger along the highway. It takes 30 minutes to charge.
That’s not downtime, standing beside your ICE car, in the cold, pumping gas. While your EV charges, you take a break, use the facilities, grab a snack, whatever.
The money you save on gas during these charging breaks is good for the wallet.
How good? Even if you needed to fully charge your battery from 0 per cent to 100 per cent at a pricey highway fast-charging station, you would save about $15 on that 400-km trip compared with an equivalent gas-powered trip. In this example, the EV easily pays for your snacks.
More likely, you would need a smaller boost at the fast charger, perhaps from a 20-per-cent state of charge to 80 per cent, and rely on a cheaper charge at home or your destination. In this case, your savings would be closer to $25.
In this example, the charging downtime starts to look like a nice part-time gig that pays $50 an hour just to relax. Still think EVs are for the rich? EVs are also for the frugal.