With the lousy press electric cars get and the ensuing public confusion, it’s amazing to think that Tesla’s Model Y mid-sized SUV was the top selling vehicle in the world in Quarter 1 of 2023. It actually bumped off the venerable Toyota Corolla from that lofty perch. Yes, an electric car beat out all new vehicles, including gas-powered ones.
But how can this be? From what I hear there are a million serious issues with electric cars. The battery range is too low. The sticker prices are too high. The build quality is spotty at best. They burst into flames spontaneously! And, they’re not really that great for the environment, anyway! Hold your rotary phone, the world has changed and so have cars. For the better. Despite what you’ve heard or read, you do not need to wait for better e-cars, lower prices or longer battery range. They are all here. Now.
Honest Abe
Here’s a case in point. We just returned from a trip to Springfield, IL, to visit Lincoln’s Museum, tomb and family home. We charged our 2023 long-range Model Y at home to about 95% and easily made it to the small community of Peru, where there were 20 superchargers in the grocery store parking lot. We plugged it in, used the bathroom and sat down for lunch in the adjoining restaurant. Before our food arrived, I got a text saying the car was charged to the necessary level to reach Springfield! Wow, what an inconvenience this charging is. That took about 15 minutes. Outrageous! Who has time for that?
The biggest obstacle I see to widespread electric car use is the common assumption that every aspect of an e-car must meet or exceed what is normal for its gas-powered counterpart. Yes, they are both cars but they operate on completely different technologies. Is a bass boat the same as a cruise ship? Hey, they both float!
The fairer way to look at electric cars is how they stack up overall. On the pro side:
They don’t use gas, so no pollutants come out of the tail pipe. Well, there is no tail pipe!
Electricity costs a lot less than gas so your expenses drop noticeably.
Electric motors last a long time so over the life of car, their carbon footprint is substantially lower than a gas car with its constant polluting.
Electric cars require little if any maintenance. That’s a point that rarely is discussed but is absolutely true. Bye-bye to the 15,000-mile check, the 25,000, etc. Of course, there are no oil changes, either or a ton of other parts that wear out or break in gas cars.
But are e-cars really superior in terms of maintenance and reliability? Earlier this year, I brought in one of our gas cars to my mechanic of over 30 years. Knowing I also own 2 electric cars, he told me a tale of woe from one of his customers who bought an electric car. A serious problem. I don’t know. These things might not be ready for prime time. Well, yes an electric car can fail, just as a gas car can. But it’s unusual. Stuff can go wrong. But how often do you blow an engine, have a transmission go kaput or suffer a car fire? Equally catastrophic circumstances can befall an electric car and they are probably about as common.
Taking the plunge
A friend told me he was interested in buying an electric lawn mower so he went to the lawn mower store. The sales guy asked him if he’d like to see the pile of electric mowers needing repair in the back or the new gas ones? He walked out with a gas-powered mower, scared away about maintenance issues he was unfamiliar with. If you spend your career becoming proficient about everything related to gas mowers, it’s probably very difficult to switch gears to a product you’re less familiar with.
Well, even if electric motors are reliable and require little maintenance, I need at least 900 miles of battery range before I’m going to dive in. I’ve actually heard that one twice from people I know. When you travel, do your really drive for 700-900 miles before stopping? Please.
Way too expensive
I just checked tesla.com today and learned you can buy a new 2023 Model 3 sedan for $34,380, including a $7,500 tax credit. (The average non-luxury new car costs about $45,000 and you have to pay for gas!) That specific e-car comes with a 272-mile battery. In our 2019 Model 3, by comparison, we went on trips East, West and South and were able to do pretty well with a 238-mile battery. The Tesla supercharger network is second to none and is extremely reliable and easy to use. In fact, during a trip to Chicago a few months ago, I got stuck in a major snowstorm. Travel on the interstate was down to 20-30 mph. I was headed for a Tesla supercharger when the car notified me that the charging location I was going to was now off-line! I had never heard of that but it must have been storm-related. Although the prospect of running low on battery in a blizzard was initially unnerving, the car simply directed me to another nearby supercharger location that was working. I did not have to drive to the downed site to learn it wasn’t working.
That experience is not true for other charging systems that are way less advanced. Personally, I would not buy another brand of electric car for cross-country travel. That is one legitimate point the e-car skeptics make. For widespread e-car use to happen, the charging infrastructure must easily accommodate all electric cars so motorists can easily “fill up.” With the federal government creating incentives to bolster electric car use, we will have more charging options and an improved charging system in the future
Charging shock?
Even so, it’s expensive to use superchargers. A major automotive publication ran a piece that outlined the cost of charging a Tesla exclusively at superchargers and concluded that it’s not much of an economic benefit over gas cars. In reality, most of us Tesla owners charge primarily at home, and that’s relatively inexpensive. It’s only on trips that most Tesla owners would rely on the supercharger network, which is still way cheaper than buying gas.
But it is possible to use an electric car without accessing a public charging system at all. We do it all the time. In addition to the Model Y, we bought a new 2022 Nissan Leaf, a car that was first developed 10 years ago. We get 215 miles of battery range and use it as an around-town car, which is 99% of what most people use a car for. It’s a fantastic vehicle and cost us under $30,000. If you can charge at home as we do, it cannot be beat for sticker price, cost of driving and charging convenience. For apartment dwellers, however, I agree that always having to charge at public places might be a bridge too far for many people. It would be for me.
Despite all of this progress, one of my friends recently commented that for the most part, only millionaires can afford Teslas. That was probably true for the early Tesla sedans that cost more than $100,000 ten years ago. As mentioned previously, that’s no longer the case. But new cars aren’t exactly cheap, that’s for sure. There is a huge swath of the car-buying public that never buys a new car because of the high costs, so I wouldn’t expect them to buy a new electric car either, even though they offer better value than new gas cars. The bottom line is that if you can afford a new car, you can afford a new electric car.
If you do give it a try, you have to accept the idiosyncrasies you haven’t dealt with before. Here’s one we experienced on our last trip. Returning from Springfield, something unexpected happened that required us to make an extra stop to charge. That added another 30 minutes to our ride home, as that charger was a few miles off the interstate. Why did we need to stop again? It was incredibly windy and we were driving straight into the gusts. That’s one of the things about electric cars we have to accept. There are circumstances that affect battery range. If it’s really hot and we’re blasting the AC, that depletes battery. If it’s bone-chilling cold, running that heater a lot also depletes battery, as does especially windy weather. But that can also work in your favor. If the wind is behind you, you get even better battery range! If you are driving down a mountainous road, your battery actually charges.
Overall, people are slowing starting to figure this out and are getting comfortable with buying electric cars. The upstart Tesla did not produce the best-selling vehicle in the world because there’s no demand. It achieved in relatively short order what Toyota took decades to master with the Corolla. Consumer demand will continue to grow, as will the technology, battery range, production efficiency and vehicle supply.
Wait if you want or need to, but take a good look at the options today and you’ll soon realize that electric cars already have arrived.