Some things seem great right up till they’re not. If you look at the URL it originally mentioned EVs being unreliable
I sold my electric car and went back to a diesel – I’d had enough
The maiden voyage of Guy Stenhouse’s new Jaguar I-Pace in 2019 did not go well. His 145-mile route from Glasgow to Sedbergh in Cumbria was lined with charging points – but most would not charge his car, meaning a trip that should have taken about 2 hours 45 mins took seven hours.
“I stopped at every charging station I could, hooked the car up to the charger only to find it wouldn’t work,” he says.” It meant I was only able to use slow chargers and I could only get about 13 miles of charge each time. I got home at midnight.”
Many electric vehicle (EV) drivers will have heard versions of this story, or even had a similar misfortune themselves – as I did when charging problems elongated a drive between London and Cornwall in an electric car last year. It seems, five years ago, that perhaps Stenhouse was too far ahead of his time, and suffered at the hands of an under-developed charging network that is still evolving.
Stenhouse has since switched to a diesel car. That might sound surprising given that he was an early adopter of a fully electric car, as well as solar panels and a small wind turbine (he even had a hybrid car back in 2016). But he’s not alone in turning his back on EVs. According to the UK-wide independent car supermarket Motorpoint, 56 per cent of EV drivers part-exchanged for an alternative fuel type in 2023, with petrol dominating the choice at 30 per cent.
There are lots of factors for this, but, it happens. I’ve seen people buy a car and realize this was a bad idea or things changed. One lady was obliterated on negative equity when she bought a sedan then realized her son with MS couldn’t get in and needed an SUV. Someone just got obliterated when they realized a compact SUV wouldn’t work and they needed a minivan (which is what they were told to start with. Not my customer). I seriously considered going with a ridiculous lease on a VW EV, could use just for puttering around town, but, nah, don’t need a 2nd car. Like I’ve said, an EV would work 90% of the time for me. It’s that other 10% that’s the issue.
Harry Metcalfe, a motoring journalist and co-founder of the car magazine Evo, has also made the swap. After two years leasing an EV and two-and-a-half years with a hybrid electric as the main family car, he’s swapped to a diesel Range Rover Sport (though as a car fanatic, he does have an extensive collection of other cars too). On his popular YouTube channel, Harry’s Garage, he gets into the details of why, and explains he’s “not someone who doesn’t like electric cars”, and he’s another early adopter of green energy, using solar panels and heat pumps. He says that at the moment an EV isn’t suitable for their big drives or for towing a trailer.
Inconvenient.
He also cites the rising cost of EV insurance, along with depreciation: the value of second-hand EVs has dropped 23 per cent in the past year, according to research from the online marketplace Auto Trader. One reason for this is the Government’s Zero Emission Vehicles mandate, which requires that 28 per cent of all new vehicle sales must be EVs by 2025, increasing incrementally to 100 per cent by 2035. It means manufacturers are pushing new EVs on to the market faster than demand is rising, and that buyers of those can benefit from tax breaks that don’t apply to used cars.
Nothing I haven’t noted before. Tires are more expensive. Users are seeing battery degradation early, like with smartphones. Yet, Government is expecting people to keep them 10-20 years.
After that seven-hour incident, Stenhouse tried to find out the cause of the charging problem. “The charger manufacturer blamed the car, but the car manufacturer blamed the charger. Jaguar said the current was ‘too dirty’ with ‘too many spikes’”. As well as the car and charger not liking each other, the range was also an issue. The car is billed as having a 240-mile range, though Stenhouse says his car “always showed the range as 221 miles”.
Unreliable.
(Graphic via The First Street Journal)
Well, there’s his first problem. Jaguar is known for lack of reliability even without the problems of building EVs. As Elon Musk said, building EVs is complicated and not everyone can do it.
KIA’s policy of charging a staggering $52,000 for a battery pack replacement during the warranty period is a significant financial burden. Moreover, they do not cover the batteries under warranty, compelling you to purchase this exorbitantly priced battery pack out of pocket if it should fail.
Now granted, this has not happened in the USA, but it has happened in Canada multiple times now. Hmmm, let’s see the weather and Canada and failing batteries…. What a thunk!
My daughter has a hybrid, and it has spent more time in the shop than on the road due to severe problems with the electric part of her car. Anecdotal, I know, but the problem as it was explained to her, was that she and her hubby were uninformed shoppers, not realizing she bought a Hybrid in the middle of parts shortages during COVID-19, and voila her car has several used parts(old and out of date manufacturer replacing newer parts with its older versions…not really used parts per se) on it, several analog parts for a system designed to run with digital 21st-century parts.
After 3 years, the car is finally fixed, and now she is griping that during winter, her 30-mile ranged hybrid gets about 18 miles per charge—not even enough for a round trip to her office before she begins using gasoline. However, I do think hybrids should be the path forward for the EV industry simply because it would CHANGE MINDS and smooth the transition to all EVs.
Again, as I mentioned in another post, MAGA is trying to force its ideals on the public. Progressives are trying to force their IDEALS on the public. Muslims, Christians etc….the same. Now, the AGW and EV crowds are doing the same, and it never ends well for any of them as people are stubborn.
We all saw the stubbornness of people around the world in that they have only administered 13 billion doses of Vaccine to date(which includes boosters) when it should be 30 billion-plus by now if you include the additional boosters. If people are forced to do anything in any country they are going to flip you the bird and tell you to #$%^ OFF!
This is nothing more than a cautionary tale in the 21st century.
The Secretary of Transportation, when confronted with a decrease in electric vehicle sales — Tesla’s down over 8%, and Ford laying off 2/3 of workers at electric Ford F-150 Lightning plant — said, “I feel like it’s the early 2000s and I’m talking to some people who think that we can just have landline phones forever.”
Of course, people dumped land lines because they bought cell phones, and many no longer needed land lines, but people also chose to buy cell phones. I have no problem with people choosing to buy plug-in electric vehicles; I do have a problem with the government trying to force the sale of EVs with regulations designed to stop normal vehicle production.
All those gas stations, refineries and pipelines were built with private capital, and made money doing it. EV infrastructure though seems to require taxpayers to fund it or massively subsidize it as well as subsidies to buy the EVs. The entire road network was paid for by taxes on fuel, a tax that EVs don’t pay (freeloaders). I am sure the gov will find a way to recoup those losses. But sure, lets compare it to cell phones… another product that needed no government subsidies, and a product that around the world is the best option because it bypasses government enforced monopolies to hard-wire phone companies. Departments of transportation are the problem, not the solution.
My good friend Robert Stacy McCain is touting our esteemed host’s website!
My good friend Robert Stacy McCain is touting our distinguished host’s site!
My Buick Regal died a week ago Saturday. Blew a head gasket and swallowed a valve and died. And after only 326,000 miles. They don’t make’em like they use to.
So Monday I went car shopping. Actually I had already done my research so it was more a confirmation trip that yes, this is what I want.
The sales guy, spotting me looking at a Volt, mistook my curiosity for interest and descended on me. When I explained I wasn’t interested he threw a $7500 price reduction into the conversation. So I asked if he could find another $2500, making the $32000 MSRP become $22000.
To my surprise he seemed, if not agreeable, willing to keep the conversation going while explaining the battery problems were now solved and the range was extended and charging stations were everywhere. When I noted that charging stations in Memphis would be honeypots to carjackers he countered that well, maybe he could get some of that $2500 for me.
At that point I told him I was just funning him and would only take a Volt if it was free and if the dealer paid all the taxes.
He seemed to saddened at this turn of events and since he also seemed to be a nice guy I walked him down to where the Equinox’s were on display and eventually bought one.
Hope it lasts as long as the Regal did.
i am sorry for your loss.
One of our parishioners has a Chevy Dolt, but he also has a garage in which he was able to mount an at-home charging station. He needs that, because there are no commercial charging stations in the county!
i do love filling up in five minutes at the rest stops and watching all the “Virtuous” waiting for their cars to charge in 2 to 3 hours.
I can easily drive a hundred miles in almost any direction from here and never come near a charging station. Directly north, it’s almost 400 miles and I have to cross into Canada first. Yeah, EVs are not a good idea.