The reality of living with an EV that nobody talks about !!

The reality of living with an EV can be amazing or impossible depending on a couple of critical things that you have or not !

Having off-street parking and your own car charger makes the reality of living with a EV really straightforward. The vast bulk of you charging will be done at home and you won't need to use public charge point that often. However, if you don't have off-street parking and you own charger the reality of living with an EV is going to be a painful one. In this video I talk you through my thoughts and experiences.

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[JDoors]

Had an online discussion with someone who must have been in NYC or LA while I'm from a large city in the center of the U.S. I have never even SEEN a charging station, this guy said they're everywhere. I'm in an apartment with unassigned outdoor parking, he said every apartment has its own charger. He's one of those people that think, "The whole world is exactly like what I experience." Different worlds dude, different worlds.

[BMWHP]

In the Netherlands, you can go to the local government and apply to have a charger installed in the street where you live, close to your home.
There are already over 140.000 public chargers and that number doubles every 2 years.

[recyclist]

My wife & i have bought a renault zoe as a second car runaround (we still own a petrol SUV). We have 2 options within 1 mile of our house to fill up for FREE at 22kW speed (We live in Scotland). We are very lucky in this respect and i know not many places available to do this in the UK. In the zoe this is basically 1/2 tank in 1 hour or full tank in approx. 2hrs ish (giving 100 /200ish city miles of complimentary driving ...in summer at least). We dont do that many miles per week so this is more than enough. One of the chargers is on my way to the gym so i can stop off there once a week and walk to gym and then come back and im done charging for the week without range anxiety always in the back of our minds. We didnt bother to instal home charger as at the moment we dont need one. We are actually starting to use our zoe for as greater percentage of our driving as possible because it is essentially free fuel motoring. Its become a fun challenge. We even got 2 push bikes in the back for a weekend away recently. I think large charging stations at places like gyms and supermarkets may be the answer for flat owners etc. with speeds of charge getting faster 20 min shop will be enough to get a good range in the tank. The problem, as mentioned in the video is that the costs of charging your car varies so much at public stations. If u can charge for 7p overnight at home and pay 5% VAT only (versus 20% VAT at public charger) seems no brainer. I sometimes think of it in relation to filling at a gas station. You wouldnt find shell charging 50p per litre and BP charge £2 per litre. maybe needs regulation if government are really wanting a clean energy shift away from petrol/diesel

[AlexisTichko]

I'm happy that, finally, an EV enthusiast and public person dares to say out loud the very same questions that most of the "common people" have for already a long time. You nailed it on all concerns you've mentioned. Currently owning an EV is still a thing for the "happy few" because of the very high asking prices for such cars, certainly when you are in need of a decent range, but also because, as you mentioned, you need to own/have an off-street parking spot where you can install a home charger (and if possible also invest heavily in solar panels and home-battery stuff to avoid a bill chock). The so-called "cheap" EV's that are announced here and there are, first of all, not cheap at all and secondly they have small batteries which makes these cars kind of useless for most people who currently own a real affordable car (petrol Sandero or so). These cars still allow you to make real long journeys, even if it's not a driving saloon (a thing most people are not worried about because cost is the driver, not luxury or comfort). There isn't one single EV below 20000 Euros (around 15-16000 pounds I think) that is capable of driving for more than 4-500 miles on one tank (sorry, battery charge). A Dacia Spring might be a very nice and clever budget EV but it's not intended to drive 2-300 miles every day making it a very expensive car if you can only use it for driving around town and you only use it a secondary car. You are also totally right when you're asking yourself if electricity is that much more eco-friendly compared to petrol or diesel. Sure, your EV has 0 emission because of no exhaust. But the way that same electricity is generated is all but eco-friendly. It would be very naive to believe that all electricity comes from wind energy or state of the art nuclear power plants or aqua power mills... A lot of it is still generated by burning stuff to create heat and steam. Contrary to the EV sect "Fully Charged" who is using all means to convince that EVs are soo much better and that charging infrastructure and power generation is soo much cleaner by using all the same fake analyses and reports as would the petrol industry use to convince everything their ways, you dare to question that and that is how it should be. I left that channel because it was only speaking in superlatives on the whole EV thing and did (still do) everything to deny or minimise the real situation around everything needed for EV transportation. The truth is, we're not there yet and it will take a few decades before all the tech required for efficient EV transportation is mature and truly ecological. Am I against EVs? Not at all, on the contrary but it's still not a viable alternative for ICE cars for all the reasons you mentioned. I will be forced to use an EV as company car sometimes next year but I don't own a house, I don't have an off-street spot with a personal home charger. The amount of public chargers are still not sufficient to charge all suckers like myself who can't do that overnight at home and the prices per kilowatt is just mind-blowing high in my country. Agreed, it is improving on the public charging points but then rises another problem you mentioned equally, the capacity of the grid to support all that power if many people will charge at the same times. It's now already happening in some places where you have public chargers of 11 Kw but they only product between 3 and 7 Kw if more than one care is charging at the same place. The capacity is reduced to half of it which makes charging a real burden. In the Netherlands for example, the grid is now at it's max capacity because the didn't invest in it but in parallel the government kind off forced people to switch from gas to heat-pumps to regulate the temperature at home due to the gas shortages with the war in Ukraine. Nice example of future planning. In Belgium it's not that bad for now. The grid can cope but they are forcing people to not charge during peak hours (including the usage of household material) to spread the load which is an indication that the grid is starting to be strained by this increase in power demand.

[markrhodes]

Hi Pete, very informative video. My son recently purchased an EV as he lives on a small development with a wall charger. He discovered that the 7kw charger was only configured to 3.5kw. He challenged the developer who informed he that the Power supplier had requested this because if all the properties used an EV that the sub station would not be able to cope. We have a very long way to go before we are ready for EV’s.

[kevingreen]

A point to consider for those of us living in older streets of terraced housing is that, even if we could have a charge point of our own, we don't have any more right than anyone else to park outside our own home - unless it's a private road, or we have resident parking spaces (which are usually quite expensive). This country is still a long way off being prepared for "enforcement by stealth" EV ownership - unless that's part of the agenda whereby motoring will soon revert to being a privilege for the wealthy.

[keithmo]

Hi Pete. Thanks for the video. Regarding taxation, I live in the state of Virginia in the US. Here when we register our EV, and we have 2, we pay a tax to the DMV to replace the fuel tax we are not paying. Works ok except you pay either a flat fee or based on actual mileage, but we pay for the whole year at once archer in little bits at each fill up.

[aadonofr]

Great video! This hits so many important issues on living with an EV. As Retiree in the US who enjoys exploring our vast country we opted for a hybrid SUV. We've taken several 1500 mile trips and it's practical and reasonably economical at 30-35 MPG.

[garyrudd]

Thanks Pete, great content as always. A few points (from an ex Mach-e ‘owner’). Resetting the range clock does absolutely nothing to impact the range, it just resets it to the theoretical range until you e done a few trips and then normal ‘range calculation’ is resumed (240 on warm days, 200 on cold days).
I didn’t have a home box, used the public network. It was a complete ball ache with charge points out of order or full on about 30% of journeys. Travelling to and from Cornwall on holiday with the family was god awful with all the waiting around to charge. And the public charge points say 50kwh…complete tosh! lucky to get 40kwh out of most. After 9 months I gave up. Back to dinosaur juice I’m afraid and life is so much easier. I’ll see what EVs look like in another 10 years - maybe. Keep the content coming, great work

[avidviewer]

I can't charge at home and found your acknowledgement of the difficulties highly supportive. Thank you. If someone asked me to sum up my several years' EV driving experience in one word, I'd say 'unpredictable', and I'd also urge them *not* to become an EV driver unless they can charge at home. Thanks again.

[rtmpgt]

G'day from Australia. You make a bunch of real good points on this front. I am in the situation where I live in an apartment and I was considering an EV to replace my ute and my Getz. The entire idea of having to structure my week around whether or not the car's got charge in it was, to be fair, the biggest dealbreaker for me when it comes to EVs.

To be honest? I don't see the UK implementing a full ban on ICEVs by 2035. I mean, they'll roll it out, sure. But, they'll have to either walk the ban back by means of a broader net-zero emissions target and a gradual reduction scheme for emissions (via efficiency standards) when it comes to auto sales across the whole country (which is what we're aiming for here in Australia), or alternatively you'll see a lifting of the ban and a pushback of it back to say, 2040 or 2045. The reason? Cars are just too damn expensive, and wages are too damn low. People can't afford EVs or PHEVs when new, Hybrids are at the upper end of what the average punter can afford as far as low-emission vehicles are concerned, at least if you want something from a reputable brand like Toyota or Mazda. I would say that the best way to walk this back and make the legacy industry happy is to mandate pluggability by say, 2035. Not necessarily forcing people into pure BEVs, but through gradual emissions standards, require that vehicles sold from 2035 onwards have some form of electrical charging system that is capable of being used at both DCFC and AC chargers. This way, you have the option to plug in your car for short commutes, use fuel for longer commutes/road trips, and use Hybrid mode to extend the range of your fuel.

Taxing vehicles by weight will solve the roadwear issue (we already do this in Western Australia), and when it comes to the taxation issue for charging, place the tax on the _charging companies_ and not the electricity wholesalers/retailers that sell your electricity. Electricity is a commodity, that charging companies will buy from energy providers at a wholesale price, so the government can simply target the excises on fast charging companies, which will encourage more people to plug in at home.

As for my situation? Well i'm likely going to buy a Base-model 2.0L Mazda MX5 as my next car. I miss my old NA, and the Getz doesn't need replacement for at least another 10 years. It takes 26 tons of CO2 to make a Tesla Model 3 from ground to garage. A Mazda MX5 takes about 16 tons, and it suits the role of what our next car is going to be way, way better. I want the experience of a motorcycle whilst not driving something that's well... Potentially going to kill me.

Cars need to get smaller, lighter and more efficient. Most BEVs kinda go against that trend.

[brycewalker]

This is a fantastic video. The same issues you describe are the reasons I bought a Hybrid instead of an EV. In Ontario Canada where I live we have a government which cancelled all incentives for EV purchases. They are only available at the federal level. There is little to no infrastructure publically. People are going back to gas powered vehicles in the larger city centers as a result. Range insecurity is a huge issue in Canada and of course our winter lowers your range. It is a mess which no one talks about. So much more to discuss but will leave it at that. Terrific, straight forward and honest discussion.

[ncooty]

The funny/ ironic thing about subsidies (tariffs) for "early adopters" is that they're just discounts for the wealthy. As prices become affordable for the middle class, the subsidies evaporate--and yet again, we collectively subsidize the wealth gap.

[malcolmbrown]

At a dealership this summer in Canada, a Mach E in GT trim had a price tag of $CDN88k. The petrol version, 5.0l V8 in GT trim was $CDN52K. I can buy a lot of petrol for the difference!!

[jeremiahpuckett]

Very good point about taxation and loss of revenues as we switch over to electric.

In Colorado, USA our taxes per gallon is 22 cents. The Federal tax, as I understand it, is 18 cents. I should assume there is also a county and city tax. At minimum, 40 cents per gallon. Assuming 20 mpg, that’s 2 cents per mile. I currently pay about 11 cents per kW and figure conservatively 3 miles per kW. Just for easier math, let’s figure 4 cents per mile in my EV. That would have to go up at least 50% per mile to make up for that revenue. Currently in the US, there is NO tax on electricity for residential use.

[CRZL]

Great video, and you have raised some points that most people who own EVs seemingly do not want to discuss or debate. A couple in particular stand out: 1. the increased current that 'fast chargers' need so that EV users can be on their way in about 15 minutes causes a massive drain on the local electricity network, however most EV users either plainly ignore this fact or couldn't care less, and 2. the subsidies offered to people to encourage the uptake of EVs only benefits those that can already afford it. So essentially society is funding people who shouldn't be getting a subsidy in the first place. It's not too dissimilar to subsidies some governments provide for the uptake of solar panels. Most people either can't afford solar panels or live in a situation where they couldn't have them even if they wanted to, i.e. those who live in apartments. Again, it's the majority of society that has to pay so that a few can benefit.

[archangele]

You are so correct with respect to the cost of a new EV being
out of reach for many of us. Also, the fact that the number one
issue with used EV's is the battery, and the batteries cost a fortune
to replace. I see the total cost of ownership of a new EV to be
a bit too high for many people. I know plenty of people who
find it a struggle to purchase some used car at $10, 000 - $15, 000.
Good luck finding a good EV with a battery that isn't getting ready to die
for that kind of cash. In fact, the price of all cars, both used and
new, has gone up so much this year that most people I know are just
refurbishing their present older cars. The price of a new transmission
or a good deal of engine work is not much more then the
sales tax on a new car these days.
They can push EV's till icebergs float in
Tampa Bay and if people just don't have the cash for one they
are not going to give up their old gas powered clunkers until they will
no longer move and parts are totally unavailable.

[rogerrabbit]

Hey Pete, I live in Australia. and installed Solar panels on roof several years ago and was getting good rate for surplus electricity I was selling to the grid, now I get next to nothing plus hidden solar meter charges. I saw this happening a long time ago, as you rightly say, the same will happen with EV's when Governments lose out on excise etc. Very well put together arguments on living with an EV.

[rustykilt]

As electricity prices soar and supply reliability diminishes, you also have the cost of charging at home which is not cheap and will only get worse, if you are luck enough to have a home charger and garage. Most people today cannot afford a home and garage.

[royjacobsen]

I just purchased an EV and can't have a wall box charger, however I can charge over night with a granny charger into a 240v socket returning 1.8kwh so yes it is very slow but not nowhere near as expensive as rapid charging is. I will only ever need to rapid charge if going on a long journey as you say further than the range of the vehicle which is 260 miles. I've only had it a few days and so far I absolutely love it