It’s easy to tell other people how to live their lives. It’s easy to say to people you don’t know that they should buy electric cars in the blissful abstraction of the Internet. Reality is a lot harder. And the reality, according to a recent study, is that owning an electric car is difficult for those who don’t have access to a home charger.
Yes, we’re going to beat up the universe for not providing enough chargers, because the big concern most EV owners have is that they can’t charge easily. Specifically, we’re going to beat up Electrify America, which may be one of the companies that has, ironically, done the most damage to electrification in America.
Who else is damaging the move towards electrification? The American Petroleum Institute and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, both of whom are suing to stop the Biden Administration’s new rules on emissions. Rules that, I’d point out, were cut back fairly dramatically to make it easier for automakers. This is also a little ironic given that the Biden Administration has quietly been great for America’s oil producers.
Whether accurate or not, Elon Musk is the one individual who usually gets credit for electrifying America and he wants to get paid for it. According to Musk, that’s gonna happen.
Owners Are Cranky About Electric Charging
I should clarify right off the bat that this survey is from global consulting firm McKinsey & Co. and some people have thoughts about McKinsey that are not charitable. The survey, however, sounds correct. (I mean, McKinsey may have aided a pharmaceutical company in the creation of an opioid crisis that wrecked lives and communities, but the firm’s advice was at least accurate. Terrible, but accurate). [Ed Note: My view and Matt’s don’t align on McKinsey. I think, though the company has a checkered history, it also does a lot of good, helping struggling organizations optimize and, in some cases, stay afloat. (A close family member of mine works for McKinsey). But I get it. -DT].
The data we have comes via a survey done by McKinsey’s Center for Future Mobility, which I have not seen, but was viewed by Automotive News:
Twenty-nine percent of EV owners across the globe said they’re likely to reverse course. That hit 46 percent in the U.S. Consumers globally said their top concern was the inadequacy of the public charging infrastructure. They also cited concerns with high costs of ownership and detrimental impact to long-distance trips.
“I didn’t expect that,” Philipp Kampshoff, leader of the consulting firm’s Center for Future Mobility, told Automotive News. “I thought, ‘Once an EV buyer, always an EV buyer.’ ”
That sounds right to me. Our non-Tesla EV charging infrastructure is bad. I was at an EVGo station yesterday and it was packed, which makes sense because there are only two non-Tesla stations near me and they’re always clogged with Uber drivers and the wait times are terrible. It’s a big reason why I’m not getting a PHEV or an EV.
I also think this is where Tesla has been successful. The Supercharger network is great. Up-time is really high, and because it’s only served Tesla cars up until recently, issues have been minimal. Tesla also went to a lot of prime spots for charging early and won that battle.
If only there were another company that had a huge amount of money and a big lead that could have provided an alternative to Tesla. If only it was actually owned by a car company…
In Ultimate Rebuke Of Electrify America, Porsche Adds ChargePoint Capability
I’ve already gone full batting practice on Electrify America, so I’ll just summarize for those who are new to the awfulness that is Electrify America. Some smart lawyer or planner at Volkswagen convinced a judge that, instead of just turning over all those billions of dollars in Dieselgate fines to the government, the company would take a couple of those billions and build out an EV charging network.
That network became Electrify America. It could have been the alternative to Tesla’s Supercharger network, but instead, it became a laughing stock. I’ve rarely been to an Electrify America charging station where everything just worked. Between credit card readers failing and chargers freezing up, it’s been a bad experience for myself and many other people I know who have roadtripped electric cars.
This failure led Ford and, eventually, Volkswagen to agree to adopt Tesla’s NACS charging standard for future vehicles. And now, there’s this, from Porsche:
Porsche Cars North America, Inc. (PCNA) today announced it has signed an agreement with ChargePoint, a leading provider of charging solutions for electric vehicles (EVs), which will enable access to its charging network within the Porsche Charging Service. The collaboration will increase the number of chargers available to Porsche customers to more than 86,000 across the United States.
“We passionately believe in choice, and as a result we are constantly looking for opportunities to enhance our customer experience and expand charging options,” said Timo Resch, President and CEO of PCNA, “this is a significant step in that direction, and well-timed as we look forward to the arrival of both the new Taycan arriving at Porsche Centers this summer but also the all-new Macan Electric later this year.”
On the one hand, this was probably inevitable. Electrify America, for whatever reason, was unable to get big enough to serve all VW brands, and most buyers like being able to just connect to a charger and not have to mess with a bunch of different apps. By integrating ChargePoint, Porsche owners will be able to connect to a charger via the My Porsche app and not have to fuss. I suspect this isn’t the last company that’ll get integrated into Porsche’s system.
On the other hand… lol.
The Oil Lobby Wants To Save You From Electric Cars
It’s important to reiterate that there’s no specific federal mandate saying that car companies can’t sell gas-powered cars. There’s a formula for emissions/mileage (well, two formulas, sort of) that automakers have to meet, and the federal government leaves what that technology is up to automakers. Can automakers meet those goals without selling a lot of electric cars? Probably not.
I mention this because this is why two oil and gas lobbying groups are suing the Biden EPA’s new, kinda relaxed regulations.
“Today, we are taking action to protect American consumers, U.S. manufacturing workers and our nation’s hard-won energy security from this intrusive government mandate,” API Senior Vice President and General Counsel Ryan Meyers said, voicing a common refrain from opponents of electric vehicles.
[…]
“EPA has exceeded its congressional authority with this regulation that will eliminate most new gas cars and traditional hybrids from the U.S. market in less than a decade,” Meyers added. “We look forward to making our case in court.”
BTW, because of President Biden’s policies, these companies are all more profitable than ever. We have a system of government that allows this to happen and so these groups can exercise their rights as they see fit, but I’d just point out that automakers seem fairly happy with the revised regulations.
Elon Musk On Track For Biggest Payday Ever
Both Tesla shareholder resolutions are currently passing by wide margins!
♥️♥️ Thanks for your support!! ♥️♥️ pic.twitter.com/udf56VGQdo
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 13, 2024
I’m not sure what to make of the tweet above, but it seems like Elon Musk is confident he’s going to get the biggest paycheck in human history. Will a Delaware judge allow the company to leave to avoid enforcing its judgment? That remains to be seen.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Man, this song from post-punk Irish band Fontaines D.C. is extremely good and I can’t wait to hear the rest of this album, which comes out at the end of summer. Also, what is this video?
The Big Question
Does this study sound right to you?
I kind of get it. There are a lot more EVs in my rural town(I just saw a Rivian the other day, and we have a good bit of Tesla/Kia/Hyundai EVs around all things considered. Like 1 out of 10 cars). There’s currently only a Tesla supercharger and Electrify America station 30 miles away from my town. There’s a couple of chargers getting installed at a Pilot travel center 10 miles away though. The next closest charger from the former is 50 miles away. It’s not great and we have Interstate 70 going through the area. My town has multiple exits on it. Pretty pathetic to me.
Uh huh…Mckinsey…EVs….Musk…..electrify….kkeeewwlll…..
More importantly, let’s talk about that music video:
it feels like it was strongly inspired by something like the film, Holy Motors. Which perhaps is less an explanation of what’s going on, and just an observation about similarities between the content and the general ‘storyline’. I think there’s material enough to probably take interpretations a few directions. Also, I strongly advocate for viewing Holy Motors if you’ve yet seen it.
Otherwise, that video was the most post-punk part of the whole song.
I don’t understand why Fontaines DC are considered post punk and I also don’t understand what the hell all the hype is about with them. I’ve been hearing about how they’re the next big thing in indie rock for the last 3-5 years but whenever I listen to them I’m wholly unimpressed. The instrumentation is bland, the lyrics don’t make a lot of sense, and I’m sorry but the frontman can’t sing. At all.
And not in a fun and memorable way like Lemmy or Louis Armstrong or something. In a droning, monotonous way. Now get off my lawn.
McKinsey gave us Pete Buttigieg and for that alone I will never forgive them….
Can you outline specifically what bothers you about Pete Buttigieg?
He’s a Neoliberal hack who has very few actual beliefs whose entire life and identity are built around a downright weird drive to be president. He’s also (likely) a former CIA spook, he did a bunch of shitty/shady consulting work, and his resume is extraordinarily slim for someone to run for president/somehow find his way into a major cabinet role.
It’s like he was created in a lab to be the ultimate neoliberal/corporate shill. I can’t stand neoliberal politicians because they’re as big of an obstacle to real, systemic change as the far right it…because they sell you a bunch of twice warmed over half measures while convincing you things can’t actually be better.
I believe they can, and I support politicians who agree.
Why don’t EV chargers work like gas pumps? I have only used one once (we normally just charge at home) and I had to call tech support to make it work. I want to roll up swipe my credit card charge and go!
They do work like gas pumps – at least the EVGo chargers I have used in SoCal did.
That hardly sounds like disruptive technology. It needs to be different even if it’s less convenient
I have never seen a DC Fast Charger that did not accept credit cards outside of Tesla and my area has a wide variety of options for charging equipment. One of EAs issues is that their credit card processor on the machine is down regularly which pushes the app which is a pain.
Yeah, I suspect some of the issues with chargers would be solved by not requiring a stupid app for each charging brand.
but then how can they steal and sell all your data??
3 reasons
1. Charging is a money losing business so they want to reduce costs. Most apps have users load funds in large blocks of $20 or more so the charge network only pays one swipe fee instead of one for every charge
2. The app is used to control and monitor the charge. The expectation is the driver will go do something while the car charges and use the app to check status
3. They want the data.
However this will change in the future as now to get federal funds for chargers the charger has to have a credit card point of sale interface and a screen.
I’d want to see their data before making anything of it.
Who was sampled? Talk to surburban home owners that can have a charge at home, and I bet the number is higher. Talk to surburban home owners that can charge at home and don’t commute much and the number should be really high. Talk to urban home owners/renters in higher density housing and they’ll rate it lower.
For me, EV is perfect. Even if I was commuting every day, the cost to charge overnight is a fraction of what my gas cost would be. I’ll likely replace my current car soon, and it’ll be replaced with another EV.
But I totally get it being a PITA for folks that needed to depend on public charging. It *SUCKS*. (It’s bad enough that tinfoil hatted me wouldn’t be surprised if VW intentionally duffed it up to minimize their spend)
900 people in flyover country who answer calls from unknown numbers – That’s your sample group.
“We visited a diner in the middle of South Dakota to find out what real Americans think”
Even if the sample size was from the Midwest, almost 69M people live there. Their opinions are as valid as anyone else’s, and the simple fact is that there is little to no EV infrastructure in many places throughout the Midwest. It’s perfectly understandable and reasonable for lack of charging infrastructure to be a reason for people to avoid buying an EV in an area of the country that requires lots of driving.
The problem with polls is that sample sizes are incredibly small, and the people who take polls are generally low-information people – as measured by their propensity to answer random phone calls from people they don’t know.
Sure 69 Million people is a large number of people – but that number of people does not outweigh the other 264 Million people in the rest of the country.
I’m not saying it outweighs the rest of the country at all, my point is that their situations should still be taken into consideration and not written off.
Dang it. But we aren’t talking about 69 million people. We are talking about a few hundred people. If this data was based off the views of 69 million people that would, for sure, be valuable!
I’m not arguing that this is a worthwhile study – my issue is with the comment essentially stating that the opinions of Midwest residents are somehow less valid.
But you miss the point! They live in ugly flyover country and might have differing political opinions, and as such they should not be considered people! Coastal Elite-ing is hard work, man
I think his point was more that the wrong people are being polled – wrong because they answered the phone to be polled in the first place, not bad because they live in flyover country.
Also, his comments are hedging that it was a small sample size in a rather particular location.
For this “study” to have any validity, it should at the very least include people living in all different types of areas (urban, suburban, rural, etc) and should include a large number of people surveyed.
I’m not a midwesterner (worse, I’m a blue-dot urban southerner). The assertion that the respondents may be low-information MAY be true or might not, but for most reputable polls you can examine the cross-tabs on the sample population and they tend to show that the survey taker tries to build the sample representative of USA as a whole, so usually weighted geographic diversity, education levels, etc.
I went to an Ivy League for my masters degree andI have a wonderful BA from a state school (way better education experience than the Ivy).. I’m a pretty voracious reader and consume a pretty diverse set of news sources. I also probably participate in 4-5 voter polls during each state and federal election cycle. I’m just one member of any sample group, but I don’t think I’d be classified as low-information and I don’t think I’m a complete outlier.
The reason I have gone out of my way over the years to take part in surveys (I was even a Nielsen household for a while) is that I know that lots of people have a belief that only people with no life and nothing between the ears participate. I don’t think that’s true and there’s data out there that supports it. Also, I don’t think it’s too much of a terrible imposition to take 10-15 minutes out of a day 4-5 times.a year to be a data point that might help my voice be heard.
Also, if examine the crosstabs or sample info or actual questions, most polls are garbage, sadly, even the ones that are cool enough to ask me my thoughts 🙂
Why? Have you ever been there? Midwesterners can’t even cook food correctly. I have family there. If you so much as bring a salt shaker into my uncle’s house suddenly everything is “too spicy.” If you don’t boil vegetables for less than 30 minutes they are undercooked.
The midwest is a mostly horrible place full of mostly horrible people. They should not get the outsized political power that they have.
Agreed on outsized political power, but the same is also true of most New England states. The disproportionate representation in the Senate and Electoral College is worthy of discussion, however I shouldn’t be starting a debate on a Friday night.Perhaps we should recognize that Vermont has roughly 650,000, Rhode Island a little over 1,000,000 whereas Missouri has 6,100,000, Wisconsin around 6,000,000, so the outsized political power is not just a Midwestern problem.
I think you are making the same point Urban Runabout is, but with a different conclusion. If your sample comes entirely from a part of the country where long drives are a regular occurrence, it’s going to skew the results. I think Urban Runabout is pointing out that a poll entirely focused in that region is potentially going to be different from one that pulls from a variety of geographical regions.
It’d also be a problem if they only polled people In California. Or if they only polled areas with access to cheap electricity.
Surveys are inherently limited. Without access to the data, we don’t really know if this is skewed toward the experiences of one group of people or another.
I bought an e-Golf last year, and if I needed to replace that car would go electric again, likely on another e-Golf. I would do this because I can charge at home, and have only used public charging 3 times ( 2 @EVGO, and 1 @ Chargepoint.) We also have a GX460, so that gets used for road trip duty. The e-Golf get used by the wife on the daily, and then get used on the weekend for anything less than 50 miles away, which is almost every weekend trip.
I am aware my situation is not everyone’s, and if you do not have the ability to charge at home, the infrastructure is not there. Also who wants to spend 1-2 hours sitting at a charger waiting multiple times a week?
You would have to be driving quite a bit in a modern EV to be at a charger multiple times a week.
@12000 mile per year the average distance per week would be 230 miles. Maybe 1 charge will work, but most likely a person would be visiting twice in a week.
I think the average mileage bumped to 13500 so it would be a bit more. This is part of the reason that while I think having more DC fast charging is great, we need way more L2 charging at workplaces and destinations. That also makes PHEV more attractive.
Correct. I have even heard 15k is the new average, but like to underestimate in cases like this. The fact is if someone doesn’t have home or work charging they will likely spend a decent chunk of time charging or waiting to charge. I can totally understand some people not wanting to continue doing that in a new vehicle. This mostly goes out the window if you can charge at home, or work.
The one chargepoint charger I used was on a overnight trip to New Jersey, on a total of 80 miles one way. The charger was at the Revlon Corporate campus in Edison NJ. It was a 220v charger, and was free (only while charging). This corporate center had 3 chargers, for probably 300+ employees. At 220v it took my 38kwh battery 3.5 hrs to charge, so if an employee with a tesla plugged in during work they would likely be there all day. More chargers, and more access are the only way to make EVs functional for more people.
I just bought a 2016 e-Golf and have the exact same use case scenario. I drive it about 50 miles a day round trip. It charges full or almost full on a standard outlet. We take it shopping and shorter trips on the weekends as well to minimize our gas usage and expense.
That’s great! I agree with the Autopian about buying hybrids, however if you hybrid the fleet instead, it can be a lot cheaper, as e-golf prices are pretty damn great! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Agreed. Price was the biggest factor in the reason I bought it. My payment is less than the amount of gas I was putting in Fusion.
I spent less on home charging over one year, then I spend gassing up the GX in a month. We will often go a few days between charges too.
I just went on my lunch hour & plugged in for .25 a kwh and got 8 more miles for $.44. My calculations of cost for home charging is like $12.00 a month lol
So you’re charging on 120v outlet? Man … I wouldn’t be driving more than 40 miles a week. (Maybe I just need an E-bike, eh?)
I typically have 15-20 miles of range leftover by the time I get home. It takes 12-14 hours to get a full charge & I’m almost always full by the time I leave.
I’ve found that when the battery between 20-80% you get about 5 miles of range per hour of charging. The final 20% can seem to take a long time, but it’s almost not as necessary either. Plus 110v charging will let the battery last far longer then DC fast charging.
Someone who’s driving that much and using public chargers should probably stick with an EV that would let them make more like one 20m stop a week. It’s 2024, not 2016, and there’s a decent number of options for that. The e-Golf is basically a compliance car, and definitely has its niche, but I wouldn’t consider it representative of current options.
I guess I’m surprised by that number in so much as it indicates that a large number of EV purchasers seemed unaware of the logistical challenges they were buying into.
Road tripping a Tesla in areas without Superchargers looks like it could be, ahem, interesting. They need a CCS to Tesla adapter. The major DCFC networks state that only the official $250 Tesla adapter is supported. Add that onto the cost. Plus a mobile connector at another $250 for plugging in if the destination is a DCFC desert. At least they still come with a free J1772 adapter.
I’m not at all surprised by the purchasers being unaware of the challenges given the standard EV narrative that it’s all sunshine, roses, and buckets of saved money.
I recently took a roadtrip across the country and back in a Tesla. I was curious/trepidatious about the first leg of the Tesla trip because it included seeing the eclipse in totality — ie, that part of the drive was during an event with many more cars on the road. Most charging stops were perfectly fine with no wait, but two stops weren’t. The worst of those two had me waiting about 40 minutes for a free stall. (Other cars lined up in the queue behind me, and those probably had to wait at least an hour.) After the eclipse we continued across the country and back — never any waiting. Anyway, the point being that if it’s not a special occasion / holiday with extra traffic, Tesla’s infrastructure works great. If there is extra traffic, it still works fine for most stops, from that experience.
My kids took a similar drive in a Bolt a couple years ago using EA’s network, BTW. (It wasn’t during any higher-traffic event, so can’t comment on that scenario.) For them, there were few issues. There were indeed occasional dead chargers and a resulting short wait just once or twice. It wasn’t as terrible as I had expected from all the bad press.
Note that most of the time lost with charging is made up for with the time saved not dealing with oil changes, brake pad changes, smogging, etc.
From my experiences driving EVs the past six years (and ICE vehicles the prior 30ish years), I would definitely never go back to an ICE vehicle.
r.e. McKinsey – many people outside the consulting world don’t understand what their role is and see them as some kind of boogeyman that pulls all the strings. In reality, management consultants are often brought in to provide an outside imprimatur on the actions company management wanted to take in the first place. Or, management may not be able to/not want to follow their advice and when the project ultimately fails it’s convenient to have someone to blame. This is not always the case, but many times McKinsey is being paid to be a fall guy essentially. In still other cases, McKinsey may have provided bad advice and/or engaged in shady practices. Hard to say which is which sometimes.
As it pertains to this study, I don’t think it matters that much as the follow up actions are in a way self-evident. If you don’t own a Tesla and can’t charge at home, it’s bleak out there right now. Someone claiming we *don’t* need to improve the infrastructure and add more chargers would have to back up that extraordinary claim with extraordinary evidence.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, unless and until there is a charging speed breakthrough, EVs simply aren’t ready for wide use. Find your favorite queuing theory simulator and see the effect of 15 minute charge times (and that’s really a best case right now) on how many chargers are needed in a location to avoid long lines if all cars were EVs. Then do the math on how much power would need to be available at these locations compared the power use by gas stations. It needs to take the same time to charge from 10-80% as it does to fill up a gas car of similar size. My car has an 11 gallon tank and it takes less than 2 minutes on a slow pump to fill it. That gives me ~400 miles of range.
It doesn’t help that many EV fans exaggerate many aspects of how good EV ownership is and how bad ICEV ownership is.
I had one fan telling me it actually takes me 10 minutes to refill my car and that people are just bad at judging time.
Yeah I’ve had people online try to tell me that too – pure gaslighting in the original meaning of the term. That’s why I now know how long it takes because I timed it with the phone stopwatch several times when filling up.
I also love being told by childless 20-somethings how great it is to relax for 45 minutes at a charging station and stretch your legs…
Exact same experience here. I told him that I listen to the radio and oftentimes the same song is still on when I start filling and when I finish. He didn’t believe me.
Don’t get me started on how much they think maintenance costs.
When I was a childless 20 something, I drove straight to anything. I was like the sole pilot of a bomber in the SAC returning from a show of force over the Soviet Union during nuclear tensions where everyone else on the flight was incapacitated from some mystery problem. As a childless 40 something, I don’t do long runs anymore, but if old Iron Ass got called back for one last secret mission over enemy territory, I’d run it the same way, this time with energy drinks.
I don’t think any EVs come with a CRM 114 discriminator, you’ve gotta go turbofan for that.
I wish I could post a photo of me in a boonie hat on my rocket bike that looks close enough to a bomb to pass for Slim Pickens’ last ride.
I still try and stop as little as possible. I want to get to my destination and put my feet up, not do it at a Sheetz. I arrive dehydrated and starving, but I arrive as fast as possible.
I’m totally fine with stopping on road trips; I just want to be the one deciding where to stop, not the charging network. Most of the chargers I see on trips are in little plazas with crappy fast food options instead of the neat local places I like to stop at on long drives.
Atleast in my case, I would also count the time getting into gas station. Where as my trip end most of the days to home. So plugging the car into charger takes li 15 secs. Whereas going to fuel station is about 10 minute extra hurdle (not in the my normal routes).
Disclaimer: we drive about 40tkm a year, which most are sub 300km days. In finnish winter the winter stuff isn’t great on roadtrips, but with 2 small kids we anyho have to stop every 2 hours. And in our neck of the woods service stations (where the charging stuff also is) are pretty epic. And normally we use more time for the kid stuff than it takes to charge.
The worst case are our (adult only) winter sport trips to skiing/climbing. They are usually optimized so, that we drive 7-9 hours on friday after work to norway, climb/ski the saturday and half of sunday and bomb back. Not really working scenario with EV where it would easily add about 2-3 hours to our trip/direction.
I pay at the pump. Literally under 5 minutes
Sure, but you have to go there. In most cases it takes time.
In our case we used to go to fuel station about 1-2 times a week. And lets say 1. And It would take about 10 minute extra time to go there (deviation from route + actual fueling). So 52*10 minutes is 520 minutes a year, or about 9 hours. I’ve generally been about 8 times on public charger during last year, with longest being about 60 minutes (kids eating…) and on average about 30 minutes (just coffee or fast kids). So about 4 hours or so.
Also kudos for the username.
Gas once every two weeks or more for me, leave station, turn right and an immediate left and I’m at my gym. Piece of cake. No garage, just carport at my condo, so no charging available.
The fuel stations are along the route. There’s no need to go out of one’s way to find a gas pump. If the argument against gas is that it takes longer than plugging in a car at home, that’s a pretty flimsy argument. All it takes is one event of forgetting to plug in at home because the dog ran out of the garage when you opened it, or your kid’s just hurled apple sauce on the door panel, and any of that miniscule time savings is far out the window anyway.
I don’t think it’s a flimsy argument, I don’t claim it’s the same for all (fe my brother lives quite far from gas station due having a farm, and seriously considers getting EV) and I opened my case which definitely saves time and money above. Perhaps yours don’t and in case where one cannot home charge, the whole case becomes reversed.
I worked for a company that commissioned a McKinsey study, they turned in a phone book thickness document filled with recommendations, and the executive summary referred to us the “least innovative organization” they had ever examined. Upper management selected a few of the cheapest and easiest ideas to implement, and threw the rest in the paper shredder. Basically, the parts used were to close all regional offices and consolidate everyone at headquarters, lay off a bunch of support staff, and add the word “impact” to the titles of all departments (so Human Resources became HR Impact, etc). They went bankrupt not too long after
If you’re talking about the portion of the population that road-trips everywhere and can’t charge at home, sure.
An EV is absolutely ready for wide adoption for specific buyers: Charge at home, only commute a short distance to work.
And since the majority of people do live within a short distance to their work AND spend their evenings watching NetFlix, there is a LOT of people that are a great market for an EV.
They’re just hung up on range anxiety and recharge points without actually understanding how they use their car. The whole “but what if I wanted to go on a road trip?” portion of the population that hasn’t gone on a road trip in a decade.
I will be clear though… there are MANY people who should not buy an EV. And that’s ok. That’s why ICE cars are still available.
This is where I think DT is right on the money – he had an article or maybe it was a comment about how people buy cars based on what they can do, not what they do every day. I’d pair this thought with Mercedes’ article about how cars represent freedom to say that it’s borderline irrelevant to people what they do daily with the car if they can imagine a situation where it wouldn’t work and/or feel restricted by not being theoretically able to take a road trip easily.
Most people don’t have multiple cars and so their car needs to do everything they might do. Right now an EV makes sense if you can charge at home, the range is greater than your round trip commute, and you have an ICE car for roadtrips/towing. Personally I’m ok with it if it continues to be an option for people where it makes sense but if it’s going to be (effectively) mandated, it ain’t ready.
This analogy explains my wife exactly. I have a 25 mile, each way, or 250 miles a week (minimum) commute. I desperately want an Bolt EUV for <$16k so I can stop doing maintenance on my daily unless I have to do maintenance. She can’t seem to get over the range anxiety when we have 2 other gas vehicles for those trips. It’s just baffling to me. BUT, we all pay attention to this stuff. So, it’s more obvious to us in this community.
BAD example: this morning, when I got out of my car, I noticed my wife’s cell phone blatantly sitting right there on seat next to me. I didn’t see it the whole 25 minute ride. My point of this story; not everyone is paying attention to what is going on around them. Some, just go to the dealer and buy their next car with no research and without having paid attention to the automotive scene going on around them. And THAT’S OKAY.
Question. Did you take it back to her? Or did you tell her to come and get it?
My dumb ass move is to go shopping and forget the shopping list on the kitchen counter. Brain damage really can suck sometimes…
Work is 25 miles away from home. Nope, she suffered. Funny thing is, she works somewhat near me, and could have come pick it up (or I would have dropped it off if she wanted). We can all use a day away from our phones anyway.
You have brain damage??? How??? Or, are you just making a Dad joke, cause it seems like a Dad joke to me. Am I horrible that I laughed?
You a good guy. And getting away from the phone is a good thing. I had to laugh at the phone story. I do have some brain damage though as a result of several misfortunes.
Snow skiing accidents, hockey injuries, car accidents, etc. and dumb behavior as a young person all caused brain damage. And countless concussions apparently are a brain damage thing as well. I don’t mind. It’s ok to laugh,
Back in the early 2000s I had a bad habit of locking my keys in my trucks while 40 miles away from home. My poor wife would have to leave work and drive to me and unlock my truck for me. She was such an angel, she never bitched or chewed me out. I tried the hide a key deal, but could never remember where I hid it on the truck. After a half dozen rescue missions, she bought me a lanyard to wear with a key on it.
But since I hate wearing stuff around my neck, I would forget it and lock it in my trucks, along with my keys.
She passed away almost 2 years ago. For some strange reason I have not locked the keys inside the cars since then. Strange, but I think that being an angel, she is now protecting me from myself now, like she did in life.
Hope you have a great weekend.
Col, that was a great story. Thank you for sharing it. It’s amazing how those things work out.
I was not on the project, but I previously worked with a firm that worked to develop Electrify America’s mobile applications.
It is every bit the clusterfuck you can imagine and more. I’ve actually wondered if VW is using EA as a means of malicious compliance with the fallout from the diesel scandal.
Two years back I did some work with many of the EV charging companies. Tesla was a pain to deal with, but in normal Tesla fashion. Charge point, EVgo, and several others were decent to work with. Electrify America was absolutely the worst, though. They had no direction, their planning was a joke, and the employee turnover rate was outrageous (like people would come and go in a matter of 2-3 months). My coworkers and I often mused about the malicious compliance thing on the part of VW, because they certainly didn’t seem to provide much of any support to EA outside of setting the company up.
Of course they are.
I’m skeptical of all surveys. Design (wording, sample selection, etc.) has so much influence on the outcome of a survey that most are worthless. For example, I got a survey from the NRA once that gave the choice of protect the 2nd amendment or have your family murdered, AKA a false choice.
That said, I do believe charging is a big barrier to EV adoption. Many people live in apartments or have street parking and no way to charge at home. Most employers don’t provide chargers – yours might; I said most, not all. Most hotels don’t have chargers and the one’s I’ve seen only had one or two. I’ve seen chargers in parking garages, but garage entry was $20 and charging was an additional fee. Most charging stations experience a lot of downtime, and even if they don’t, they’re expensive and charging takes a long time compared to gassing up. Yeah, these issues can be overcome, but I think most people just don’t want the hassle.
If you can charge at home, most of the hassle goes away.
Yeah, I can’t seem to find the actual design of the study anywhere. I’d really like to know what was asked and how the survey was conducted. The only reference I can find specifies they asked 200 questions, which also makes me wonder about the questions surrounding the one making the headlines. If you’re asking the questions about charging issues right before the question as to whether you’d buy another EV, it might look different than asking questions about cost savings beforehand.
Mostly, though, I wonder what the actual question was and how they interpreted the results. “What kinds of vehicles would you consider for your next purchase?” (maybe an additional car) is a bit different than “What kinds of vehicles would you consider to replace your current EV?” and they’re both very different than “Do you regret purchasing an EV?” (I suspect that’s not what was asked). And I don’t know if the 40% answered “would consider replacing with a gas car” or “would not consider another EV.” If it’s the latter, that is big news. If it’s the former, it’s pretty much meaningless–I’d suspect a lot of people would not rule out a gasser or hybrid when shopping, even if they might lean toward EV. If it’s something like “prefer gas/hybrid,” it is notable, but maybe not as major as it sounds.
I’m an apartment dweller with on-street parking, that fact makes it a no-go for me. I’m not against them, and I actually like the driving experience. I just have nowhere to conveniently charge the damn thing. Not at home, not at work, there are no EV lots anywhere on my commute, the only chargers I see are at certain shopping centers and the mall (that I don’t go to).
If I could plug it in at work, I’d consider one, hopefully that will be an option by the time the new Rivians come out.
I don’t ever see myself owning a home now, so home charging is not likely to ever be an option.
I am an apartment dweller, but I literally have 5 superchargers withing about 5 miles from and at places I frequent. EA is at the grocery store and Costco near me, its like 2 to 3 miles. Then I have access to L2 and 50kwh charging at the office. 4 L2 spots are free for 4 hours and the others are pay to use at the office park.
I admit I have it good when it comes to charging.
Even the new apartments in my area are installing chargers and a few with dedicated single car garages with charging in them.
I live in the northeast where there isn’t any new construction. Anytime a project is announced, the NIMBY crew comes out of the woodwork and gets it shot down.
I actually see a good number of EV’s in my town, but they’re owned by the wealthy people that have access to home charging. When I walk my dog I see a lot of EV’s in the driveways of 7-figure houses.
I live in the NE as well and there are plenty of EVs here but they aren’t the domain of just the wealthy.
I would imagine anyone with a house has easy ability to charge an EV, especially since many can charge from a standard outlet, albeit at a reduced rate.
Not sure why it’s necessary to insinuate that you need to be wealthy to have access to home charging.
Many moons ago, we were considering a Leaf that was dirt cheap with credits and you could charge it from any outlet with no monetary outlay for home modifications. (We decided against it for specific Leaf-related reasons.)
Definitely don’t need to be wealthy and I would argue that some people can save a lot of money with an EV. Not everyone, but some.
I don’t disagree your point that one doesn’t need to be wealthy to afford an EV, however my main point is that one needs to be well off to have access to home-ownership itself.
Due to lack of charging infrastructure in my area, it’s homeowners that tend to have the EV’s. In my little seaside corner of RI, the homeowners tend to skew to the wealthy side, as even a 1,000sq/ft house will run you close to a million. The only reason I can afford to live here is that I have an incredibly non-greedy landlord. My rent increase has been a small fraction of the norm for the area.
I think it depends on where you are. It’s not quite THAT pricey here, but we had to live with family for quite some time to be able to afford home ownership.
You can rent here, but assuming you have enough money for a down payment, home ownership (or the mtg payment at least) can actually be cheaper. That isn’t just the case where I am, it also holds true in some surrounding cities and their suburbs.
I believe the study because I am one of those people. I drove a Nissan Leaf for a year or so, then sold it and bought a series of 20-year-old BMWs. The Leaf consistently let me down on advertised range and after leaving me stranded and waiting 3 hours for a tow, I got back into gas cars.
Personally, I think hybrids are overly complicated, but I do believe they are the future. But I’m a guy that drives old cars and likes to fix them myself, so I understand I’m not the market.
The Leaf is a terrible measure of an EV though. Air cooled batteries, a dead charging standard with few options publicly to use.
“My EV was less reliable than a 20-year-old BMW.”
Wow, that is some apocalyptic level shade.
My gas-powered 2022 Ford Bronco is horribly less reliable than my 1976 Ford F-150. Progress isn’t.
The economic argument for EVs is pretty weak until gas hits $4-5/gal. Given current prices, it’s no surprise that Americans aren’t in love with them. I was at a Pilot the other day and gas was $3.09/gal and the EV chargers were $0.65/kw. Assuming 35mpg and 4mi/kw, that’s nearly DOUBLE the fuel cost/mile for EV over gas ($0.163 vs $0.088), plus you have to wait longer. Charging at home is, of course, much cheaper, and still makes sense for our commute, but not everyone is driving 60-70mi/day.
Just noting that the gas price & mpg of this scenario are on the low end (gas price) and high end (vehicle mpg), while $0.65/kw is on the way high end.
There are a number of ways to look at this, but on average the numbers you used were about as favorable to the gas option, and unfavorable to the EV option as possible.
Yes. It was a snapshot in time. And the most expensive charging rate I have ever personally seen. As the internets say, your mileage may vary…
(35mpg hwy is actually probably more common than 4mi/kw hwy now that I think about it. My mini is averaging closer to 3.5mi/kw on a mostly hwy commute, and I suspect larger EVs would be lower – that’s the kicker with EVs on road trips – speed kills your efficiency)
Here in the PNW gas is $5/gal in the city and electricity is $0.13 at home so your numbers swap.
Hence the higher uptake of EVs there. The at home rate here (TN) is $0.11, so it is still cheaper to charge an EV at home than running on gas.
The shocking bit is the $0.54/kw delta between this charger and the base rate for electricity!
I’m not sure that’s a great example though.
This has been a relatively benign summer for gas prices and yet where I am gas is approx $4.50 and on the other coast it’s easily north of $5.
I don’t imagine it’s hard to find a bunch of places in the US even now that are $4+/gal. And this isn’t a particularly bad time for gas prices here.
Just wait until there’s an actual price increase.
I could see the EV study being correct (I would guess the range would be somewhere 20-50% of EV owners wanting to go back to ICE), but certainly depending on who is polled. The charging infrastructure does indeed suck, but is slowly getting better. I’m certainly on the side that I don’t care to deal with ICE maintenance and other hassles in any new car, so have no plans on going back, but the potential of EVs and charging infrastructure is lagging well behind what it could potentially be. I really thought by now that my 2017 bolt would seem entirely outdated, but I have really zero interest in any of the new EVs coming out, as they are mostly just heavy, bloated, and software oriented.
I’ve personally had few issues with charging on road trips, but I’m also an engineer who researches the routes ahead of time, and can do basic quick estimates on charge needed for different trips in different conditions (and I also know that I need a backup plan for any trip involving EA chargers). I could see anyone who treats an EV like their previous ICE vehicle will not do well. Anyone who goes by the “drive till the gas light is on and then look for fueling” will be hosed in most places. The general population will have a difficult time until EV charging is ubiquitous to the point that it requires zero thought. Like most things, the situation could be much improved if people would learn how to use something new and actually think, but good luck with that happening.
My girlfriend keeps cautioning me against going full EV because of this mindset. She told me that her friend complained that he has to plan his route when travelling. That’s it. That’s the full extent of the problem he has driving an EV. Sounds like his complaints aren’t even about charging station uptime, just route planning.
That doesn’t surprise me, you could have an EV that is the same purchase price as an ICE, has zero maintenance other than tires for 200k miles, costs 1/10 as much to run as an ICE, but there will still be people who will overlook everything because “my favorite place to eat lunch on my once a year roadtrip doesn’t have a charger, so an EV is non-feasible”
My wife has trepidations about EVs for this reason as well, that we’d need a combustion vehicle to go on road trips because charging an EV would be inconvenient. There are apps specifically for planning routing and even figure in the charging time and SoC percentages at each stop, based on the car, so it’s not even that bad in that regard. I’ve also learned that charging doesn’t even have to add a ton of time to the trip, like a five-and-a-half-hour trip from NEOhio to DC is extended by about forty to fifty minutes, depending on the car you have. Doesn’t seem like a big deal to me. I guess it can be mitigated by going with a PHEV instead of a full BEV, which is the debate I’ve been having in my head, but I’m not as worried about the long trips as she is, especially as they’re just a once- or twice-a-year thing anyway.
I’ve taken to messing with route planning apps just to see, and I’m seeing the same sort of results. I currently have a PHEV, and I’ve considered just bumping up to the RAV4 Prime to get a bit more EV range, noticeably more space and significantly more power, but I keep looking at EVs, since only taking a couple long trips each year makes me a pretty good candidate for one.
While I hate Elon this is the benefit of Tesla. I put in my destination and leave. I don’t make any further consideration unless there is a specific place I want to stop like Harris Ranch. The Bolt is a great car but the slower charging and relying on CCS still let it down on road trips but that has not stopped me from considering a used one as a second household vehicle.
You’d think that would be idiot-proofed enough for the general population, but then there are the “my navigation system told me to turn left, so I swerved into a lake” people who would probably even screw that up.
If you’re regularly taking your PHEV to public chargers, it’s certainly not worth buying one. You definitely want a regular hybrid.
Let’s also talk about how thieves are stealing the copper out of the charging stations now.
Thieves are targeting EV charging stations | AP News
Okay, but they have also been routinely stealing catalytic converters so much that we have a cottage industry of protectors and some mfrs are planning around cat security.
Thieves are a problem for everyone.
Probably organized by the flash mob robber gangs terrorizing Target, Pharmacies and jewelry stores. It’s a conspiracy I tell yah.
Remember when flash mobs resulted in sudden dancing in malls? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
Missed that. IIRC I was distracted with family, career and couple of growing boys. That decade is but a hazy memory.
I think it was the 90’s when it happened. You definitely sound like you were busy.
The 90’s. Heard from someone that they happened. I recall a gen 1 Taurus wagon, a Merkur Scorpio, Olds Intrigue. Home renovations, building computers as a side hustle. Getting into consulting and working for IBM, Deloitte and Touche, and Arthur Anderson.
Nice!
Those firms demand your life plus 30% if you want to climb the ladder. Eventually got disillusioned and went back into pure tech stuff via SAP. By then the marriage was done. I bought a new 2001 Corvette Coupe to salve my wounds.
Ow. Sorry to hear that.
Life’s a learning process. Experience and mistakes are part of that.
Yep.
Yes they are but there is a difference between exhaust delete amd bneing able to refuel.
Maybe some Daleks?
Unless they hit all the charging stations, you can always go to another one.
Driving without a cat is illegal in many states and may be quite noticeable depending on your car. The other problem is that during the height of the thefts, they were on backorder for many vehicles. So not only were they expensive to replace, you had to wait.
It’s always the goddamn Daleks!
Yep
Oh, it’s Mckinsey who said that? A company with major ties to oil and gas. Who did things like this- https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231107-top-consultancy-undermining-climate-change-fight-whistleblowers and https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/business/mckinsey-climate-change.html. Says a thing that harms their economic interest is actually totally bad? Well color me suprised. This like management saying 46% of workers actually don’t want a break. It’s hard to be a more than a little skeptical when the results are of such beneficial economic interest to them.
Surveys are always to be met with a bit of side-eye, but a scenario of early adopters wanting to switch back is most definitely possible.
It’s like being a one of those fancy parties where some people drink too much and impulsively jump in the pool for funsies. Except, a bunch of them forgot to take their wallet and phone out of their pockets, and come to the conclusion that what seemed like a cool idea at the time might have been a bit rash, and are ready to towel off.
My wife also went back to her Geo Tracker (Later commandeered my Ford Ranger) after her Fiat 500e’s battery took a dump and Fiat bought the car back. Now she won’t consider a EV. She is open to a hybrid or PHEV, but now it will have to be in a “mid-size” truck form.
P.S. The Maverick has a interior that is too funky for her.
Jeep Gladiator?
It is an option, but no 4xe available yet.
Bummer.
By the math, don’t most car-owning Americans have a driveway/garage to park their cars in? Don’t those people charge at night? I can’t help but feel like the difficulty with publicly available charging is overblown except for those exceptions that drive hundreds of km/day. I get that there are a ton of city-dwelling car-owners who street park and rely on public charging but that can’t possibly account for the stated 46% of EV owners.
…
A hearty “No Comment” on McKinsey from this Canuck (*cough cough* Policies, procedures often broken in awarding contracts to under-fire consulting firm: auditor general)
More people live in condos and apartments than houses and of those that do live in houses there is a good percentage that fill their garage with junk instead of cars.
Most people in North America live in houses.
While that may be true (I don’t care enough to look it up; I know many people live in houses), many people live in cities and that means apartments, condos, houses with street parking, etc. where they can’t install a charger or even run an extension cord. Arguably, cities are the best places for EVs because the traffic is heavy, distances are short and cities can get more benefit from reduced air pollution than rural areas.
Basically, cities would benefit the most from EVs, but they are the most difficult place to own an EV.
It is true. For some reason urban dwellers think everyone lives in apartments when it’s simply not true.
I agree with your other points though.
As a former Urban Dweller, I have a distinct differentiation point of city to suburb which is based on how many apartment towers there are vs houses. Given how expensive land is in a downtown area, I automatically expect more apartments than houses. It’s definitely a bias and I own it.
Apartment living is expanding quicker than living in houses, but at the moment, apartments are less common.
In a decade I believe things will be quite a bit different.
That is extremely depressing. I absolutely hated living in an apartment.
As a sidebar, why do they call them apartments when they’re all stuck together like that?
Great username! Lol
Damn good question.
Also, why do we park on the driveway and drive on the parkway?
Why do we say Dead as a Doornail when a Doornail never lived?
You can have a bias, but I don’t think it’s fair to claim something unlikely as fact without proof.
Every metric I see online shows that the majority of Americans still live in houses.
Fair enough
All the best cities already have great EV networks…trams, subways, LRT… 😀
Monorail!
Look at Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook! By gum, it put them on the map!
Exactly!
Living in a house is fast becoming a luxury most can’t afford.
That’s unfortunately true in many areas. It’s too bad work from home didn’t take off. That way people could live in affordable markets but still make good money.
I think that was part of the problem, the remote work people gained the freedom to move to cheaper areas and made them not cheap anymore.
It’s true that Americans are more likely to live in detached houses than Europeans – in part it’s a cultural thing that we got from Britain, although the best most of them could manage was semi-detached despite looting a quarter of the world for two centuries* – and I suspect that EV owners would be more likely the ability to charge at home than the average, so any bias in the poll of existing owners would be in favor of people who can charge easily.
*I kid! I love and respect the British! I mean, not enough to let them off the hook for all of the looting thing, but these days they’re doing it indirectly, like we do.
That needs to change.
Yes. I don’t think it will be anytime soon though, there are so many forces working against it.
Also, when many people finally can afford a house, they won’t want/ can’t afford a new car payment. I almost went catatonic when my wife totaled her car 1 month after we bought a house, and 2 days before a vacation. I was in a financial panic for the whole trip.
Yup. I’ve vowed to never have a car payment again if I’m to have any hope of home ownership.
More people may live in condos & apartments but I specifically wonder about *car-owning* people. City-dwellers are less likely to own a car.
If they have an underground parking space in their condo/building they should have access to charging. (Condo boards here in Ontario are *required* to approve a resident’s request to install a charger in their parking spot unless some serious hurdle exists.)
I’ve been a suburbanite with a long-ass driveway; a city dweller with no car; a city dweller who street-parks; a city dweller with a postage-stamp driveway… honestly I’m just confused who the people are that bought an EV without a plan for charging it beyond public options, or who lean most heavily on public chargers. I didn’t buy my first EV until I had a driveway to park it in. /shrug
Stanley Mug Syndrome?
“more people may live in condos & apartments… ”
They absolutely do not, at least not here in the US. So that’s not something to worry about yet.
EVs are not for every situation, which is why you would think most people would plan somewhat for EV ownership before taking it on. It’s way more likely this survey was poorly done (or purposely poorly done based on the desires of those running the survey).
No reason to look for unlikely reasons when the most likely reasons (money and desired narrative) line up with the “results” of this survey.
No, this is not true by any metric I’ve ever seen. On average, I think something like 65% of Americans live in houses vs Apts/condos.
Other studies have shown that 1 in 8 Americans are living in an apt, though I’m not sure where condo dwellers come in.
Filling your garage with junk is meaningless, you can still run a cord to the driveway.
Sure, you can run that cord out and then that night comes where the neighborhood kid hooks up their karaoke machine.
Haha. Those damn karaoke hooligans are always causing a ruckus.
Tell me about it! There’s only so many times you can hear “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba before something snaps.
I don’t have any direct experience with McKinsey & Co but I do with their competitor (which rhymes with Shmalvarez & Shmarsal) and their “optimizations” have made my professional life a LIVING HELL for the past 2 years. Luckily the board finally said enough with their bullshit and now we’re doing all we can to reverse every one of their “suggestions” before it’s too late.
I know they’re two different companies but I hold them both in the same light. Neither actually produces anything of substance and neither are held accountable for what they do produce. We’re not going to get any refunds for what we paid them for their demonstrably bad advice.
It’s the reputation of companies like these that make me roll my eyes any time anyone utters the word “Consulting” around me. It’s turned into an absurd field which allows business bros to milk the remaining cash from struggling companies while providing nothing of value. Companies like McKinsey provide as much if not value to this world than Instagram and TikTok influencers
I’ve been at companies that worked with both McKinsey and that other AMazing firm that you dealt with. Both were absolutely horrible and a net negative impact in my opinion. I lost count of the number of times someone in the company had an idea, the consulting firm heard about it and next thing you know it’s on a slide to the board as “the firm’s” idea. And those were the only good ideas they ever brought to the board, any of their own ideas were almost 100% garbage. One company I was at had the AMazing firm on site almost full time for 5 years, paying absurd amounts per month while also laying people off.
The best example I can give of how inept these firms are in my experience: One of them did an “analysis” of like how many positions and hours per day etc. we had and concluded that we were “overspending” on people costs by around 5-6% and suggested huge investments in system measures to ensure people were only paid for actual hours worked.
The analysis made its way to the internal team at the company and one of the most junior guys in the finance group(His annual salary was probably the same as what they were paying per 2-3 weeks per consultant) looked at it for 30 seconds and was like “uh guys, you forgot to factor in we have paid vacation and sick time, that’s about 5-6% alone….”
It seems the only suggestions they have are some form or other of staff reductions. No unique ideas on how to increase revenue or venture into untapped markets, nope, just reduce staff until you’re profitable again. GENIUS!!!
Pretty much!
“Oh you want to increase your profits? Have you considered just making more revenue? Or how about spending less on expenses?”
Or sometimes they just re-arrange things and call it an improvement. The most hilarious example was at one company first they were like “Hey instead of dividing your company structure into 6 regions, let’s consolidate it to 4 big regions with 10 sub-regions within them!”
Then the same firm, but different specific team members, came back like 2-3 years later with “What’s the point of having regions AND sub-regions? We think things would be smoother if you got rid of a layer… but 4 regions isn’t quite granular enough so we should break it up a little to oh, I don’t know, maybe 6 regions?”
I think the site is better when you try to editorialize less on politics.
That’s a fair position. Counterpoint: if Matt/DT hadn’t editorialized you can bet the comments would have brought it up. I’m OK with a writer/outlet taking a standpoint on a topic.
I maybe laid it on a little thick, I think the point is made I may just link and be done with it next time.
I don’t know…
I appreciate knowing where you stand. I also know a lot of people will make judgements on your intelligence based on how much they agree/disagree with you on a single subject.
I like knowing where you are on different subjects so I can consider the different angles of the story and the points being made to come up with an informed decision.
But I get that’s a tough needle to thread for all of you.
Also, it’s interesting to read the differing opinions from you and David in the editorial comments. As someone who works in corporate America where you always have to present a consistent message and all that it’s fun to see everyone is allowed to be individuals.
Although I wish the editorial comments would be in the comments where we can all interact on it instead of interrupting the article.
Politics influence our car experience. Example A: Tesla using ZEV credits to fund making desirable at the time EV’s. Example B: Kei trucks getting banned.
I think there’s a balance to be had. To say nothing is to grant all parties equal footing in a debate or argument. Editorializing, for better and for worse, brings nuance to that: why might McKinsey publish results of a survey to this effect? Are they reputable, and do they have a clear political bias or other affiliations that would sway their conclusion to one end or another? To leave out context is to grant an unduly fair platform to participants operating in bad faith.
Absent the context given by editorializing, naked statistics are subject to as much speculation and perversion as the reader sees fit. E.g., because 46% of EV drivers are looking at getting a gas car next car, does that mean 54% (aka more than half, the majority, etc) are happy with their EV? We don’t know, but editorializing from a trusted source, or failing that at least a known source, fills in the intermediate shades of grey that “46% of some people say this” fail to illustrate.
Plus, if you keep your wits about you, you can start to get a feeling of who you agree with and who you don’t. I tend not to agree with DT on lots of things; he’s so optimistic that he tends to lose sight of reality, IMO. I still respect and appreciate his perspective, and keep a pile or two of salt at hand when he, for instance, proposes that the Fisker Ocean isn’t that bad.
That study tracks with what acquaintances who drive EVs have told me. They like their cars, just not the charging hassle. I wonder if any new home and apartment builders have adopted the practice of installing chargers in all of their projects, or at least as an option? If this became routine, that could go quite a way to helping alleviate charger envy in the disadvantaged. I do think retrofit installation of chargers in older homes, rentals, and apartment buildings is going to become a thing at some point.
I will keep saying this over and over again, Chin restaurants need to put in a few charging stations in their parking lots. (It could’ve saved Red Lobster.)
Red Lobster had plenty of customers. Private Equity killed them, specifically Golden Gate Capital. They were bought by a private equity firm that loaded them down with debt to finance the deal and sold their physical locations for $1.5 billion and then then had the restaurants lease them back at inflated costs, triple net leases adding massively to their operating costs.
And forced them to buy from their seafood supplier as sole seafood provider at higher cost.
Vulture Capitalism
I will add this was what I have been saying about malls. You put lots of charging in the parking lots. Cover them with solar panels and add some battery storage. Since Sears closed make that a grocery store, have a nice food court and then the regular stores that can fill in along with the requisite movie theater and maybe a gym.
Malls, at least around here, are hurting.
They may be the next movie theaters in our neck of the woods.
Strip malls are fine, but very few people want to trek to the actual few malls when you can have things shipped to your house and return them if necessary.
I do feel bad for teens, hanging out in the malls was a good time back in the day.
This is being done in France.
I know it’s easy to dump on EA, but in the 3 months I’ve owned my Ioniq 6, I’ve yet to have a bad experience with them.
Most charging is done at home anyway. The OEMs need to clean this up for sure, but I think a lot of narrative is flying around that isn’t really rooted in reality.
lol at McKinsey “helping struggling organizations”
The annual McKinsey meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY
Thanks for the link.
They have been adding new equipment that is much more reliable. The previous generation of stuff was not great and has added to their reliability. I have seen the equipment changed and then working without issue. Many posts I see of David having trouble is on old equipment which is part of the overall issue with charging still.
As soon as I saw “thoughts about McKinsey” linked, I knew it was going to be the Last Week Tonight story. Last season they did a story on organ donation and my wife tensed up. She works for one of the organ and tissue banks briefly mentioned in the story, but the focus was less on them and more the oversight and how the waiting lists worked.