A journalist who rented an electric car for a week ended her experiment sold — but on gas-powered cars, not EVs — as she came to the conclusion that she would never own an EV unless she had no other option.
Writer Stella Morabito recently wrote of her electric vehicle experience and it wasn’t a good one.
“While planning a week-long trip to the Seattle area recently, I wondered aloud to my husband if we should rent a Tesla. Neither of us had ever driven an electric vehicle before,” Morabito wrote on Monday. “The price difference between the long-range Tesla Model 3 and a standard mid-size gas-fueled vehicle was pretty negligible.”
But after ending her experiment, Morabito concluded, “After test-driving one for an entire week (instead of just 30 minutes,) we learned we will never buy a Tesla or any EV as long as we have the option of gas-powered vehicles or even hybrids.”
Her first issue was one of the most well-known issues with EVs. It’s a problem called “range anxiety.” That is where drivers feel intensely worried over how much time their EV will remain operable during their drive and their fear of being stranded if they can’t find a place to plug in and charge up as their battery comes inexorably closer to its depletion zone.
“In the Tesla, stress is a given. The battery drains faster than you might think,” the car renter wrote.
She added that the lower range she experienced in reality over the airy claims of the distance she could travel that the manufacturer told her “confirms EVs are a poor choice for road trips unless you enjoy the risk of being stranded.”
Morabito also found that being forced to constantly be on the hunt for suitable charging stations, and then being stuck there for an extended period of time as her car recharged, was also a vexing issue.
Morabito said that one worry was the sort of “amenities close by” to charging stations since they had 30 minutes or more to waste as they waited for their car to charge.
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That long wait also added another worry; personal safety. She said she and her husband worried if they would be safe just sitting there for so much time, stranded and unable to get away until their car had enough juice to operate.
“I got the uneasy feeling that many of these unsupervised locations — and the length of time required to be there — were crime scenes waiting to happen,” she wrote.
She also found it shocking that texting while driving was “required” in an EV because a single driver has to be using a touch screen and search features while looking for a charging station. This seemed like a safety issue right away, especially since police departments and government agencies are always warning people “Don’t Text and Drive.”
She next discovered that even the windshield wipers were a danger.
The wipers, which are supposed to be automatic once rain is detected, can also be turned off to save power. Hers were turned off and she was forced to fiddle with the touch screen system while she was driving when it started raining to figure out how to turn them back on. This also presented a distracted driving danger.
Finally, Morabito discovered that some charging stations actually cost her as much to charge up her EV battery pack as she would have spent pumping gas into a normal car.
Morabito summed up her experience, saying, “But pigs will fly before I buy an EV based on my Tesla experience/experiment. This conclusion is not based on a one-hour test drive but on an entire week of driving in an EV-friendly part of the country… But all in all, it was too much hassle and too much anxiety. I’m now totally sold on gas-powered vehicles.”
The writer is far from the only person who has come to this conclusion. Even Ford’s own CEO found that EVs simply are not ideal for long trips.
Ford CEO Jim Farley decided to use one of his company’s top EVs, the F150 Lightning, to take a long trip down America’s Route 66. But in the end, it was a “reality check” for him and news to him that EVs aren’t ready for prime time.
Farley found out that charging the truck was “pretty challenging” while on the open road and added, “It was a really good reality check of the challenges of what our customers go through and the importance of fast charging.”
Prior to Farley’s realization, another journalist set out to test an EV for a long drive and found the experience turning into a nightmare when they ran their truck to zero battery power and were met with a long list of complications trying to recharge. Even towing the car became problematic when there wasn’t enough juice to free the parking brake.
Another journalist gave a Kia EV6 a try for a long drive in March between Michigan and Florida but found that winter weather and her need to use the heater inside the cab made serious cuts in the distance she could drive between charges.
She discovered it was either drive longer distances and freeze as she drove or turn on the heater and have to recharge many more times than the manufacturer claimed she would have to for the distance she was covering.
Other “benefits” are chimerical, as well. Some journalists decided to test President Joe Biden’s theory that you could use your EV to power your home during a power outage.
But after looking into how that could be facilitated, they realized it would cost them $18,000 to install the systems in their home that would allow them to run the place off their car battery. That is simply not an economical move.
In all, many of the claims of the wonders of an electric vehicle simply don’t pan out in real life. And hard-earned experience is uncovering the myths pushed by government cheerleaders, including Biden, and car makers who want to sell the EVs that are sitting unbought at dealerships all across the nation.
