I’ve Had it With EV Misinformation

Late last year, the Canadian federal government finally solidified its plans – in line with several Canadian provinces – to phase out internal combustion engines by 2035. This announcement was the culmination of long-laid plans (both by the provinces and the feds). This latest announcement is by no means shocking, and is in line with several other countries and US states’ plans.

Naturally, conservatives are losing their fucking minds.

Misinformation about electric vehicles has always been a continuous dull roar, but in the last month it has reached an absolute fever pitch. If you ask the eternally-online crowd, they’ll tell you that EVs turn into hazardous garbage after a few years, that the batteries end up in landfills, that mining rare earths is worse than burning fossil fuels. They’ll tell you that EVs catch fire all the time, and – most recently – that they all unceremonious die on at the side of the road the moment it gets a little cold.

The fact that this is all overly-simplistic bullshit is par for the course for the right-wing rage machine. What’s truly galling is that the left and journalists at large seem to be actually drinking this Kool-Aid.

As the title says, I’ve had enough.

As the owner of a Hyundai 2022 Kona Electric, I can tell you first-hand: this is easily the best car I’ve ever owned. EVs are amazing machines, they’re the future of vehicle technology, and their adoption will go a long way towards lessening our species’ environmental impact on this planet. Unfortunately, the biggest problem with EVs is people and our flawed little meat brains – whether it’s the people whose fragile identities are linked to burning gasoline, or those who expect a machine that’s fundamentally different to an internal combustion engine (ICE) to behave exactly the same as an ICE.

As I said, my first-hand experience as an EV owner is centered around the Kona. Nevertheless, while the Kona is considered a good EV, I don’t think its so head-and-shoulders above other EVs that my personal experience is invalid.

So let’s jump into the myths, and why they’re bullshit:

EVs Stop Working When it Gets Cold!!!

Let’s start with the “freshest” turd. No, EVs don’t suddenly die just because its cold. However, their batteries do perform worse, and you will use up additional energy heating the car. How much worse your batteries perform depends on the exact model and how cold we’re talking: a cheapie EV in -30°C weather could potentially lose 50% of its range. My Kona is on the upper end of the scale, but it has a top range of between 450-500km. So if you regularly make extreme long-haul trips in arctic conditions, you might be in trouble.

What this most likely boils down to is going to be a recurring theme in this: people expecting to treat their EV like an ICE, insomuch as they can fill it up in a few minutes. When you first own an EV, you need to get into the habit of thinking about charging – from my experience, this was pretty easy to do and didn’t take much adjustment.

However, it seems like people who live in places where it doesn’t often get very cold are blindsided when they need to spend more charging for less range. Couple this with a person who regularly lets their battery hover around 20% and you end up with the kind of scenes that showed up in Texas recently. This segues well into the next argument…

There Aren’t Enough Chargers and Lack of Them is Going to be a Disaster!!!

There is a lack of public charging infrastructure, and that’s concerning.

The solution is to – y’know – build more chargers.

Thankfully here in BC, a network of level 3 fast chargers is already well-maintained by our public electric utility, BC Hydro. They’re not overly expensive to use and are positioned to help travellers to charge quickly on road trips. Chargers maintained by institutions, business, and municipalities also exist. There should be more, but it’s a start.

Contrast this to predominantly conservative jurisdictions where officials intend to make “EVs are bad because of a lack of chargers” into a self-fulfilling prophecy – either by banning public chargers or forcing them to offer free gas as well. I don’t think I have to explain what a stupid argument this is.

Furthermore, because providing EV chargers is a public good rather than a lucrative venture, American EV charger companies do a shit job of it, and we all know how Republicans feel about public corporations.

Of course, those of us who are lucky enough to have a garage or driveway can charge there, right? Unless…

EVs Are Going to Overload our Entire Electric Grid!!!

I’m already tired of writing this. So very tired.

Yes, a majority of people charging EVs at home will necessitate more grid capacity and studies into how the power can be produced. However, as my electrical engineering friend likes to say, a grid operator who isn’t working towards continuous, incremental growth of capacity probably isn’t doing their job.

Second, I think a lot of this fallacy is predicated on the idea that level 2 charging (240V, typically between 20-40A) is “the best kind of charging”, and level 1 (120v, between 7-15A) is “bad, slow, and useless”. This is itself a fallacy which is predicated on people wanting to treat their EVs like ICEs and “fill them up” as quickly as possible.

But we humans now have a lot of experience with lithium-chemistry batteries – from phones and laptops and tools and EVs – and this has imparted some simple wisdom about usage habits to prolong their longevity: Slow, shallow charging. That is, charge the batteries slowly, and neither fill nor drain them completely unless needed (ie: most of the time you should keep capacity between 20-80%). This will greatly increase the life of batteries (if you have a newer iPhone or MacBook you might notice it does this automatically).

With this in mind, for those that have a dedicated space to park their EV overnight, level 1 is the way to go (when it comes to multi-unit residences, BC has also required stratas to undertake electrical studies to plan their EV charging capability). This also has the benefit of not incurring the cost of installing a 240V circuit required by level 2 chargers. My garage has a dedicated 15A outlet (for a built-in vacuum system that no longer exists) which has proven plenty adequate for overnight (level 1) charging.

This brings us back to our original point – if I’m using 15A to charge, why are we not also having a moral panic about the increase in household dishwashers? Or to get more incisive, portable air conditioners have become increasingly popular as the climate warms, and they also suck up a whole circuit’s worth of juice. Yet no one seems to be raising alarms about air conditioner use? Hm…

When Your EV Dies the Battery Will Rot in a Landfill!!!

Of all the misinformation that is spread about EVs, there could not be a more egregious and outright lie than this one.
That’s not how it works – that’s not how any of this works.

The extraction of elemental metals like lithium and cobalt is resource-intensive, and there’s a discussion to be had about how we minimize the harm – both socially and environmentally – of that extraction process.

But here’s the thing: once those minerals are out of the ground and refined, they’re too valuable to throw away. Tossing lithium batteries in a landfill is literally tossing semi-precious metals into the garbage.

Lithium (and associated metals like cobalt) in batteries are not “used up” in anyway by repeated use. Rather, the structures that make up the cells break down, and thus their ability to hold charge slowly decreases.

When a lithium battery outlives its useful life and enters the recycling stream, it’s pounced upon by battery recyclers. That’s because reprocessing the lithium and cobalt from used-up batteries is way cheaper and way less environmentally impactful that getting the elements out of the ground in the first place. There are numerous videos online of this process in action. Not only that, but studies have shown that the recycled material actually works better than newly-extracted material.

If you gently rub a couple of brain cells together, these realizations will combine into another epiphany: with proper recycling of lithium-based batteries, we can reach a point where we will extract increasingly-less minerals from the Earth and rely on a continuous cycle of reprocessing our existing cache of elements. So while EVs have an initial environmental impact, that impact can be lessened over time.

EVs Are Heavier and Will Cause More Lethal Accidents!!!

Yes: EV batteries make them heavier vehicles. My Hyundai Kona EV is about 700 pounds heavier than its ICE Kona counterpart. That’s about 1.23 times as heavy.

However, a Ford F150 with four-wheel-drive is over 2,500 pounds heavier than my Kona EV (see here, under “Base Curb Weight”).

Given the choices, which vehicle would you least want to be struck by?

We Should be Focusing on Better Transit, Not EVs

Obviously this comes more from the left than the car-loving right. I won’t get argue with this other than it’s not the reality many of us live in. Yes: we need more and better transit. But I’d argue that “transit vs EVs” is a false dichotomy. Cities don’t need to be built around cars – I can drive my EV around the ‘burbs and the boonies on weekends and take commuter rail into the city for work on weekdays (or better yet, let your employees work from home if that’s an option and reduce the necessary capacity for travel all around).

We can have BOTH public charging AND transit infrastructure.

After 10 Years Your EV’s Battery Will be Degraded and Your EV will be Junk!!!

Ignoring for a moment that any car that is 10 years old or older is going to experience increasingly expensive maintenance issues, here’s an entire recent reddit thread of people with 10+ year-old EVs that reputedly perform fine. Your mileage may vary, depending on overall use.

What it’s Actually Like Owning and Driving an EV

It’s great. Really great.

Obviously EVs are an investment and out of the reach of a lot of folks in our current economic climate. My suspicion is that as we transition away from ICEs, the cost of EVs will continue to go down and come into reach of the general car-owning public at large. My wife and I saved up for our EV and I’m glad we did.

It performs really well. It’s zippy and smooth: a real pleasure to drive. We charge it overnight in our garage (level 1), or at my parents-in-law (they have a level 2). Sometimes my wife charges it at her workplace. In a pinch we could pay to use one of BC Hydro’s nearby fast chargers (level 3).

The service so far is cheap. Way cheaper than our ICE vehicle. We don’t have to change the oil. And obviously, we don’t pay for gas.

One additional cost is that we have an insurance policy for our battery specifically in case of damage. The policy is good for two years and though its underwritten by a different insurer than ICBC (BC’s public auto insurance company – another of those damnable Canadian crown corporations!) the adjustment and repair would be done through ICBC’s facilities/affiliates.

Conclusion

I could spend all day debunking stupid EV myths, the above are just the most common I’ve heard. We live in an age where we are awash in misinformation, and simultaneously lack the ability to do basic research and assess sources. Below are a bunch of links – from electric grid operators, the EPA, – debunking common EV myths.

UK National Grid: Busting the myths and misconceptions about electric vehicles
https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/electric-vehicles-myths-misconceptions

US EPA: Electric Vehicle Myths
https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths

SaskPower: EV Mythbusters
https://www.saskpower.com/about-us/Our-Company/Blog/2021/Myth-Electric-vehicles-cant-handle-our-cold-Saskatchewan-winters

BCHydro: 9 EV myths busted
https://www.bchydro.com/news/conservation/2021/ev-myths-busted.html

SciShow: Are electric cars more environmentally friendly?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_RRKePSjL4

Image by frimufilms on Freepik