Electric Cars are not the Problem: Falsehoods Perpetrated by Some EV Owners

Published Sep 29, 2023 • Last updated 0 minutes ago • 6 minute read

As has become standard operating procedure before launching into any diatribe involving electric vehicles, I will start with the caveat that Motor Mouth is not anti-EV. Battery-powered vehicles will undoubtedly play a significant role in transportation’s zero-emissions future. That said, the exaggeration, half-truths, and outright lies some of their owners peddle are not only false but counterproductive. That is, in their fibbing, said protagonists actually reinforce anti-EV sentiment.

As for why I’m writing this now — EV-ers have been peddling the same crap since the Tesla Model S first hit the streets — I just finished a couple of weeks in a Mercedes-Benz GL450e, a most excellent plug-in hybrid with an electric-only range of between 77 and 82 kilometres. Remember that number if you will: It will prove extremely important in just a few moments.

Provisos dispensed with, here are the two falsehoods, in order of the frequency they are peddled, most often promoted by EV converts.

Falsehood 1: Plugging in at Home is more Convenient than Going to a Gas Station

The number one claim of the truly pious is how convenient plugging in at home is compared to having to go to visit a gas station. Indeed, legion are the comments celebrating never having to use a “smelly” gas pump again. Now, of course, said convenience is not available for anyone using street parking, nor for many in multi-dwelling homes and even a few townhouse complexes — like mine! — that won’t allow outside charging points. Nonetheless, for at least those with the space and wherewithal to afford it, charging at home would seem to be very convenient. Or maybe not. At the very least, there would be some who would beg to differ.

Indeed, one of the anomalies of EV prognostication is that owners of fully battery-powered automobiles seem to really hate plug-in hybrids. Now, some of that is just what Wall Street Journal writer Gerard Baker calls the “quasi-biblical belief in climate catastrophism.” Nonetheless, the largest technical complaint EV-lovers have with PHEVs is that their owners don’t plug them in overnight.

Think about that one for a moment: The same people who proclaim overnight charging at home is the ultimate in convenience also denigrate PHEVs — the only vehicles offering the choice of both home-charging and gas-station fill-ups — because a large number of their owners seem to find plugging-in less convenient than visiting a gas station every week or two.

Now, to be fair to the peddlers of this drivel, there is some truth to this rejection of plugs by PHEV owners. Numerous studies have shown that some — perhaps many — PHEV owners don’t recharge their batteries as often as they should. In fact, one report — which, according to U.S. News, uses data from Fuelly.com and the California Bureau of Automotive Repair — says that PHEV owners drive anywhere between 25 and 65 per cent fewer miles than their batteries might allow.

In other words, they’re not plugging them in. In fact, they’re paying extra for the supposed inconvenience of having to visit to the gas station, Fuelly reporting that they consume between 42 and 67 per cent more fuel than the U.S. EPA estimates they would if they optimized their charging cycles.

Actually, the numbers get worse. The typical daily commute is often listed as somewhere between 20 and 40 klicks (an official 2019 StatsCan study says we drive, on average, 8.9 kilometres each way to work). In other words, if the whole home-charging mantra were true, a diligent Mercedes-Benz GLE 450e owner — as well as those who drive Toyota RAV4 Primes — would actually only have to plug in every second night. And still a significant number of them find it more convenient to fill up at a gas station. That’s not hardly a resounding affirmation of the superiority of home-charging, is it?

Is it wrong? Is it stupid? Is it, considering the premium prices PHEVs demand compared with gas-only powered vehicles, a waste of money? Damned straight it is. What none of that averts, however, is that a significant portion of the only people with an either/or choice of plugging in at home or gassing up at a service station choose the latter over the former.

Falsehood 2: Hardly Anyone Takes Long Road Trips, so Range Doesn’t Really Matter

While not quite as common as the home-charging-is-the-bee’s-knees argument, the range-doesn’t-matter-cause-road-trips-are-so-infrequent misdirection is a close second in the EV proponent’s lexicon. Essentially, their argument is that the vast majority of automobile use is of the aforementioned commute-to-work sort, and that road trips beyond the range of the modern battery are so infrequent that complaints of range anxiety and slow charging ought to be dismissed.

Now, never mind that many of the statistics they quote don’t mean what they claim they mean. Or that this dismissal of the needs of those who do rack up big miles — especially those trailering Airstreams or boats — is not exactly going to win them converts. Or that this nonchalance will prove catastrophic on high-mileage, high-traffic holidays like Labour Day Monday. Even if we pretend that these are but minor inconveniences, this claim is in direct contradiction of the first. To wit: If plugging in is so convenient and so few people take long-distance road trips, why do we need fully battery-powered electric vehicles at all?

If, for instance, my Mercedes tester was plugged in every day — pretty much eliminating its daily emission of greenhouse gases — and I travelled, say, from Toronto to Montreal but three times a year, it would result in the elimination of almost 90 per cent of its 9.1 L/100 kilometres fuel consumption and resultant tailpipe emissions. All, I’ll remind you, without the need for the hugely expensive and — if reports of their unreliability be true — problematic public fast-charging infrastructure that is proving to be the most significant roadblock to EV adoption.

But even that doesn’t tell the whole story. It is an accepted truth — for the time being and probably for the foreseeable future — that the production of battery-powered EVs causes more CO2 to be released into the atmosphere than the manufacture of an equivalent ICE-powered vehicle. In other words, it takes some driving before a BEV truly reduces emissions compared with a gasoline-fuelled car. Of course, there is much disagreement over how far you have to drive before an EV is truly cleaner than internal combustion. But, even an optimistic estimation of, say, 25,000 kilometres would see a Model S needing seven or eight years to catch up with my PHEV’ed Mercedes. If, of course, it was “conveniently” plugged…

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