EVs for Thee but Not for Me

There’s an old joke: How do you tell the difference between a plumber and a chemist? Ask them to pronounce unionized.

I think that aptly captures how vastly different the meaning of the phrase ‘Electric Vehicle’ is to people. Some people I talk to think it’s the future, others think it’s a gross thing stuck to the bottom of their foot. I don’t know which is true, but I wanted to freeze my thoughts in time as of March 2024 so that it exists in writing. Maybe it will age badly, maybe a Car and Driver article in 2045 will say “Journalists of the time once said that  ____ and lol rekt what n00bs they were... Damn I’m real thirsty I haven’t had clean water since 2035”

I’m also going to attempt to keep it short. I realize my ‘columns’ have been Parthenons lately. So this is going to be a thought dump, rather than Dickensian prose. Sorry.

Cars are doing a lot of things. They are seating you, entertaining you, cooling and heating you, storing your luggage, storing your mum, towing your mum, your kids, your kids’ kids and their friend’s kids. They propel you, they halt you. They music you, they display important information on screen. They are a place of long distance tiredness, and a place for respite from the cold/heat. And all of those are just a few things that they do.

They also ask for some things back from you. They require you to buy them, first of all. They also require your forgiveness for their drop in value. Then they require maintenance, love and care, refuelling, storage and if possible, no crashing of any kind. 

The fact that there’s so much to cars is the reason I think we are all interested in them, and why the direction they are going is something we are all invested in, whether we are currently in the market for a new car or not.

EVs are having a tough time. Which is weird because they are better than ICE cars.

They are also worse.

The reason is because all the stuff I said above has to see a net positive across the board for them to be considered a success. And that’s a lot of things. Other stuff in our lives that gets updated are much more singular in their mission. Give or take a few small niggles, mobile phones are absolutely better with every single generation. Laptops are, too. Headphones. Wi-Fi. Microchips. Gaming consoles. Roads. Data storage. Vacuums. Even printers! Wait no. Fuck printers. They all suck. And yes, I did just have to do a speech at a Wedding in Texas and none of the Printers at the hotel worked so I AM bitter.

Ahem…So even if EVs do some things better, the net positive remains to be seen. 

Also just a quick side-note, I think the sustainability argument went the way of the Dodo after the Prius. As nice as it is to think we are saving the world with the car we buy, I think it’s now moot and that consumer behaviour when it comes to cars is based on improving our own lives. For that reason, any EV counter-sustainability arguments are equally invalid in the spirit of this column.

Even the marketing of EVs has grown stale for people. It’s the same stat we see again and again. And whilst impressive, it seems to obscure a lot of the questions we all still have.

But all that aside, I promise that if I chucked 90% of you the keys to a base Lucid Air Pure, you’d never want to give it back. Unless it was for a free fast-charge.

Consumer (non-billionaire grade) EV power isn’t addictive. Or at least, it isn’t for long. It isn’t thrilling. It’s not going to scratch the enthusiast itch if that itch is one that requires a third pedal and some revs.

But it just makes sense.

It’s so effective. It’s so easy to maneuver in car parks, so easy to judge what level of throttle is required in any given situation. The more powerful versions feel like they have an endless pit of power to draw from. I just lived with the Rivian R1S quad-motor for a week, and man does that powertrain make a GMC Yukon feel like an absolute dinosaur (Also for the first time ever I needed the Rivian’s frunk, and it came in very clutch).

We had the same feeling the first time we stepped into a Tesla Model 3 in 2018 and I still get that feeling every time I operate an EV for daily driving. So does Thomas. The moment he pulled away silently in the 2024 Model 3 we tested recently, he immediately and almost involuntarily said “It’s just lovely isn’t it.” 

EV power Just. Makes. Sense. To quote Jason Cammisa “we found a better way.”

Hell, I used to be an RC car enthusiast back in the day. For some reason the club I was part of was called ‘Backyard Bashers’ and I was bullied mercilessly for it. But the point is, back then about 2 decades ago the split between electric RC cars and gas ones was about 50/50 at the meets. Nowadays no one worth their salt gets a gas RC car. Unless of course, they live for the imperfection and the inner workings, which to be fair is also the reason why my RC car back then was gas. Even though the lawn-mower style starter never worked properly and made my fingers bleed. But it was sick, and blew smoke! Here’s a photo of it with no shell.

The point is, even the RC community, which is literally hobby-led, sees electric for the progress that it is.

But then there are the classic caveats which are all valid. The Rivian, for example, is heavy. 7,000 pounds curb. And it feels it. It can’t deal with its weight, so it rides worse than the Yukon I just mentioned. Heavy acceleration creates side to side motions that doth make my pants brown. The BMW i5, the Lotus Eletre and some other big fellas exhibited the same ‘running while holding 20 loaves of bread’ feeling when launching them.

The packaging of EVs is amazing. Cabin and trunk space is now legion compared to ICE vehicles. Apart from the Mercedes EQS, which is a turd.

EV center of gravity is game changing for low speed nimbleness and high speed perceived nimbleness. I almost stuck my first EV driving experience, a Kona Electric, into a canyon wall because it gave me some serious false confidence. The CyberTruck did the same thing.

EV’s don’t make smells.

They have less moving parts.

The powertrain, and one pedal driving means I can drive passengers with professional chauffeur levels of smoothness. The Spectre exemplified the pinnacle of this.

As a daily vehicle, they are unbeatable. I have zero problem with range when I live with the vehicles at my home. That changes when we attempt filming days/road trips.

As for those road trip moments, I recently watched James May talking about EVs and range anxiety. He quite astutely stated that it’s not range anxiety, but rather ‘recharge’ anxiety. Outside of California, chargers are still not legion enough. That, and you don’t know if they are going to be working when you arrive. You don’t know if there’s going to be a line-up. Or why some cars charge faster than others. Or why some cars charge faster at different states of charge.

Other James said that if charging stations were like petrol stations, we wouldn’t care about range so much.

He also said that our obsession with range is leading to manufacturers chasing bigger range numbers, which means bigger batteries, which means more weight, which means WORSE vehicles.

Also, it’s a boring thing to say but EV adoption is still a question of use case. Not everyone can justify a two-door sports car, but we never say “This 911 sucks ‘cos no four doors.” The same way someone living in an apartment building with no charger, or someone with no driveway could probably not justify an EV. Keep in mind, James May has owned 6 EVs as of the time of writing. He is a privileged man, after all, but he’s coming from a neutral position.

And for now, EVs are a privilege. But so is having your own car. So is a personal computer. So is an iPhone. So is a printer. JOKE, FUCK YOU PRINTERS. 

That’s how this all starts. I don’t resent it for that. And we’ve even started to see the transition from privilege to commonplace. I’ve seen talk of used Model 3s becoming the new age Nissan Altima driver in California. So the cycle is nearly complete over there. We’ll just have to see how the rest of the world responds.

And just for time capsule reasons, some other comments:

I love the super/sports cars we’ve driven that have paired electric powertrains to ICE. I’m keen to see that progress.

For enthusiasts, we have like, 60 years of used cars to pick from for our three-pedal fix. Things change. That’s okay.

PHEV’s are a great current solution assuming their price comes down a bit.

The loss of ICE-only powertrains is making for an absolute banger of a send-off across almost all the brands.

The nostalgia for the old is causing a huge rise in the number of resto-mod companies, meaning the cars you remember can be operated the way your rose-tinted glasses think they used to.

Essentially, there’s a lot of good happening here.

Apart from printers.

Fuck. Printers.