A reader linked me to an article last week that started off strong but went downhill near the end. I agree with the main thrust, though.
Mainly, that Elon Musk’s Tesla Model 3, in yet-unattainable base form, is wholly unnecessary. We’ll leave the company financials aside — Musk claims high-zoot Model 3s are necessary to keep the cash-burning company afloat, and there’s little reason to doubt it — and focus on the broader argument.
Electric cars are nice, but you don’t need one to save the planet.
Most of the public’s driving duties are easily accomplished by a plug-in hybrid with a Honda Clarity or Chevrolet Volt-type range, the author states, and this is certainly true. The vast majority of driving miles — commuting, running errands — can be handled with a vehicle that doesn’t entirely dispense with gasoline, but doesn’t need it for trips of roughly 50 miles.
If those trips suddenly went electric, we’d all be breathing easier, Mother Earth would smile (maybe less in areas with mineral extraction), and drivers could feel good about themselves. There’d also be gas left in the tank for those longer drives.
Last fall, while testing Hyundai’s all-electric Ioniq variant, I got to talking with a soon-to-be-retired man who lived with his wife in a downtown condo. Super keen on electrics, this man wanted a battery-powered vehicle as his next ride (his current car of choice was an entirely sensible Toyota Corolla). There’s a neat factor at work with EVs, sure. But the man’s wife didn’t want to spend her golden years figuring out the distance to the nearest public recharging station, nor did the idea of kiboshing certain road trips due to lack of infrastructure strike her as appealing. Also, no one wants to cool their heels next to a highway as a 240-volt connection slowly replenishes their battery’s juice.
My entirely predictable advice? “Get a Volt.” The husband would get his EV kick without sacrificing the range needed for a trip to Boston or Stowe or New York City, and his household would still end up about 90 percent gas-free.
Yes, it’s a pain to battle with the condo board for a hookup point in your urban parking spot, but outfitting an ordinary home with a Level 2 charger isn’t the Apollo 11 mission. You’ll just need to upgrade your breaker panel, probably, and run wire to the garage. Depending on a number of variables, it can be done for less than $1,000.
While the author of the piece advocates dumping the cost of electric vehicle charging infrastructure on every new home buyer and parking lot user, that’s simply not my policy cup of tea. Feel free to disagree on the urgency of the matter. What I do agree with, however, is that the base Model 3 — still months away from production — is only necessary for PR purposes. Consumers already have plenty of choice. It’s likely that more than a few $35,000 Model 3 reservation holders have taken notice.
What’s your take?
[Image: Kia Motors]
I am a huge advocate or the Volt, especially if you don’t need the backseat all that often. It handles local and long distance chores seamlessly.
In a similar fashion, we were having a neighborhood pot luck in the driveway Saturday evening and while having some adult sodas with the guys one of my neighbors indicated that his next car will be an electric of some kind and the discussion expanded from there. He has charging stations at his work and turns out commuting in his now 2 year old Tundra is fairly spendy. He figures to have his wife use the truck for her 2 mile commute and for him to get a Volt for his. As we have seen the transition has been slow to the electric propulsion, but as advancements are made and pricing stabilizes I believe the adoption rate will be on a steady incline.
A two-mile commute is simply the worst thing you can do to an internal combustion-powered vehicle. The engine never reaches operating temperature, resulting in excessive cylinder wall wear and very fast oil contamination and moisture buildup. That is the PERFECT application for an EV.
Or better yet, feet or a bike…
For the moment at least, and as a practical matter, I just don’t see the great advantage in having an entirely electric vehicle, largely because of range and recharging limitations. Nor do I see anything lastingly unique about a Tesla that can’t (and won’t) be replicated by any number of other manufacturers in relatively short order.
Full EV advantages are many –
Never having to buy gas again
Never having to touch a nasty fuel nozzle at a dodgy gas station
Never having to waste time pumping gas
Reducing CO2 and NOX emissions
Being able to recharge at home while sleeping
Immunity to fuel pricing shocks
Car can be pre-heated and warmed in the garage
I am getting an EV as a second vehicle for all of these reasons. With a 100 mile commute, there are several that can do the round trip and in the event of an issue the office has an EV charger.
Steph, You make way too much sense. The Musk Kool Aid drinkers will be putting the curse of a thousand camels on you.
Musk, in true Silicon Valley style, says that the legacy auto industry can be “disrupted”, which means you build a highly differentiated profit magnet of a product that draws all the profits out of the segment away from the legacy competitors. In other words, those with more money to spend will want only your product and will be willing to pay a lot more for it. Think iPhone. The trillion dollar question is, is a car just a giant iPhone on wheels? To do that in the auto industry is extraordinarily ambitious.
By the way I agree that cars like the Honda Clarity provide 80% of the environmental benefits of an EV with much lower cost and a more conventional ownership experience. If EV fanatics really gave a damn about the environment, Clarity’s would be flying off dealership lots.
EV fanatics aren’t blind…
The 3rd gen Insight would be a better buy. Actually almost any of the other gas/electric hybrids would be a better buy. Plus, the used market adds a (relatively) low cost entry point for electric-intenders with range anxiety issues.
Actually, regular hybrids are no longer the better buy, at least not for those who can take advantage of incentives that are only available for plug-in vehicles. After those are taking into account, the Prius Prime is actually cheaper than the regular Prius, the Niro PHEV is cheaper than the regular Niro, the Clarity PHEV is cheaper than the Accord Hybrid, etc. Basically, there’s little reason to skip the plug now.
Musk may as well open a facility in Jonestown and get it over with, this dumpster fire isn’t going to end well for his fanbois.
I think that depends on what Tesla’s competition does. The thing is, there’s clearly a market for the stuff they’re selling, and the Model 3, flawed as it is, is a hit.
If one of their competitors manages to bring out something equivalent, Tesla is indeed toast.
The couple should buy another Corolla, preferably used. With a tiny 4 cylinder engine they wouldn’t use much gas and they’d save a ton of money compared to buying a brand new electric car.
Also the negative environmental impact of manufacturing a new vehicle has already occurred on the used Corolla. A brand new vehicle has to be manufactured every time someone chooses they want to save the planet with a new, more efficient car.
Plus a Corolla has a smaller cobalt footprint. Cobalt is becoming a “trigger” for Captain Planet types.
Which is why Cobalt Ontario is coming back to life.
The limiting factor of every non-Tesla EV on the market is styling. The Bolt might be a great car, but it’s incredibly dorky looking, and the interior styling is, shall we say, a bit too minimalist.
The perfect people’s green car might just be the upcoming Kona EV.
Having said that, I think there’s a huge opportunity for GM here: adapt the Bolt’s chassis into a conventionally handsome sedan, up the power, skip the silly touchscreen-dash nonsense Tesla’s selling, and sell it as a Cadillac for +/- $55,000. I think that’d rejuvenate the brand and slip the knife into Tesla.
Given their decreasing popularity, GM was wise not to design the Bolt as a sedan.
When it comes to greenie-mobiles, looking dorky is actually a huge asset. Theres an inherent difference in the tastes of the type of person who buys a car to show the world how much they care about the environment or are interested in new tech vs who buys a car for self gratification. Tesla seems to be the lone dissenting voice here, but I guarantee that theres virtually zero cross shopping between ANY electric/hybrid car and any muscle cars or sports cars.
There are many hybrids on the road you don’t even notice because they look the same as their non-hybrid equivalents.
‘Many’? Way to keep it vague. I can’t find the article on here but just recently I read that electric and hybrid cars account for just over a half a percent of all new vehicle sales. This crap has been foisted on us for what, 18 years since the first prius? People aren’t ponying up the extra money because the value just isn’t there unless you’re either geeking out on the tech or a slave to the whole greenie thing.
Maybe the reason the hybrid variants of regular cars go unnoticed is because those were based on cars that are bland irrelevant appliances that no one notices anyway.
Looking dorky is NOT a huge asset.
Sure, yes there is a niche audience for people who want to show off how much they love mother earth.
But there are plenty of folk who like cars precisely because they like the latest, coolest, baddest, fastest thing. And for those folks, an electric car that looks awesome and also accelerates like a beast is a wonderful, wonderful thing.
Not a conventionally handsome sedan, but a larger and more conventionally shaped CUV. A Boltified Equinox would sell very well indeed in cities.
Electric cars are sheet.
Bring back diesels. Get emissions to a lowest level reasonable. Then do offsets. Plant 100 trees per car- what ever.
Electric cars will NEVER surpass 1-2 % of all sales. We are already at maximum COBALT EXTRACTION.
Turbo motors have poor durability. Under moderate loads- deliver worse mileage as my V-6
Stop the madness – please.
@redapple – pretty much all diesels are turbo..
LOL
If he wants to drive around in a straight diesel passenger car, I wish him well.
He’ll have plenty of time to savor the passing scenery, that’s for sure.
Anytime I hear someone talk about peak production of something or running out of it soon, I’m reminded of the late 1970s when we were supposed to be running out of nearly everything — petroleum, fresh water, critical industrial metals. It was so bad that one wag advised new college graduates to, “Get yours while there’s still some left.” The shortages prompted clever engineers to improve extraction processes which higher prices made economically viable. By the time we were supposed to have run out, proven reserves were higher than when the doom-and gloom-predictions were made. To mix metaphors, Chicken Little has cried “Wolf!” too often.
HUGE difference between petroleum which is always forming, vs a rare earth mineral–a very finite resource. Yes, the scarcity may be overblown but its guaranteed that petroleum is far more plentiful than dense metals. Those metals are incredibly toxic too, I might add.
“HUGE difference between petroleum which is always forming, vs a rare earth mineral–a very finite resource. Yes, the scarcity may be overblown but its guaranteed that petroleum is far more plentiful than dense metals. Those metals are incredibly toxic too, I might add.”
Yes, but petroleum forms over hundreds of millions of years and is zero percent recyclable.
Rare earth, lithium, cobalt etc. are not that rare. They sell by the ton. Lithium and cobalt are 100% recyclable. Rare earth is not yet recycled because products use so little of it that producing new stuff is cheaper. But methods to recycle rare earth are in development.
Electrics and plug-in hybrids are already both at around 2.5% each in California and by the end of the year, it’s going to become evident that electrics will be around at least 3% nationally as the Model 3 deliveries crank up in the second half.
If I wanted to use fewer resources I’d buy a Mazda.
I’d buy an Ecosport, which I’d never drive. Resource use problem solved.
The EcoSport hacks your life. You can put seeds and potting soil in the cup holders and grow your own food! How green is that?
Don’t forget that you need to water those cup holder plants with Brawndo on occasion. It’s got what plants crave!
While there are several issues with an EV versus an ICEV, one of the biggest is the lack of widespread condo/apartment charging points. I suspect that many who lease their domicile would love to give a plug-in hybrid a try, but won’t, because they can’t plug-in at home.
Until the problem of relatively convenient, cost-effective, overnight charging for people who lease is solved, battery-powered cars are never going to hit the mainstream.
Electrify America 350 kW charging stations starting to show up now, so that is the beginning of the end for the charging problems for condo/apartment dwellers. Cars that support it should start showing up next year.
You know what there are a lot of on city streets and parking lots? Street Lights.
When you replace the regular 1000W Sodium vapour lamp with a 200W LED lamp, there is an opportunity to now retrofit the poles to add some vehicle charging infrastructure. This would be really handy for non-home owners.
I’m about 10 years out from retiring. I have already downsized my house (my adult children are out) but am considering the next steps for our driving/commuting needs.
In a “blue sky” scenario, I’d love to get a hybrid Pacifica, which would cover a lot of needs for me/us. However, getting my wife into a minivan will require more wine than I can stand to drink…
The most logical thing I can think to do is to find a used Volt and get my electric jollies that way. A Bolt could be considered too, but again, the wife factor comes into play again (looks too much like a minivan).
I think before long there will be enough long-range BEVs that gas/electric hybrids will become rarities again.
In the long term, I think things will settle out to where most vehicles are plug-in hybrids, with a trade-off between battery range (20, 50, 100 miles) and gas tank size, and some straight electric vehicles for people who hire a gas car for the occasional long trip.
Assuming there isn’t some kind of breakthrough in technology, I actually see EVs becoming the dominant car type in crowded urban areas, with ICEs staying dominant in suburban and/or rural areas.
What FreedMike said, except that 200-mile EVs will become the standard and they will do just fine in the burbs. I’d guess that only rural dwellers/employees, megacommuters, people who tow super-heavy stuff, and a few holdouts will be buying new ICE vehicles in 20 years.
Having 2 cars is a solution to the range issue with EVs, for those with the parking space. A small EV for around town and short trips, an ICE vehicle for everyhting else.
Maintenance differences between EV and ICE might tip the balance for some to EV.
What you suggest is cross ways to our use of vehicles. We have an economical FWD compact which gets the most use, an AWD minivan for large loads and winter weather, and an RWD sports coupe which is my three season toy. All of them get used for long trips as well as local errands.
That’s exactly what I do. Manual BMW E39 for fun/road trips/etc, 80-series Land Cruiser for camping/wheeling/hauling, and used Nissan Leaf for commuting. I wanted a full BEV so I would have one vehicle I’d never have to do any maintenance to.
In the year since buying my Ford C-Max Energi, I’ve found that explaining the plug-in hybrid concept can be difficult. Most people seem to think of cars in polarized, either-or terms; it’s either a gas car, or electric. They haven’t thought much about having it both ways. And when I explain that “it goes 20 miles on a charge,” that sounds rather lame. But every day’s journey has a first 20 miles, so that adds up. So far, it accounts for the difference between my daughter’s hybrid C-Max’s cumulative fuel mileage of 37 MPG and my plug-in’s reported 66 mpg. And please don’t think I stick within a 10-mile radius of home. My work calls me to drive all over the Colorado Front Range, with recent 100-mile+ trips to Fort Collins and Colorado Springs.
I haven’t spent anything on home charging infrastructure. Since the battery’s relatively small, a full charge on 110V current takes under five hours. I’m usually asleep when it happens. So I’ve gotten to keep all the daily savings from my low cost of gas and electricity, which I compute at about four cents per mile. In real terms, every day I drive over 50 miles, the car buys me a free lunch, compared to my former 30 mpg gas hog.
I can’t think of a better personal transportation solution– if your goal isn’t to never buy gas again. But here in a place where the electrical grid is largely coal-fired, I don’t see electricity as a clean energy source. But gas and electricity together are capable of wondrous things!
I’ve had this experience too, although with the added benefit that the Seattle City Light energy grid is 97% non-greenhouse, so it really does make a carbon difference.
I’ve learned to say “It goes the first 20 miles on electricity, and then switches to gas if I need to go further.” It’s surprising how many people have their mind blown by that statement. People are also surprised when they learn that, with short city trips, we get 180 mpg in the summer and 100 mpg in the winter.
I could do a PHEV if they somehow made one that was affordable, good looking AND fun to drive. Hell, just a regular hybrid that fit those parameters would do. I know Honda tried with the first Accord hybrid but the game has moved so far forward now tech wise. Current Accord Hybrid weighs like ~3300-3400lbs… another 100 or so lb for the 2.0T would work wonders and keep gas mileage up… albeit at a cost.
The C-Max has a 2.0 gas engine, with total HP around 195. It’s heavy as heck, two tons, but that does give it a smooth, big-car ride. I felt like all the roads had been repaved when I got mine.
330e?
The issues with EVs are being solved. The battery durability issue is pretty much gone: 500k miles before the latest Samsung SDI cells hit 80% capacity.
https://insideevs.com/lets-look-at-the-specs-of-the-samsung-sdi-94-ah-battery/
Charging infrastructure is growing nicely. 350 kW chargers are now being installed (20 miles per minute of range for the Porsche Mission E) Some of them at gas stations:
https://insideevs.com/electrify-americas-first-350-kw-ultra-fast-charger-to-be-launched-on-april-25/
Tesla supercharges are up to 1130 stations with 8496 connections.
Keep pretending that EVs are going nowhere, but the reality is that the technologies behind it are advancing and the support network is growing. ICE vehicles are going to die much faster than anyone is predicting. The speed of advancement of the technology is much faster than expected. Once ICE owners start to experience range anxiety because of disappearing gas stations, it will be even faster. It won’t happen overnight, but in fifteen years ICE ownership is going to get really difficult.
I keep waffling between BEV and plug-in hybrid to replace my current 89-mile Leaf.
The reality is that, at least for a single-car household, the plug-in hybrid makes more sense. This much is obvious. With a 50-mile electric range I’d rarely need to dip into the gas tank, but for the occasional road-trips I’d much rather fill up at Chevron that try to find a super-charger and twiddle my thumbs for an hour.
But the wonderful appeal of a BEV is the, almost literally, zero-maintenance aspect. My Leaf never needs an oil change or its engine serviced. Maybe in 10 years the batteries will have lost 20%? 3 years in they’re still at 100%. The biggest issue I have is, lacking any regular oil changes, I sometimes run out of washer fluid.
A plug-in hybrid defeats much of that simplicity. You’ve got normal engine maintenance stuff. And you’ve got the maintenance associated with the more complex drivetrain. No idea what that is long term. But the point is that, while you do get the best of both worlds with a plug-in hybrid you also get the worst of both.
C-Max Hybrid owners report their car’s maintenance alert signals oil changes at 15,000-20,000 mile intervals. Mine hasn’t gone off, but I did a first change at 7,000 just out of habit. The gas engine spends most of its time off- even, surprisingly, when the plug-in range is used up. Engine wear is worst on those short trips where the engine never warms up, and those are the trips made on EV instead. Anyway, I’d like to have a trained eye look over the dark side of my vehicle every year or two, just in case.
Economy cars are good enough for basic green transportation. Prius-like powertrains are good enough to handle more sophisticated eco motoring.
If you want to fix the car industry ban power driving controls. Things will get eco in a hurry.
“…outfitting an ordinary home with a Level 2 charger isn’t the Apollo 11 mission. You’ll just need to upgrade your breaker panel, probably, and run wire to the garage.”
Steph, I haven’t seen a house with an attached garage that doesn’t already have the circuit breaker panel in the garage. 200A breaker panels have been standard for a long time.
My current house, built in the ’80s, has an attached garage. The 100A breaker panel is in the basement.
Previous house, built in the ’70s also had an attached garage. 200A breaker panel was outside at the opposite end from the garage.
Breakers are convenient, I remember when we had fuses, what a pain. I stopped buying them and just stuck pennies in there.
The most environmental choice is to keep your current vehicle (whatever it is) as long as you can keep it running reliably and cleanly, and walk or ride a bike for short errands and leave the car in the garage as much as possible. Unless you are driving 20,000 miles per year in a 8 mpg Suburban or Ferrari V-12, buying a second car, or trading a perfectly functioning vehicle early for a hybrid or BEV will almost never pay off environmentally due to the high amount of energy and pollutants generated by manufacturing a new vehicle.
This. Unfortunately, much of society doesn’t think this way.
I used to say that also. But careful evaluation shows that resources saved by ev’s far outweigh the embedded resources of a new car.
Economically these just don’t begin to add up. Gas is cheap and cars are expensive. When the product is compelling enough to stand on its own the market figures it out quickly – see MAP on Priuses 10 years ago. Until those conditions arrive again, well, the market has figured that out too.
Pollution in the poison in the air that kills you sense isn’t coming from new cars and different new cars won’t solve it.
Pollution in the global soda bubbles sense is a teeming billions in the developing world problem and what we do or don’t drive doesn’t even amount to an asterisk against it.
The only problem that I see being addressed here is that not enough of our money is in Saint Elon’s pockets.
The main reason why Prius became sooooo popular was the ability to drive in carpool lanes with only the driver. California and the Feds made these cars’ owners instant superpersons with the ability to do this. Had none of this nonsense ever happened, I don’t believe the hybrid demand would have taken off like it did.
“…no one wants to cool their heels next to a highway as a 240-volt connection slowly replenishes their battery’s juice.”
Straw man claim. Nobody refills an EV with a Level 2 charger, except at home. They exist, but only for destination usage – not ‘next to a highway’.
“Electric cars are nice, but you don’t need one to save the planet.”
Your underlying premise – that EV buyers are a monolithic bunch of tree-huggers – is false.
I like EVs for the instant torque, low- to near-zero maintenance, quieter ride, and substantially lower operating cost. Personally, I am unconcerned with GW, CG, ACG, or whatever the latest eco-panic is called.
My only concern with EVs is depreciation.
Rationally, there is no doubt that keeping an economy car in running order makes better sense from a microeconomic perspective. But car buying often isn’t rational, which is easily observed in the volume of trucks sales in the US.
If we’re going to argue that the best green choice is to simply stick with economy cars, let’s open the discussion to include all vehicle choices.
Absolutely. Replace the awd Escape Hybrid with an Outlander PHEV. The Mitsubishi has electric range for city use, battery capacity to recapture energy during long descents in the mountains, store/hold/discharge control, variable regeneration braking, and it can’t possibly be less reliable than the Escape. The only downside is the Outlander’s poorer gas-only mileage.