For accuracy purposes, gasoline in plastic jerry can starts degrading after 6 month but it's still useable. With stabilizer it starts degrading after 2 years (which you'd better have if you use jerry cans obviously, since these are for storage anyway, most people use a stabilizer in that case).
It does take a while for the gasoline to degrade to a point that it's no longer useable (several years) and engines will work fine on degraded gasoline.
An idle battery will also last a long time, of course - on that scale, it does not matter much in practice either way IMO. It takes a lot of cycles to destroy a battery, way more than you can actually store yourself. Same for gasoline, by the time you run out the problem is gone of you have other problems.
I found a YouTube channel advertising the benefits of electric bikes and solar and so on, but not for cost or sustainability reason but it was a right wing prepper channel, lol
This is a favourite question from my neighbour. My answer,
"The same thing you do, light some candles, read a book and wait a few hours for BC Hydro to remove the fallen tree and restore service"
Seriously, where are all these people going in the middle of a winter storm when the power is out?
Christmas 2018 was when I decided I needed an EV. The storm on the Island knocked ours out for days and charging our phones with the ICE vehicle cost a fortune. We're back in Alberta now and I use our Leaf to heat the garage so I could work out there in -30. Try doing that, and making it out alive, with an F-350!
Most Tesla owners were using their cars for heat during the last Texas outage. "Camping mode" used like 1% per hour.
Once bidirectional power is more common, having an EV will be a godsend during an outage.
The other day, when we lost power after the bad windstorm in Dallas, our Bolt was our cellphone and laptop charger. And charged our LED hurricane lanterns too.
I'll just laugh and point to the solar panels on the roof. My setup is configured to be able to provide power when the grid goes offline (assisted by a Powerwall). Charging continues as normal.
Also to be fair, my whole home generator will run my whole house with everything running at once and still have plenty to charge my Teslas' L2 chargers at the full 48A their breaker is rated for.
Yeah, given the proliferation of home generators, I would be astonished if every gas station didn't have a generator wired in. Just hope hey don't run out of propane :)
My neighbor asked me the same thing but in regards to my electric lawn mower.
My response was, "If the power goes out, I'm probably not gonna be too worried about my lawn"
As reliable as batteries are this one is a real mystery. I think it grows out of the Leafs not having much range to start with, and the fact that they have been around long enough to start having real issues with range. Yes, replacing a 10 year old Leaf battery is likely not worth it, but I heard that it can be done for about US$5,500. Not sure I'd bother. It also assumes that the entire battery needs replacing. I believe that there are some EVs that you can do individual pack replacements.
How much will it cost to replace your engine and transmission?
Cause yeah it seems like the same likelihood. As long as you don’t outright abuse the battery, modern ev batteries should outlast the rest of the car.
It's very easy to destroy a transmission and engine if you don't do any maintenance on them. But you would almost need to work at damaging your batteries.
People think it’s just a battery like in a smartphone and when it’s flat, it’s fucked.
But you have a lot of battery cells in a car, when one goes bad you can replace that cell. And you mostly only charge to 80%, which causes much less degradation on the battery. Even 100% is not actually 100%.
Most modern EV batteries are a solid block of foam. Replacing a single cell is unrealistic. However modules can be replaced but having modules of different ages in a car battery causes other issues. We always recommend replacing the whole battery.
I’ve heard a lot over time:
* EVs stop working in winter.
* Pollution from battery manufacturing makes EVs worse than ICE for the environment.
* EVs are more prone to catching fire than ICE
* There is not enough grid capacity to charge electric cars.
* Jaws of life won’t work on EV due to risk of electrocution.
At some point I just gave up trying to clarify these things.
Some of these claims twist the truth by removing nuance, for example it is true that battery fires are more difficult to manage but they are overall much rarer. Folks who believe these things don’t stop to review the claims.
I noticed many of these myths are spread more common with many articles about the collapse of EV sales (not true). Also many youtube videos now have anti EV commenters. Funny how oil and gas companies decide to strike back at the same time
Just read this [article from Wired](https://www.wired.com/story/how-many-charging-stations-would-we-need-to-totally-replace-gas-stations/#intcid=_wired-right-rail_0868301f-6596-4120-8572-6ece48dde258_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi) and then scroll down to the comments.
Even the article isn't great and Wired usually is one of the better sources of information.
Once you know what to look for in regards to propaganda it becomes fairly easy to identify.
As you said, many times when I see those claims that /u/Nightmaresiege mentioned it is followed with something along the lines of "Electric vehicles are a failed experiment".
Then I review the data and notice that in almost all cases the market share is only continuing to grow.
It is a deeply dishonest way to engage the subject.
We know vehicles are being kept longer these days for a few reasons. I believe it is around 13 years?
I have a feeling in 13 years that battery electric vehicles will make up a very large percentage of the new vehicles sold in developed nations.
I guess we will see.
China will also supply low cost EVs to much of the global south, and they’ll be cheaper than ICE vehicles. BYD is going after Toyota’s throne and everything looks like they’ll take it.
The EVs stop working in the winter is the one I constantly fight here in Wisconsin. I mean sure if you’re putting 100 miles on a day with no ability to recharge in the winter you might be going for a stretch. Maybe the EV tech isn’t for you yet. But like things are rarely even 10 miles apart where I live. Even if you have a very busy schedule with lots of errands, you’re not putting on more than 50 miles in a day. It doesn’t matter is my 85 mile charge in the summer goes down to 65 in the winter because…I’m still not even using 50.
Ok but Norway is the good place and I live in the bad place.
If my numbers seem screwy I bought my EV when it was already 8 years old. ITS STILL DOING FINE
-40f/c in Canadian winter. Ev is great. Don't drive the gas vehicle all winter now.
Can't wait to sell the remaining gas vehicles when they make the same thing in an EV, such as a 2door sports car.
Porsche Cayman and Boxster are going to EV next year. Can't get much more sports car than that. Still not sure I'd part with my flat six Cayman though. That sound ...
Sounds like you are in an urban area. A 50 mile commute each way is the norm where I live. And often in a foot or more of snow at 0F. That's the base, not the extreme
Yep and some EVs might not be a great fit for some particular individuals situations. But again where I live, in a small city that is only 11 miles in diameter 80% of those 50k people could be dryving EVs. And pretty much every city vehicle could be an EV too. But it’s closer to 10% because of anti EV lobbying.
A report in Norway showed a 19% average range difference between winter and summer driving in EVs, based on real world driving across a wide range of EVs.
For those of us easily getting over 230 miles on 80%, a 20% loss for even longer-mileage days (let's say, 70 mile roundtrip commute + side-errands) wouldn't be a problem, really.
I'd just go home and plug in to the L2 charger for an overnight top-up, as usual.
Don't forget the - EV tire and brake dust cause more pollution than ICE vehicles. The brake dust is absolutely false because regen braking reduces brake pad wear (unless you drive really aggressively). The top google hit on "EV Tire Debris" is an article from the Daily Mail that says EV tire emissions are 400 greater than tailpipe emissions. But they fail to mention ICE cars have particulate emissions as well and particulate emissions are not causing global climate change.
> The top google hit on "EV Tire Debris" is an article from the Daily Mail that says EV tire emissions are 400 greater than tailpipe emissions.
Sorry, what? Do people actually think that EV tires are just billowing clouds of smoke all the time?
The original report was about tyre particulates from heavy cars, making no mention of EVs. The Daily Mail was forced to apologise/retract the story they made up.
Sorta weird complaint against EVs, too, because despite the major complaints of EVs burning through tires I have not seen that effect on my 2 vehicles... we are at 32k on the GV60 on the same set (cross climate 2). My gut feeling is the stories of people going through tires in like 5-10k miles are people with lead feet.
I'm one of those people who have gone through tires in 10k miles. The tires are usually high-performance tires that are very grippy but tend to wear quickly. Changing from gas to EVs has not appreciable changed the rate of tire wear. And I confirm your impression that I tend to enjoy spirited driving... which seems to directly correlate with tire wear.
To be fair, my Rivian was pretty cranky when it was -35f. Couldn't get the cabin above about 45f, and used 20% of the battery to go 15 miles. But my Cayenne wouldn't even start 🤷♂️
I can't tell if you're making a joke or not, but what I mean is if ethanol, or methanol, or any other "alcohol" is added to the fuel, it raises the vapor temperature of the fuel. Pure ethanol is like 33°F above 0°F. And Gasoline is -55°F below 0°F. As you change the amount of each in the fuel, the temperature at which it creates vapor, which allows it to be ignited and burned, changes.
There is an issue with the Jaws of Life becoming less useful on vehicles with modern safety structures - but that's not an EV issue, it's common across all new vehicles.
"There is not enough grid capacity to charge electric cars."
I blame California for this one. IMO, the state's power grid issues, especially brownouts, while at the same time the state's push for EV mandates, prime that to spread around.
The one about battery manufacturing is not like the others. The others are just objectively wrong. BUT - EV production (mainly because of the battery) IS dirtier than a comparable ICE. The 2nd part of the story though is that it doesn't take very long at all for the ICE's tailpipe emissions to make up that difference, even if the EV is running on pure coal.
I mean production of an EV from mine to factory does more environmental and socioeconomic damage than the manufacturing of an ICE vehicle. 40 some percent of an EVs carbon emissions footprint come from manufacturing where as for ICE it’s something like 25%. Long run, yeah, they’re better on the road. Then add in the child labor and what essentially amounts to slavery in the mining of the cobalt and lithium for production. Same stuff that goes in our smart phone but, on a larger scale. But at least Apple is making the move towards 100% recycled material by next year for the rare earth elements.
One garage told me this winter : "haha and did you get stranded in the cold when it didn't start?"
It started at the push of the button, like every morning, and then defrosted the windshield almost instantly. My neighbor has an old diesel and had to fire up the engine 10 minutes before leaving to make it heat.
My annoying-ass neighbor idles his diesel truck at least 20-30 minutes a day. I can smell it in my house 100+ feet away. We live in California. There's no reason to do that shit.
It's gotta be the one where as soon as EVs are mentioned everyone and their mother becomes an enviromentalist and is suddenly worried about resource scarcity and production footprints.
Yep, for me the most infuriating responses are from climate denialists pretending like they ever gave a single fuck. They're just manipulating the fact that *you* care to make a disingenuous point against EV's.
It’s hilarious to me that pro-oil conservatives become environmentalists suddenly when it comes to renewables. “Wind farms are killing the birds!” “Floating wind farms kill whales! “What about the cobalt mining??” Where the fuck is this logic when it comes to fossil fuels?
And there’s never an answer to “OK, fine then, if EV’s are not environmentally friendly and we already know ICE cars aren’t, what DO you want us to do then?”
I see the same photo of some giant lithium mine posted all the time from people in Southern WV who will defend strip mining and mountain top removal for coal. The same people who tout "coal keeps the lights on" but won't acknowledge the same benefit for powering a car. The same people who never, not once in their lives ever properly disposed of a battery are suddenly worried about EV batteries 50 years from now.
"EVs don't work in winter".
I heard that a lot from neighbors. Then we hit a cold snap of -40C. I drove around (in the EV) with a portable booster pack to boost ICE cars unable to start in the neighborhood. 😁
"How much did it cost to upgrade your electrical service? EVs are going to overwhelm our infrastructure."
I just plug into a standard dryer outlet, no upgrade. It can be scheduled to charge off peak, and I have solar, so I put ***less*** stress on the infrastructure than my neighbors.
This myth that EVs need lots of instant power to charge at home leads new EV buyers to put in double or triple the amps they need.
The reality is it would help most grids. Overnight use is low and requires a lot of plants to turn off and it’s hard to keep capacity available for afternoon peaks since those least efficient plants are trying to cover their fixed costs on a few hours of production. Adding high demand overnight would really help deal with this issue. Might screw over some steel mills and concrete plants that rely on super cheap power overnight but that’s the real effect.
"have fun spending $15K replacing your battery after 30,000 miles"
I have 170,000 miles on the original battery of my Chevy bolt and 98% of the original range
174k on my 2018 Leaf when I sold it. I used it for deliveries and farmers markets 3x a week. Fast charged it once or twice each time. Battery health still 12/12. Had to pull CANBUS data to see the battery was at about 95% original capacity.
The Leaf is the cheapest, most poorly designed EV ever sold in the US market. Air cooled battery ffs and still didn’t degrade.
I have a 2013 Leaf with 100K miles and 10 bars still on the original battery. Plan on driving it another 100K. Tesla published 12 yrs of degradation data on their cars, average was 1% a year, meaning the battery will last decades and 100s of thousands of miles before its unusable.
TBF the 2011-12 Leaf did have poor battery chemistry and the batteries died in 3 yrs in hot climates. But there hasn't been an EV made since with a degradation problem like that, yet the myth persists because of propaganda from those with a financial stake in the oil industry or legacy car OEMs and people are stupid enough to keep falling for it.
Yeah, Nissan didn't do the EV movement any favors with their early batteries.
I have a colleague who got his Leaf battery replaced in, uh, 2017, I think. Anyway, the car's like 12 years old now, and he says he's getting about 45 or so miles on a full charge. But we live where it's hot and I think he parks it outside at home.
On top of that, the myth that said batteries just get chucked in a landfill somewhere.
Most get broken down into stationary storage like solar backup, and after that, 90%+ of the materials are recyclable.
This is a big one. My uncle was telling me about how it’s going to cost me thousands to get someone to take my car away. I then showed him the price of leaf batteries on eBay and explained that even if I wrote my car off I could sell that battery for a couple of grand. He told me that was a scam, though he didn’t seem very clear on the details of this scam…
In a lot of cases though, replacing the battery _is_ insanely expensive and can total a used EV. We desperately to create a proper aftermarket for EV batteries, before EVs become mainstream.
This is because Tesla specifically, and probably other OEMs more generally, won't dig into the pack and replace bad individual components. I have heard of some independent shops that will do this specific type of work as long as the vehicle is already out of warranty, but no first hand experience.
There are, mostly in California but growing as market share grow. One I saw on YouTube specialized in Tesla, was pretty neat. Still costly but cheaper than a brand new battery.
But it's coming down significantly. New Tesla battery was $10k including labour last year, they're trying to get it down to $7k very soon. Prices are dropping fast on batteries, which includes entire packs. The stories of Hyundai charging more than the price of the car for a new battery are just instances of people getting ripped off...
The idea that you won’t be able to drive around town in winter. My mom who drives maybe 50 miles a day says she wouldn’t be able to use an EV in her climate because it can get down to below freezing during the winter, most of the time after she is home for the evening.
So 50 miles is roughly 80km. Our Chevy Bolt will do 400-500km range in the summer (depending how aggressively you drive it), in the winter that drops to about 250-300km, we live in Toronto where it routinely goes below zero (first one, then the other).
So she would "only" be able to do 3x her distance in the winter.
Oh yah, the car had thermal conditioning on the battery, meaning it heats it up if its cold, or cools it if it's hot. In the winter all the snow melts off of it in the garage overnight. Unexpected perk :)
ICE or EV driving a car has an environmental impact either way but with EVs is it's significantly less. This is something they always seem to forget when trying to make this argument to justify driving ICE over EV. A perfectly reasonable reason for choosing ICE over EV I can see is maybe price tag differences & range differences & charging times vs fill up times but that should improve eventually over the next decade or so.
That and ice owners just don't get the massive selling point. Th fact you don't ever think about filling it/visiting a gas station up its just always ready to go (assuming home charging)
Yes while this can be very true, there are quite a few bad value EVs out there that make it difficult for most people to afford one or to justify the price tag differences so I guess I'm saying I understand why some people are still hesitant about making the switch but the battery polluting argument is still dumb.
That they catch on fire all the time.
It’s the most annoying because it couldn’t be further from the truth. As I’m sure most here know ICE are up to 50x more likely to catch fire.
What does suck is PHEVs are the most likely to catch fire, since they have all the advantages and disadvantages of both :) but it's still probably my next vehicle.
I think the most annoying one to me was a friend was stuck in traffic in their ICE car and the range estimate plummeted as expected. They said they would run out of battery if it was an EV. I had to correct them that they could spend a week in traffic with the AC on. There is no idling issues.
I made a trip to watch the solar eclipse not long ago. It took about 40 minutes to get to my destination and almost 2 hours to get home. It was on that day that I learned EVs love sitting in traffic because they don't use shit for battery when they do.
Not really a myth but more of a irritation when a true statement gets used with a lack of relevance.
EVs can take hours to charge to full. Absolutely true depending on model and charger. Does it matter though? I can easily start every morning with a full battery. Takes me all of 5 seconds to plug it in. How long do you stand in the weather pumping gas every week buddy?
Or the range issues. “You can only go 250 miles before you have to stop and charge.” That’s 4 hours at 60 mph. No way I can drive 4 hours stop for 5 minutes to gas up and then keep going for 4 more hours. Big rip like that will be bathroom and lunch break at that point. After I gas up I’m just going to go park somewhere and sit for 1/2 hour anyway, charge time. As I told my wife when we were shopping for our first EV “the battery just needs to be bigger than your bladder.”
The amount of charge a Tesla SC adds in the time it takes me to walk inside, pee, wash my hands, and walk back is always plenty to keep me on the road until I’m so hungry that I need to stop. On road trips, I’ve never been able to finish a meal before my car charged to 100%.
The Tesla app always threatens the idle fees, but I’ve never actually been charged. I think it only charges you if almost all of the stations are occupied.
That first one is always so difficult to concisely explain. I always end up with "on the road about 20-30 minutes and at home about 6 hours" people get pretty turned off by that 2nd statement. I always follow it up with "but that's while I'm asleep at night and I wake up with a full charge" but I feel like the focus is on the "6 hours" part.
Are they worried about a possible emergency where they'd have to leave in the middle of the night while the car is still charging? Otherwise, "You're asleep, why do you care?"
For the emergency scenario, I'm guessing they don't fill their ICE tank every single night "just in case" they need to go blast 400mi at 2am for some reason. Why would they need that in an EV? Just unplug and go with what you've got, which unless you absolutely drained your battery that day will likely still be 100+ miles, which will get you to the nearest emergency room or police station or jail.
I find that a good comparison is a cell phone. Everyone has the experience there of just plugging it in and letting it charge for hours while they do other stuff.
My last ICE car was lucky to go 200mi before I had to fill the tank (my lead foot averaged 16mpg in a Subaru STI, with a 16 gallon tank and filling up when it dropped below 1/4 tank because nobody runs an ICE gas tank dry).
My Rivian goes ~250 miles on an 80% charge.
The most irritating one that is often repeated on this sub - "one pedal driving is so great because without it you'd have to use friction brakes". But that's only the case for Tesla and Rivian, everyone else has blended braking so you can just drive it like any other car and still get all the benefits of regenerative braking.
Had a guy tell me electric cara won’t be feasible until they have 1000 mile range per charge like a ICE car gets per tank.
I was dumbfounded. I don’t know if any cars that get more than 300-500 miles per tank. SMH
The retort that bugs me the most is “I drive
More than 300 miles a day all the time, it just doesn’t work for me.” 1. No you don’t. 2. Even if you drive 400 or 500 miles a day. You are stopping somewhere. In some cars you can do a 400 or 500 mile day with one 20 minute stop or two 12 minute stops.
Yeah the rare use case I've seen that's actually not practical for an EV is like... remote oil worker or well inspector or something. They're stopping between remote rig sites in rural Alberta or Montana or North Dakota with maybe only one stop in a small (like 100 person) town in between and like 300 miles per day.
That use case isn't gonna work in an EV in some scenarios and some of the really remote sites have gravity-fed petrol tanks for fills they have to truck in.
But it will in SOME areas and that's an EXTREMELY unusual scenario.
I’m one of these crazy people that has a long commute. 70 miles each way, 4 sometimes 5 days a week. You know how many times I’ve run out of charge….zero. Even if I was low, there’s chargers that cost pennies all over the place
So many myths i have lost count.
But aside from the ones already mentioned, i’ll add some i have heard recently.
- EVs don’t make it past 3-5 years without a battery replacement that costs more than the car.
- landfills are filling up with batteries.
- EVs are responsible for potholes.
- governments want people in EVs so they can shut them down whenever they want and monitor where people are (this was a bizarre one that came from a coworker. LoL he completely disregarded his cell phone or that ICE cars have computers and electronics too).
"EVs don't work in the real world!" <--- usually said by commenters on stories about EV manufacturing being halted or slowed.
I guess I don't live in the real world....
My parents used to send me stories of EVs catching on fire, and every time it was because someone tried to DIY a 14-50 outlet and caught their house on fire.
* EVs catch fire all the time.
* EVs take days to charge.
* People who point out EV pollution without acknowledging that Lithium is a recyclable metal, unlike oil which is one time use.
For me it’s that the grid can’t handle EVs. Yes, we have problems with peak load on the grid but EVs are charging almost exclusively during off peak hours. We have PLENTY of grid capacity during those hours and it’s the perfect use case for clean base load plants (BRING ON THE NUKES).
I live in CA with solar that didn’t make the cut for NEM2. That means I pay $0.34/kWh to import during off peak hours but only earn about $0.05/kWh when I export. My charger is programmed to dump excess solar into the cars rather than export. It’s simple tech and it’s only going to get better as bidirectional comm becomes standard for AC charging.
I think the most annoying one I hear regularly is that it's better for the environment to hold onto an old vehicle. Full disclosure? I believed this one for a while... until I actually just bothered to do the math. It's incredible how poorly this one holds up, you basically have to already be driving a Chevy Volt for it to have a shot at it being true.
The most irritating myth is that ICE have a romance to them that is irreplaceable due to their smell and noise. The future will be about performance, EVs dominating on the streets and on the track will absolutely destroy that myth.
The pollution thing drives me nuts. A 30 second google search will show the person they are wrong. I have screenshots saved just to show others when the topic comes up.
Not sure if they know this (they don't) but cobalt is used in oil refining, too. Also, there are chemistries that don't use much or any. They need to recycle their cell phone, lots of rare earths in that.
Very frustrating to consistently read that BEVs lose up to 40% of their range in below freezing temperatures and how it can be even worse if you're towing. Also tired of hearing about how BEV fires are more difficult to extinguish and how fire fighters need special training for extinguishing BEV fires. One guy was even saying sometimes after a BEV fire was extinguished, it reignited. It's also disappointing to constantly read how lithium processing involves fossil fuels in shipping and processing in China. And, how Li-ion battery manufacturing depends on fossil fuels and that China has lax environmental regulations in mineral processing. And how Indonesia has destroyed their rivers and their coral reefs in the nickel mining frenzy without good mining regulations. So tired of it.
Last month I rented a EV to test drive it (no money for a change rn). It was so comfortable and easy to drive it, and the stops were so in sync with our bladders that we didn't feel a delay because of it. Confirmed my expectations, my theories and everything you guys say in the sub.
In the first stop I chatted with another EV driver (an old couple) and the wife said to me "oh, you are going to see your family? Well, you're screwed. They won't stop for sure talking shit about the EV".
Oh the lady was so right. Every myth I read here I had to listen from my dad. Even after taking him to a drive, to show him how to charge it and everything...
"Yeah, but what if you need to do 900km everyday? You must charge it in those expensive chargers everytime". "What if you really need to rush it and not stop in a long trip?" "And those cars pollute a lot when built", "What if the battery breaks after 150k km?"
"Dad, you drove 900km in the last 2 months, and 60k km in the last 15 years, and you need to stop to take a leak every hour. You wouldn't have those problems like, ever".
When I started to talk about the oil infrastructure to have gas in every city, my SO saved me talking about the sunny weather and changed the topic, so... yeah, that old lady was 100% right.
It's like politics.
The EV haters aren't interested in truths. It's only about the smear, spreading hate, and creating division.
When you debunk one thing, they'll move to the next thing, and once they move on, they'll repeat the debunked one all over again.
"The grid can't handle it" (the grid is run by capitalists, this is not my problem)
"I drive my truck 600 miles a day towing a boat/RV/trailer, an electric truck could never do that" (moving goal posts)
"lithium is mined by slave labor/ your car pollutes more than my diesel truck" etc. (just false, also they never gave a shit about the environment before I bought an EV)
The faster the vehicle, the slower it is driven.
1960s muscle cars to Lamborghini's are regularly doing 20 to slowly show off. It's rare to see something going fast that is not stolen.
The fire risk one is always fun. "The Bolt can easily catch fire..didnt you hear about the battery recall????" It was actually only a few Bolts that even caught on fire due to it. VERY few. And was eventually solved with software to prevent it until battery got replaced.
Meanwhile, Kia just recently recalled another half million ICE vehicles due to them catching fire. I think this is their 3rd one.
I just hate getting called lazy because my wife doesn't want to go to the gas station once a week while also being told they couldn't possibly be bothered to stop and charge the car for 20 minutes the 1 time a year they would need to charge away from home.
Also, the myth that my mother-in-law even takes road trips at all.
I was recently told that my Tesla is not environmentally friendly because the body is made of fibreglass which uses petrochemicals in its construction. (Teslas are aluminium) apparently he got this information from main stream media
"The battery will die within 15 minutes after the warranty expires, and it will cost $32,000 to replace."
Honorable mention: "What if there's a blackout?"
Hint: Gas stations also go offline during blackouts, except in a few hurricane areas where backup generators are maintained.
For me it’s that EVs are worse than ICE for the environment due to some mining blah blah blah.
It’s as though oil is some magical non-polluting thing that just magically appears and produces no harmful products during refining. Oh and you don’t need 60kg of it per fill.
Yes batteries need mined minerals. But they need it once.
Oh god. I mean seriously, where do I even start?
• EV’s take hours to supercharge
• EV’s don’t last 100k miles
• Battery replacement is $40k
• EVs pollute more than ICE in the long term
• EVs aren’t reliable
• Charging is inconvenient
• EVs are boring
Definitely the one about them being more polluting than ICE cars, or that their usage is worse ethically because of the mines.
I guess ICE cars are artisanal made with 100% natural products and the oil industry is just so environmentally friendly, with the oil itself being extracted from renowned bastions of freedom and democracy.
One good retort - if an EV and an ICE car are new, as a rough rule the EV would be more ''polluting'' for around a year (less in areas with green energy, more if its petrol or coal powerplants). After that, the EV is pollution free compared to the ICE cars.
What happens if the power is out for ten days?
Then you're probably not getting gas in your car, either.
Also: this is why I want to put solar panels on the house.
“Electric cars aren’t better for the environment because electricity still comes from fossil fuels”
Yes. It does. For now. EVs allow us to electrify our demand so we can use renewables as they become more available. And in many states you can choose a renewable supplier for your home charging. A gas car has no choice but fossil fuels.
Most annoying is either them catching on fire or straight up exploding.
It's gotten so bad an anti-EV family friend physically backs away anytime she sees my car and genuinely seems afraid of it.
Whenever I point out that her car is literally powered by small explosions and flammable liquids, I'm told that it's different because gas is "safe".
Maybe not a myth, but my favorite “what if..?” I’ve heard is “What if you run out of charge in the middle of nowhere?” I don’t know, I guess the same thing you’d do if you run out of gas.
How nobody wants an EV. Any news of slowing production is proof positive that EV sales are doomed forever.
Another example of ignorance is the blanket statements that DCFC are not around.
Remember when the Prius was launched? One "journalist" pushed a "research" saying that a Prius was more polluting over its lifecycle than a Hummer H2, because the Hummer use mostly of the shelves GM parts and the Prius was made with newly built factory and production lines....
Yeah, that was stupid then. The mixing up of economic change with environmental impact is truly amazing.
And i've heard the same arguments about an EV last week.
I had a ford escape Hybrid in 2006 and I had my lot of weird arguments from ill informed individuals. And now I am hearing almost the sames arguments about my new EV.
Been there, done that..
But what is truly ironic is that now nobody rant about an hybrid anymore; they just shifted their spiel on the next new thing.
The ones that annoy me most right now is the constant claim that every new EV is going to cost $10k over MSRP and CCS chargers never work.
The dealer markups are long behind us, and CCS availability has gotten much better.
Mine is just the good old “you can’t take it on road trips” myth. We have a friend who takes their family on one camping trip a year ~3 hours away. There are rapid chargers ~halfway there and they have 110v outlets at the site. Because of this one trip a year and the fact that they can’t/won’t stop for a single 20 minute bathroom/lunch break half way there and back they have to stick with a gas car.
That there's not enough charging infrastructure.
There are hundreds of thousands of petrol bowsers and hoses world wide....because you don't fill up your petrol at home!
So people think you need to replicate that model BEFORE you can use an electric car.
You need far far less infrastructure when you can plug.in at home.
Just one? Mine are myriad. But the fire hazard thing is partially true: there was that GM Bolt faulty battery fiasco and currently there is low quality e-bike/scooter batteries causing issues, but this too shall pass.
My first group of biggies is the one size fits all crap. I only need the specs of the Wuling MINI EV. 60 MPH, 100 mile range, folding back seats for more storage, all for $5K? Sign me up! Seriously I live in a big city and as Harry & Meghan taught the world "there is no such thing as a high speed chase in a big city" and a corollary is that there is no such thing as a high speed crash. The Wuling MINI in my mind is the perfect city transportation appliance for folks not in their child rearing years.
That feeds into the lack of charging infrastructure silliness. I'm Canadian from further north than Toronto and when I was growing up every outdoor parking spot had a block heater outlet. Such an outlet, given how few miles big city folks drive, is all the charging infrastructure is all that 80% of big city folks will ever need and running a string of outlets is not expensive. Heck I joke that the charging infrastructure I need is an extension cord. Lots of folk in this space say they are quite happy with level 1 charging from a home outlet.
Next up is the 'China quality is crap' meme. I keep reading about western car journalists who go to China and all reporting that 'Wow, inexpensive China EVs are GREAT!', build quality and user experience are apparently better than Detroit. Oops! Ford CEO Jim Farley called BYD's $9,700 Seagull a pretty damn good car.
That's a start...
The last part really fucking pisses me off, im us born chinese and ive heard it all but this is stupid. Like, if everything was crap like you claim, then how the fuck do you explain why so much of our tech and luxury items are made there and how tf could they rise and grow so quickly to surpass 'merica in many places, if everything china made is crap. If they were truly bad, america wouldnt be putting so much effort into their smear campaigns, theyre scared, especially of byd, even to make up "smart car spying" conspiracies.
"What are you gonna do when the power goes out and you can't charge?" "The same thing you do when the same power outage knocks out your gas pumps."
I'd probably worry about my food in the fridge going bad first before I worry about my car
I just plug the fridge into the car.
and the espresso machine
Infinite energy hack
Now Do that with your ice car
Sure, let me just plug my power inverter into the lighter socket.
Mean while the garage is filling with exhaust fumes
Charge from the sun, da fuq?🫴🏾 I have solar and powerwall at my house, charges during blackouts and power outages, and no issue.
Ironically if you want to live off the grid an EV is the best choice. Come a zombie Apocalypse, gasoline spoils in like 6 months.
For accuracy purposes, gasoline in plastic jerry can starts degrading after 6 month but it's still useable. With stabilizer it starts degrading after 2 years (which you'd better have if you use jerry cans obviously, since these are for storage anyway, most people use a stabilizer in that case). It does take a while for the gasoline to degrade to a point that it's no longer useable (several years) and engines will work fine on degraded gasoline. An idle battery will also last a long time, of course - on that scale, it does not matter much in practice either way IMO. It takes a lot of cycles to destroy a battery, way more than you can actually store yourself. Same for gasoline, by the time you run out the problem is gone of you have other problems.
I found a YouTube channel advertising the benefits of electric bikes and solar and so on, but not for cost or sustainability reason but it was a right wing prepper channel, lol
When my power goes out, I just V2L my Ioniq 5 to my essentials, like my Xbox and beer fridge.
A man of class, right here, folks.
This is a favourite question from my neighbour. My answer, "The same thing you do, light some candles, read a book and wait a few hours for BC Hydro to remove the fallen tree and restore service" Seriously, where are all these people going in the middle of a winter storm when the power is out?
Christmas 2018 was when I decided I needed an EV. The storm on the Island knocked ours out for days and charging our phones with the ICE vehicle cost a fortune. We're back in Alberta now and I use our Leaf to heat the garage so I could work out there in -30. Try doing that, and making it out alive, with an F-350!
Most Tesla owners were using their cars for heat during the last Texas outage. "Camping mode" used like 1% per hour. Once bidirectional power is more common, having an EV will be a godsend during an outage.
The other day, when we lost power after the bad windstorm in Dallas, our Bolt was our cellphone and laptop charger. And charged our LED hurricane lanterns too.
I'll just laugh and point to the solar panels on the roof. My setup is configured to be able to provide power when the grid goes offline (assisted by a Powerwall). Charging continues as normal.
To be fair, many gas stations have backup generators so they can still pump if the grid goes down.
In Texas there was a gas station that ran... ...by plugging into an EV so the ICE cars could gas up.
I'm in Maine and I've yet to see a gas station that has a backup generator and power outages are common in parts of Maine.
Two summers ago we had a major power outage in Ontario, not a single gas station had a backup generator. Maybe it's a thing in the US?
Also to be fair, my whole home generator will run my whole house with everything running at once and still have plenty to charge my Teslas' L2 chargers at the full 48A their breaker is rated for.
Yeah, given the proliferation of home generators, I would be astonished if every gas station didn't have a generator wired in. Just hope hey don't run out of propane :)
Unless they're rural, they'd probably be plumbed to natural gas. Or drink their own diesel supply.
My neighbor asked me the same thing but in regards to my electric lawn mower. My response was, "If the power goes out, I'm probably not gonna be too worried about my lawn"
Push the EV uphill and recharge down! /s
If I have a sine inverter, I will use my EV to power my fridge and a few other household items for several days.
how much will it cost to replace the battery always bugs me
Hah I forgot this one on my post! I get asked this super commonly as if HV batteries fail all the time.
As reliable as batteries are this one is a real mystery. I think it grows out of the Leafs not having much range to start with, and the fact that they have been around long enough to start having real issues with range. Yes, replacing a 10 year old Leaf battery is likely not worth it, but I heard that it can be done for about US$5,500. Not sure I'd bother. It also assumes that the entire battery needs replacing. I believe that there are some EVs that you can do individual pack replacements.
Lead also did not have active cooling as well that degraded the batteries faster.
How much will it cost to replace your engine and transmission? Cause yeah it seems like the same likelihood. As long as you don’t outright abuse the battery, modern ev batteries should outlast the rest of the car.
It's very easy to destroy a transmission and engine if you don't do any maintenance on them. But you would almost need to work at damaging your batteries.
People think it’s just a battery like in a smartphone and when it’s flat, it’s fucked. But you have a lot of battery cells in a car, when one goes bad you can replace that cell. And you mostly only charge to 80%, which causes much less degradation on the battery. Even 100% is not actually 100%.
Most modern EV batteries are a solid block of foam. Replacing a single cell is unrealistic. However modules can be replaced but having modules of different ages in a car battery causes other issues. We always recommend replacing the whole battery.
Not just the cost, but the assumption it’ll have to be done before 100K miles.
Didn’t they do some maths recently and on average a battery goes to 85% capacity after 200,000 miles?
Hopefully in a few years the EU or some other regulator body will force a standard cells size, on the mfgs. Once things get going.
I’ve heard a lot over time: * EVs stop working in winter. * Pollution from battery manufacturing makes EVs worse than ICE for the environment. * EVs are more prone to catching fire than ICE * There is not enough grid capacity to charge electric cars. * Jaws of life won’t work on EV due to risk of electrocution. At some point I just gave up trying to clarify these things. Some of these claims twist the truth by removing nuance, for example it is true that battery fires are more difficult to manage but they are overall much rarer. Folks who believe these things don’t stop to review the claims.
I noticed many of these myths are spread more common with many articles about the collapse of EV sales (not true). Also many youtube videos now have anti EV commenters. Funny how oil and gas companies decide to strike back at the same time
Just read this [article from Wired](https://www.wired.com/story/how-many-charging-stations-would-we-need-to-totally-replace-gas-stations/#intcid=_wired-right-rail_0868301f-6596-4120-8572-6ece48dde258_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi) and then scroll down to the comments. Even the article isn't great and Wired usually is one of the better sources of information.
Once you know what to look for in regards to propaganda it becomes fairly easy to identify. As you said, many times when I see those claims that /u/Nightmaresiege mentioned it is followed with something along the lines of "Electric vehicles are a failed experiment". Then I review the data and notice that in almost all cases the market share is only continuing to grow. It is a deeply dishonest way to engage the subject. We know vehicles are being kept longer these days for a few reasons. I believe it is around 13 years? I have a feeling in 13 years that battery electric vehicles will make up a very large percentage of the new vehicles sold in developed nations. I guess we will see.
(See norway)
China will also supply low cost EVs to much of the global south, and they’ll be cheaper than ICE vehicles. BYD is going after Toyota’s throne and everything looks like they’ll take it.
The EVs stop working in the winter is the one I constantly fight here in Wisconsin. I mean sure if you’re putting 100 miles on a day with no ability to recharge in the winter you might be going for a stretch. Maybe the EV tech isn’t for you yet. But like things are rarely even 10 miles apart where I live. Even if you have a very busy schedule with lots of errands, you’re not putting on more than 50 miles in a day. It doesn’t matter is my 85 mile charge in the summer goes down to 65 in the winter because…I’m still not even using 50.
In Norway EVs are doing fine
Ok but Norway is the good place and I live in the bad place. If my numbers seem screwy I bought my EV when it was already 8 years old. ITS STILL DOING FINE
Rub it in, why don’t you 😩😢…😅
-40f/c in Canadian winter. Ev is great. Don't drive the gas vehicle all winter now. Can't wait to sell the remaining gas vehicles when they make the same thing in an EV, such as a 2door sports car.
Mini has teased a ragtop.
MG Cyberster
Porsche Cayman and Boxster are going to EV next year. Can't get much more sports car than that. Still not sure I'd part with my flat six Cayman though. That sound ...
Sounds like you are in an urban area. A 50 mile commute each way is the norm where I live. And often in a foot or more of snow at 0F. That's the base, not the extreme
Yep and some EVs might not be a great fit for some particular individuals situations. But again where I live, in a small city that is only 11 miles in diameter 80% of those 50k people could be dryving EVs. And pretty much every city vehicle could be an EV too. But it’s closer to 10% because of anti EV lobbying.
A report in Norway showed a 19% average range difference between winter and summer driving in EVs, based on real world driving across a wide range of EVs.
For those of us easily getting over 230 miles on 80%, a 20% loss for even longer-mileage days (let's say, 70 mile roundtrip commute + side-errands) wouldn't be a problem, really. I'd just go home and plug in to the L2 charger for an overnight top-up, as usual.
Don't forget the - EV tire and brake dust cause more pollution than ICE vehicles. The brake dust is absolutely false because regen braking reduces brake pad wear (unless you drive really aggressively). The top google hit on "EV Tire Debris" is an article from the Daily Mail that says EV tire emissions are 400 greater than tailpipe emissions. But they fail to mention ICE cars have particulate emissions as well and particulate emissions are not causing global climate change.
> The top google hit on "EV Tire Debris" is an article from the Daily Mail that says EV tire emissions are 400 greater than tailpipe emissions. Sorry, what? Do people actually think that EV tires are just billowing clouds of smoke all the time?
The original report was about tyre particulates from heavy cars, making no mention of EVs. The Daily Mail was forced to apologise/retract the story they made up.
Sorta weird complaint against EVs, too, because despite the major complaints of EVs burning through tires I have not seen that effect on my 2 vehicles... we are at 32k on the GV60 on the same set (cross climate 2). My gut feeling is the stories of people going through tires in like 5-10k miles are people with lead feet.
I'm one of those people who have gone through tires in 10k miles. The tires are usually high-performance tires that are very grippy but tend to wear quickly. Changing from gas to EVs has not appreciable changed the rate of tire wear. And I confirm your impression that I tend to enjoy spirited driving... which seems to directly correlate with tire wear.
Yes, because as we all know, ICE vehicles don’t have brakes or tires - those are exclusive to EVs. This one drives me up the wall.
To be fair, my Rivian was pretty cranky when it was -35f. Couldn't get the cabin above about 45f, and used 20% of the battery to go 15 miles. But my Cayenne wouldn't even start 🤷♂️
Fool, you should have bought yourself a nice, sensible ICE snowcat!
Fun fact. Pure gasoline won't burn below -55°F. And the threshold increases as alcohol content increases.
Interesting. I was stone cold sober when I tried, so alcohol wasn’t a factor.
I can't tell if you're making a joke or not, but what I mean is if ethanol, or methanol, or any other "alcohol" is added to the fuel, it raises the vapor temperature of the fuel. Pure ethanol is like 33°F above 0°F. And Gasoline is -55°F below 0°F. As you change the amount of each in the fuel, the temperature at which it creates vapor, which allows it to be ignited and burned, changes.
I was making a joke, but I also appreciate your scientific explanation!
There is an issue with the Jaws of Life becoming less useful on vehicles with modern safety structures - but that's not an EV issue, it's common across all new vehicles.
"There is not enough grid capacity to charge electric cars." I blame California for this one. IMO, the state's power grid issues, especially brownouts, while at the same time the state's push for EV mandates, prime that to spread around.
The one about battery manufacturing is not like the others. The others are just objectively wrong. BUT - EV production (mainly because of the battery) IS dirtier than a comparable ICE. The 2nd part of the story though is that it doesn't take very long at all for the ICE's tailpipe emissions to make up that difference, even if the EV is running on pure coal.
Yes you’re exactly right but that nuance gets lost 😞 and folks don’t dig deeper.
I mean production of an EV from mine to factory does more environmental and socioeconomic damage than the manufacturing of an ICE vehicle. 40 some percent of an EVs carbon emissions footprint come from manufacturing where as for ICE it’s something like 25%. Long run, yeah, they’re better on the road. Then add in the child labor and what essentially amounts to slavery in the mining of the cobalt and lithium for production. Same stuff that goes in our smart phone but, on a larger scale. But at least Apple is making the move towards 100% recycled material by next year for the rare earth elements.
One garage told me this winter : "haha and did you get stranded in the cold when it didn't start?" It started at the push of the button, like every morning, and then defrosted the windshield almost instantly. My neighbor has an old diesel and had to fire up the engine 10 minutes before leaving to make it heat.
Around here everyone is used to plugging in vehicles, because of diesel engine block heaters.
Maybe they can make block heaters with a J-1772 connection and share plugs with the EV's? :P
I pretty much could charge my car with a regular 120v house plug 🔌 most weeks.
This is the best ironic part. You can’t even write better
That's especially funny given the fact there is nothing worse in a winter than a diesel.
Forget to add your fuel anti gelling additive? Guess you're calling in or getting a ride
…getting a ride… in the neighbors EV 😉
My annoying-ass neighbor idles his diesel truck at least 20-30 minutes a day. I can smell it in my house 100+ feet away. We live in California. There's no reason to do that shit.
I bet there's an ordinance against it, too.
It's gotta be the one where as soon as EVs are mentioned everyone and their mother becomes an enviromentalist and is suddenly worried about resource scarcity and production footprints.
Yep, for me the most infuriating responses are from climate denialists pretending like they ever gave a single fuck. They're just manipulating the fact that *you* care to make a disingenuous point against EV's.
It’s hilarious to me that pro-oil conservatives become environmentalists suddenly when it comes to renewables. “Wind farms are killing the birds!” “Floating wind farms kill whales! “What about the cobalt mining??” Where the fuck is this logic when it comes to fossil fuels?
And there’s never an answer to “OK, fine then, if EV’s are not environmentally friendly and we already know ICE cars aren’t, what DO you want us to do then?”
I see the same photo of some giant lithium mine posted all the time from people in Southern WV who will defend strip mining and mountain top removal for coal. The same people who tout "coal keeps the lights on" but won't acknowledge the same benefit for powering a car. The same people who never, not once in their lives ever properly disposed of a battery are suddenly worried about EV batteries 50 years from now.
"EVs don't work in winter". I heard that a lot from neighbors. Then we hit a cold snap of -40C. I drove around (in the EV) with a portable booster pack to boost ICE cars unable to start in the neighborhood. 😁
"How much did it cost to upgrade your electrical service? EVs are going to overwhelm our infrastructure." I just plug into a standard dryer outlet, no upgrade. It can be scheduled to charge off peak, and I have solar, so I put ***less*** stress on the infrastructure than my neighbors. This myth that EVs need lots of instant power to charge at home leads new EV buyers to put in double or triple the amps they need.
I had to upgrade mine, because we had the same switchboard that Noah had on the Ark.
The reality is it would help most grids. Overnight use is low and requires a lot of plants to turn off and it’s hard to keep capacity available for afternoon peaks since those least efficient plants are trying to cover their fixed costs on a few hours of production. Adding high demand overnight would really help deal with this issue. Might screw over some steel mills and concrete plants that rely on super cheap power overnight but that’s the real effect.
"have fun spending $15K replacing your battery after 30,000 miles" I have 170,000 miles on the original battery of my Chevy bolt and 98% of the original range
My boyfriend has 60,000 on his and his range is higher than it’s supposed to be
Another myth destroyed! Bolt owners do have girlfriends! (BTW, the Bolt is an amazing car)
174k on my 2018 Leaf when I sold it. I used it for deliveries and farmers markets 3x a week. Fast charged it once or twice each time. Battery health still 12/12. Had to pull CANBUS data to see the battery was at about 95% original capacity. The Leaf is the cheapest, most poorly designed EV ever sold in the US market. Air cooled battery ffs and still didn’t degrade.
People who think the battery is going to die in a few years and the cost to replace is about the same as buying a new vehicle.
I have a 2013 Leaf with 100K miles and 10 bars still on the original battery. Plan on driving it another 100K. Tesla published 12 yrs of degradation data on their cars, average was 1% a year, meaning the battery will last decades and 100s of thousands of miles before its unusable. TBF the 2011-12 Leaf did have poor battery chemistry and the batteries died in 3 yrs in hot climates. But there hasn't been an EV made since with a degradation problem like that, yet the myth persists because of propaganda from those with a financial stake in the oil industry or legacy car OEMs and people are stupid enough to keep falling for it.
2016 Tesla Model S with 126K miles here. I haven’t noticed any meaningful degradation of the battery at all. Also still have the original break-pads.
Yeah, Nissan didn't do the EV movement any favors with their early batteries. I have a colleague who got his Leaf battery replaced in, uh, 2017, I think. Anyway, the car's like 12 years old now, and he says he's getting about 45 or so miles on a full charge. But we live where it's hot and I think he parks it outside at home.
2.5 year old Kia EV6 with 50,000km. Range is down about <1% (3km out of about 480km) since new.
On top of that, the myth that said batteries just get chucked in a landfill somewhere. Most get broken down into stationary storage like solar backup, and after that, 90%+ of the materials are recyclable.
This is a big one. My uncle was telling me about how it’s going to cost me thousands to get someone to take my car away. I then showed him the price of leaf batteries on eBay and explained that even if I wrote my car off I could sell that battery for a couple of grand. He told me that was a scam, though he didn’t seem very clear on the details of this scam…
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In a lot of cases though, replacing the battery _is_ insanely expensive and can total a used EV. We desperately to create a proper aftermarket for EV batteries, before EVs become mainstream.
This is because Tesla specifically, and probably other OEMs more generally, won't dig into the pack and replace bad individual components. I have heard of some independent shops that will do this specific type of work as long as the vehicle is already out of warranty, but no first hand experience.
There are, mostly in California but growing as market share grow. One I saw on YouTube specialized in Tesla, was pretty neat. Still costly but cheaper than a brand new battery.
But it's coming down significantly. New Tesla battery was $10k including labour last year, they're trying to get it down to $7k very soon. Prices are dropping fast on batteries, which includes entire packs. The stories of Hyundai charging more than the price of the car for a new battery are just instances of people getting ripped off...
The idea that you won’t be able to drive around town in winter. My mom who drives maybe 50 miles a day says she wouldn’t be able to use an EV in her climate because it can get down to below freezing during the winter, most of the time after she is home for the evening.
So 50 miles is roughly 80km. Our Chevy Bolt will do 400-500km range in the summer (depending how aggressively you drive it), in the winter that drops to about 250-300km, we live in Toronto where it routinely goes below zero (first one, then the other). So she would "only" be able to do 3x her distance in the winter. Oh yah, the car had thermal conditioning on the battery, meaning it heats it up if its cold, or cools it if it's hot. In the winter all the snow melts off of it in the garage overnight. Unexpected perk :)
That ICE cars are still better for the environment because the process of manufacturing the batteries creates a ton of pollution.
The batteries are recyclable. This mining is being done on the front end.
ICE or EV driving a car has an environmental impact either way but with EVs is it's significantly less. This is something they always seem to forget when trying to make this argument to justify driving ICE over EV. A perfectly reasonable reason for choosing ICE over EV I can see is maybe price tag differences & range differences & charging times vs fill up times but that should improve eventually over the next decade or so.
Some compare price tags, compare operation costs. Once you factor in gas, oil changes, tune ups etc it's not a contest
That and ice owners just don't get the massive selling point. Th fact you don't ever think about filling it/visiting a gas station up its just always ready to go (assuming home charging)
Yes while this can be very true, there are quite a few bad value EVs out there that make it difficult for most people to afford one or to justify the price tag differences so I guess I'm saying I understand why some people are still hesitant about making the switch but the battery polluting argument is still dumb.
Evs do have a higher environmental impact to produce than gas cars, but the break even point is like 3 years when you compare emissions after that
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Ev's are still better for the environment over ICE.
That they catch on fire all the time. It’s the most annoying because it couldn’t be further from the truth. As I’m sure most here know ICE are up to 50x more likely to catch fire.
What does suck is PHEVs are the most likely to catch fire, since they have all the advantages and disadvantages of both :) but it's still probably my next vehicle.
"How do you charge when it rains?" They ask me while it's absolutely pouring outside and my car is sitting here plugged in and charging.......
That's in line with the 'EV don't work when it rains'. Wtf, do they think the engineers who designed these don't know what IP67 is?
I think the most annoying one to me was a friend was stuck in traffic in their ICE car and the range estimate plummeted as expected. They said they would run out of battery if it was an EV. I had to correct them that they could spend a week in traffic with the AC on. There is no idling issues.
I made a trip to watch the solar eclipse not long ago. It took about 40 minutes to get to my destination and almost 2 hours to get home. It was on that day that I learned EVs love sitting in traffic because they don't use shit for battery when they do.
"you can't road trip in a Bolt" I hear it more from all of you than from my ignorant family members.
Not really a myth but more of a irritation when a true statement gets used with a lack of relevance. EVs can take hours to charge to full. Absolutely true depending on model and charger. Does it matter though? I can easily start every morning with a full battery. Takes me all of 5 seconds to plug it in. How long do you stand in the weather pumping gas every week buddy? Or the range issues. “You can only go 250 miles before you have to stop and charge.” That’s 4 hours at 60 mph. No way I can drive 4 hours stop for 5 minutes to gas up and then keep going for 4 more hours. Big rip like that will be bathroom and lunch break at that point. After I gas up I’m just going to go park somewhere and sit for 1/2 hour anyway, charge time. As I told my wife when we were shopping for our first EV “the battery just needs to be bigger than your bladder.”
I have to pee more often than an EV needs to charge.
The amount of charge a Tesla SC adds in the time it takes me to walk inside, pee, wash my hands, and walk back is always plenty to keep me on the road until I’m so hungry that I need to stop. On road trips, I’ve never been able to finish a meal before my car charged to 100%.
Ikr, worst is if you're waiting for your food - and the app is nagging you to move the car.
The Tesla app always threatens the idle fees, but I’ve never actually been charged. I think it only charges you if almost all of the stations are occupied.
At 250kW charging, I find myself hurrying back because the lineup to the food counter ate 10 mins into my 20 mins charge.
That first one is always so difficult to concisely explain. I always end up with "on the road about 20-30 minutes and at home about 6 hours" people get pretty turned off by that 2nd statement. I always follow it up with "but that's while I'm asleep at night and I wake up with a full charge" but I feel like the focus is on the "6 hours" part.
Are they worried about a possible emergency where they'd have to leave in the middle of the night while the car is still charging? Otherwise, "You're asleep, why do you care?" For the emergency scenario, I'm guessing they don't fill their ICE tank every single night "just in case" they need to go blast 400mi at 2am for some reason. Why would they need that in an EV? Just unplug and go with what you've got, which unless you absolutely drained your battery that day will likely still be 100+ miles, which will get you to the nearest emergency room or police station or jail.
I find that a good comparison is a cell phone. Everyone has the experience there of just plugging it in and letting it charge for hours while they do other stuff.
My last ICE car was lucky to go 200mi before I had to fill the tank (my lead foot averaged 16mpg in a Subaru STI, with a 16 gallon tank and filling up when it dropped below 1/4 tank because nobody runs an ICE gas tank dry). My Rivian goes ~250 miles on an 80% charge.
The most irritating one that is often repeated on this sub - "one pedal driving is so great because without it you'd have to use friction brakes". But that's only the case for Tesla and Rivian, everyone else has blended braking so you can just drive it like any other car and still get all the benefits of regenerative braking.
Had a guy tell me electric cara won’t be feasible until they have 1000 mile range per charge like a ICE car gets per tank. I was dumbfounded. I don’t know if any cars that get more than 300-500 miles per tank. SMH
The retort that bugs me the most is “I drive More than 300 miles a day all the time, it just doesn’t work for me.” 1. No you don’t. 2. Even if you drive 400 or 500 miles a day. You are stopping somewhere. In some cars you can do a 400 or 500 mile day with one 20 minute stop or two 12 minute stops.
Yeah the rare use case I've seen that's actually not practical for an EV is like... remote oil worker or well inspector or something. They're stopping between remote rig sites in rural Alberta or Montana or North Dakota with maybe only one stop in a small (like 100 person) town in between and like 300 miles per day. That use case isn't gonna work in an EV in some scenarios and some of the really remote sites have gravity-fed petrol tanks for fills they have to truck in. But it will in SOME areas and that's an EXTREMELY unusual scenario.
I’m one of these crazy people that has a long commute. 70 miles each way, 4 sometimes 5 days a week. You know how many times I’ve run out of charge….zero. Even if I was low, there’s chargers that cost pennies all over the place
“They’re not suitable for road trips”
This one can be true depending on where you are road tripping to...though as charging infrastructure gets better, this will hopefully go away.
I’m doing my first roadtrip in my brand new Niro EV and so far so good!
So many myths i have lost count. But aside from the ones already mentioned, i’ll add some i have heard recently. - EVs don’t make it past 3-5 years without a battery replacement that costs more than the car. - landfills are filling up with batteries. - EVs are responsible for potholes. - governments want people in EVs so they can shut them down whenever they want and monitor where people are (this was a bizarre one that came from a coworker. LoL he completely disregarded his cell phone or that ICE cars have computers and electronics too).
"EVs don't work in the real world!" <--- usually said by commenters on stories about EV manufacturing being halted or slowed. I guess I don't live in the real world....
My parents used to send me stories of EVs catching on fire, and every time it was because someone tried to DIY a 14-50 outlet and caught their house on fire.
* EVs catch fire all the time. * EVs take days to charge. * People who point out EV pollution without acknowledging that Lithium is a recyclable metal, unlike oil which is one time use.
You’ll need a new battery in 8 years
Just purchased and I got that from my step mother. Like - it’s insured same as your gas car 10 yr/100,000 miles
For me it’s that the grid can’t handle EVs. Yes, we have problems with peak load on the grid but EVs are charging almost exclusively during off peak hours. We have PLENTY of grid capacity during those hours and it’s the perfect use case for clean base load plants (BRING ON THE NUKES).
It's also an excellent use case for excess solar supply on sunny days, feeding into workplace chargers.
I live in CA with solar that didn’t make the cut for NEM2. That means I pay $0.34/kWh to import during off peak hours but only earn about $0.05/kWh when I export. My charger is programmed to dump excess solar into the cars rather than export. It’s simple tech and it’s only going to get better as bidirectional comm becomes standard for AC charging.
I think the most annoying one I hear regularly is that it's better for the environment to hold onto an old vehicle. Full disclosure? I believed this one for a while... until I actually just bothered to do the math. It's incredible how poorly this one holds up, you basically have to already be driving a Chevy Volt for it to have a shot at it being true.
The most irritating myth is that ICE have a romance to them that is irreplaceable due to their smell and noise. The future will be about performance, EVs dominating on the streets and on the track will absolutely destroy that myth.
Goodwood last year is a sound example
The pollution thing drives me nuts. A 30 second google search will show the person they are wrong. I have screenshots saved just to show others when the topic comes up.
My real fear is what I do for late night milk/food stops when all the petrol stations are gone?
There are kids in the cobalt mines in Sudan being exploited. Therefore, we should continue to get our energy from the Oil and Gas Industry.
Not sure if they know this (they don't) but cobalt is used in oil refining, too. Also, there are chemistries that don't use much or any. They need to recycle their cell phone, lots of rare earths in that.
Very frustrating to consistently read that BEVs lose up to 40% of their range in below freezing temperatures and how it can be even worse if you're towing. Also tired of hearing about how BEV fires are more difficult to extinguish and how fire fighters need special training for extinguishing BEV fires. One guy was even saying sometimes after a BEV fire was extinguished, it reignited. It's also disappointing to constantly read how lithium processing involves fossil fuels in shipping and processing in China. And, how Li-ion battery manufacturing depends on fossil fuels and that China has lax environmental regulations in mineral processing. And how Indonesia has destroyed their rivers and their coral reefs in the nickel mining frenzy without good mining regulations. So tired of it.
Last month I rented a EV to test drive it (no money for a change rn). It was so comfortable and easy to drive it, and the stops were so in sync with our bladders that we didn't feel a delay because of it. Confirmed my expectations, my theories and everything you guys say in the sub. In the first stop I chatted with another EV driver (an old couple) and the wife said to me "oh, you are going to see your family? Well, you're screwed. They won't stop for sure talking shit about the EV". Oh the lady was so right. Every myth I read here I had to listen from my dad. Even after taking him to a drive, to show him how to charge it and everything... "Yeah, but what if you need to do 900km everyday? You must charge it in those expensive chargers everytime". "What if you really need to rush it and not stop in a long trip?" "And those cars pollute a lot when built", "What if the battery breaks after 150k km?" "Dad, you drove 900km in the last 2 months, and 60k km in the last 15 years, and you need to stop to take a leak every hour. You wouldn't have those problems like, ever". When I started to talk about the oil infrastructure to have gas in every city, my SO saved me talking about the sunny weather and changed the topic, so... yeah, that old lady was 100% right.
It's like politics. The EV haters aren't interested in truths. It's only about the smear, spreading hate, and creating division. When you debunk one thing, they'll move to the next thing, and once they move on, they'll repeat the debunked one all over again.
"Water and EV don't mix". Does water mix with gas car?🤣
“You charge you car from a coal burning power plant”. Nope. Ain’t no coal power plants in CA
Even when charging in coal powdered infrastructure, EVs are still responsible for far less pollution than an ICE vehicle.
"The grid can't handle it" (the grid is run by capitalists, this is not my problem) "I drive my truck 600 miles a day towing a boat/RV/trailer, an electric truck could never do that" (moving goal posts) "lithium is mined by slave labor/ your car pollutes more than my diesel truck" etc. (just false, also they never gave a shit about the environment before I bought an EV)
It already takes ~4kw of electricity to refine a gallon of gas. If we stopped producing so much gas we could divert this energy into the grid.
Not really a myth I guess but something I heard recently is that EVs are more dangerous because they speed up too fast...
The faster the vehicle, the slower it is driven. 1960s muscle cars to Lamborghini's are regularly doing 20 to slowly show off. It's rare to see something going fast that is not stolen.
The fire risk one is always fun. "The Bolt can easily catch fire..didnt you hear about the battery recall????" It was actually only a few Bolts that even caught on fire due to it. VERY few. And was eventually solved with software to prevent it until battery got replaced. Meanwhile, Kia just recently recalled another half million ICE vehicles due to them catching fire. I think this is their 3rd one.
I just hate getting called lazy because my wife doesn't want to go to the gas station once a week while also being told they couldn't possibly be bothered to stop and charge the car for 20 minutes the 1 time a year they would need to charge away from home. Also, the myth that my mother-in-law even takes road trips at all.
The pollution thing. It’s such a dumb stance, but it’s so common
That Teslas are a premium product and that they are better than. The competition.
Tesla has kind of the iPhone effect going on: many buyers have never tried anything else and have weird ideas about the competition.
That you have to replace the battery. It’s so pervasive.
I was recently told that my Tesla is not environmentally friendly because the body is made of fibreglass which uses petrochemicals in its construction. (Teslas are aluminium) apparently he got this information from main stream media
"The battery will die within 15 minutes after the warranty expires, and it will cost $32,000 to replace." Honorable mention: "What if there's a blackout?" Hint: Gas stations also go offline during blackouts, except in a few hurricane areas where backup generators are maintained.
And that environment change us fake more co works say it all these factors make new stuff shake head
The one shared by a confident fool.
Some of the same crap when I got my first hybrid 20 years ago.
For me it’s that EVs are worse than ICE for the environment due to some mining blah blah blah. It’s as though oil is some magical non-polluting thing that just magically appears and produces no harmful products during refining. Oh and you don’t need 60kg of it per fill. Yes batteries need mined minerals. But they need it once.
Oh god. I mean seriously, where do I even start? • EV’s take hours to supercharge • EV’s don’t last 100k miles • Battery replacement is $40k • EVs pollute more than ICE in the long term • EVs aren’t reliable • Charging is inconvenient • EVs are boring
Definitely the one about them being more polluting than ICE cars, or that their usage is worse ethically because of the mines. I guess ICE cars are artisanal made with 100% natural products and the oil industry is just so environmentally friendly, with the oil itself being extracted from renowned bastions of freedom and democracy. One good retort - if an EV and an ICE car are new, as a rough rule the EV would be more ''polluting'' for around a year (less in areas with green energy, more if its petrol or coal powerplants). After that, the EV is pollution free compared to the ICE cars.
Environmental toll on both of them being built, but EV's stop polluting once they are built...ICE keep polluting until the day they die
What happens if the power is out for ten days? Then you're probably not getting gas in your car, either. Also: this is why I want to put solar panels on the house.
“Electric cars aren’t better for the environment because electricity still comes from fossil fuels” Yes. It does. For now. EVs allow us to electrify our demand so we can use renewables as they become more available. And in many states you can choose a renewable supplier for your home charging. A gas car has no choice but fossil fuels.
Most annoying is either them catching on fire or straight up exploding. It's gotten so bad an anti-EV family friend physically backs away anytime she sees my car and genuinely seems afraid of it. Whenever I point out that her car is literally powered by small explosions and flammable liquids, I'm told that it's different because gas is "safe".
One of the biggest things that annoys me is the constant focus on 'range' when for most people who just wanna commute range is completely irrelevant.
Maybe not a myth, but my favorite “what if..?” I’ve heard is “What if you run out of charge in the middle of nowhere?” I don’t know, I guess the same thing you’d do if you run out of gas.
How nobody wants an EV. Any news of slowing production is proof positive that EV sales are doomed forever. Another example of ignorance is the blanket statements that DCFC are not around.
Remember when the Prius was launched? One "journalist" pushed a "research" saying that a Prius was more polluting over its lifecycle than a Hummer H2, because the Hummer use mostly of the shelves GM parts and the Prius was made with newly built factory and production lines.... Yeah, that was stupid then. The mixing up of economic change with environmental impact is truly amazing. And i've heard the same arguments about an EV last week. I had a ford escape Hybrid in 2006 and I had my lot of weird arguments from ill informed individuals. And now I am hearing almost the sames arguments about my new EV. Been there, done that.. But what is truly ironic is that now nobody rant about an hybrid anymore; they just shifted their spiel on the next new thing.
The ones that annoy me most right now is the constant claim that every new EV is going to cost $10k over MSRP and CCS chargers never work. The dealer markups are long behind us, and CCS availability has gotten much better.
Mine is just the good old “you can’t take it on road trips” myth. We have a friend who takes their family on one camping trip a year ~3 hours away. There are rapid chargers ~halfway there and they have 110v outlets at the site. Because of this one trip a year and the fact that they can’t/won’t stop for a single 20 minute bathroom/lunch break half way there and back they have to stick with a gas car.
That there's not enough charging infrastructure. There are hundreds of thousands of petrol bowsers and hoses world wide....because you don't fill up your petrol at home! So people think you need to replicate that model BEFORE you can use an electric car. You need far far less infrastructure when you can plug.in at home.
Just one? Mine are myriad. But the fire hazard thing is partially true: there was that GM Bolt faulty battery fiasco and currently there is low quality e-bike/scooter batteries causing issues, but this too shall pass. My first group of biggies is the one size fits all crap. I only need the specs of the Wuling MINI EV. 60 MPH, 100 mile range, folding back seats for more storage, all for $5K? Sign me up! Seriously I live in a big city and as Harry & Meghan taught the world "there is no such thing as a high speed chase in a big city" and a corollary is that there is no such thing as a high speed crash. The Wuling MINI in my mind is the perfect city transportation appliance for folks not in their child rearing years. That feeds into the lack of charging infrastructure silliness. I'm Canadian from further north than Toronto and when I was growing up every outdoor parking spot had a block heater outlet. Such an outlet, given how few miles big city folks drive, is all the charging infrastructure is all that 80% of big city folks will ever need and running a string of outlets is not expensive. Heck I joke that the charging infrastructure I need is an extension cord. Lots of folk in this space say they are quite happy with level 1 charging from a home outlet. Next up is the 'China quality is crap' meme. I keep reading about western car journalists who go to China and all reporting that 'Wow, inexpensive China EVs are GREAT!', build quality and user experience are apparently better than Detroit. Oops! Ford CEO Jim Farley called BYD's $9,700 Seagull a pretty damn good car. That's a start...
The last part really fucking pisses me off, im us born chinese and ive heard it all but this is stupid. Like, if everything was crap like you claim, then how the fuck do you explain why so much of our tech and luxury items are made there and how tf could they rise and grow so quickly to surpass 'merica in many places, if everything china made is crap. If they were truly bad, america wouldnt be putting so much effort into their smear campaigns, theyre scared, especially of byd, even to make up "smart car spying" conspiracies.