Any technology that comes along to challenge the status quo will always face a battle to convince those against changing the traditional setup.
Electric cars are no different… and we get it. Switching from the comfort and normality of a petrol or diesel car can seem daunting but it’s really not.
Not everyone thinks the same as us, though, and there’s plenty of misinformation out there about electric vehicles.
So let’s take a look at some of the most common EV myths that you might come across and explain why they are just myths and show you the reality.
New EVs are too expensive to buy
A few years ago, we’d struggle to argue with this statement. As with all new technology, it’s expensive at first. However, in recent years, the cost of electric vehicles has fallen with several models now on sale for around £20,000, such as the Dacia Spring, Citroen e-C3, Renault 5, MG4 and BYD Dolphin.
There’s also now a growing used market of electric vehicles, with popular models two to three years old available for the same price as petrol and diesel cars.
It’s also important to remember to look at Total Cost of Ownership and not just upfront cost when considering switching from a combustion engine car to an EV. Running costs of electric vehicles tend to be a lot cheaper when you consider home charging tariffs, congestion charge exemptions and servicing costs.
EV charging takes a long time
If you’re plugged into a domestic three-pin plug then yes, EV charging takes a long time but out on the public charging network you’ll find ultra rapid chargers capable of adding 100 miles in as little as five minutes. That’s just enough time to nip to the loo and grab a coffee or a snack for your journey.
Better still, if you do have a home charger you can top up overnight while your car is parked and not required. When you think about it like that, charging an EV battery is more convenient than refuelling a petrol or diesel car.
Electric vehicles can’t do long journeys on one charge like normal cars
There’s a lot to debunk here. The average range of an electric vehicle is now over 200 miles… with many well over 300 miles. When was the last time that you drove that far without needing a comfort break?
Ok, so now you’ll argue that when you want to stop you won’t find be able to find charging point. These days that’s simply not the case with thousands of EV charging stations across the UK and on major road networks.
We’d also then point you to the fact that 99% of car journeys taken in the UK are under 100 miles and two-thirds are under five miles. Simply put, switching from an internal combustion engine to an electric vehicle requires no compromise on the type of journeys you can do.
EV chargers are powered from the national grid by burning fossil fuels
It’s true, for electric vehicles to be truly transformational for climate change and the environment, the electricity that is used to fill up electric vehicle batteries must be green.
At GRIDSERVE, our chargers are supported by 100% net zero energy. And it’s good news for the rest of the public charging infrastructure – or any time you boil the kettle for that matter.
A third of the UK’s electricity comes from renewable energy sources – that’s wind, solar, biomass and hydroelectric. That number rises to over half when you include low carbon sources such as nuclear. These numbers will continue to grow as the National Grid phases out reliability on burning fossil fuels to power the country.
The electricity grid can’t cope with EV charging
The National Grid has estimated that even if we all switched to electric cars overnight, electricity demand would only increase by about 10%. They state this is “well within the range of manageable load fluctuation”, so if the clever folk who run the electricity grid aren’t worried, neither should you be.
Electric cars and battery manufacturing are bad for the environment
One of the criticisms thrown at electric cars is that manufacturing EV batteries and cars is labour intensive and bad for the environment. While in comparison to combustion engine cars, the manufacture of EVs is slightly more polluting, the reality is that over the lifetime of the vehicle, an electric vehicle is responsible for just a third of the greenhouse gas emissions of an equivalent new combustion engine car.
That number will reduce further as the ability to recycle EV batteries continues to grow, creating a circular economy. Some processing centres can extract as much as 98% of old batteries and there are strict regulations on what can be sent to landfill.
Recycling is crucial to overcoming one of the criticisms of manufacturing new electric cars. It’s no secret that lithium-ion batteries require rare earth metals such as cobalt to function and the ethics of sourcing this has been a controversial subject.
With recycling, the need to mine new materials for battery production will be removed, in turn bringing down the environmental impact of EVs even further. It’s also not just electric vehicles that face this issue – it’s the same for batteries in your laptops and smartphones (as well as the refining of petrol).
There aren’t enough electric vehicle charging points
This one is just not true. The GRIDSERVE Electric Highway alone has over 1,400 charging bays across almost 200 locations in the UK, many at motorway service stations. In total there’s over 75,000 public EV charging points across the UK, with a new one installed every half hour.
The network is even bigger when you take into the half a million-plus home chargers. No matter where your journey takes you, you’ll be able to find an EV charging station.
The batteries won’t last long and when they fail EV battery prices are high
With over a million electric cars now on UK roads, and millions more around the globe, there’s no evidence to suggest they’re failing early.
If anything, the data shows they’re running longer than expected. Take the Nissan LEAF, for example. Considered the first mass market electric car when it launched in 2010, over half a million have been sold and just three have reported battery failure (that’s less than 0.0006%).
So what if you are one of the unlucky few? Should you be worried about EV battery prices? Not really. Most manufacturers provide a warranty of up to eight years or 100,000 miles for EV batteries so you’re well covered. The cost of EV batteries will also continue to fall, too, as electric vehicle technology becomes even more common and the used market grows.
Electric cars are likely to catch fire
Electric vehicles come under more scrutiny as a relatively new technology and that’s perfectly natural. It means any fire that does occur in an EV is reported heavily in the media, while a petrol or diesel car fire will barely register.
So what does the data tell us? Studies into the subject of fires have not found anything to support this electric vehicle myth.
In fact, the Department for Transport found that EVs might even be less likely to catch fire than combustion vehicles. That’s supported by figures from Norway – the global leader in EVs – where it reports four to five times more fires in petrol cars or diesel cars than in battery powered vehicles.
