The Expert Podcast

Currently about one percent of the vehicles on the road are plug-in electric vehicles or EVs. That's pretty low number - one out of 100 cars. The plans are for auto manufacturers, government agencies, utilities to have all vehicles be electric within 10 years. Here's an example: in Washington state they have a law in the books that's going to say that no gas vehicles will be able to not only be purchased but even registered - sold, purchased or registered by 2030. That's less than 10 years away. It's eight years from now.
So in eight years they want to have no gas vehicles really on the road in Washington state. Okay, you're going from one percent to a hundred percent in eight years. It's a pretty big jump. How are you going to do that when there's already lines at charging stations? Here's an article from the same date that has a Tesla owner hands up in frustration at a supercharger location - happens to be in Las Vegas - had to wait in line. People had to wait in line an hour just to get plugged in, and that's with one percent of cars on the road. What happens when you have 100% of cars on the road? What are the lines going to be then?
This is very easily the biggest problem with the electric vehicle conversion. Look, in the long run it may be that electric vehicles become the norm. It may be that gasoline vehicles go the way of the dinosaur - no pun intended - and they're removed from use just like you know steam buggies used to be the way that vehicles were produced. It used to be that sailing ships were the way that boats and cargo was shipped. Now it's all - then it was coal and now it's diesel or electric for boats. It may be a natural evolution, but trying to accelerate that process so that you go from one percent to a hundred percent in eight years without having an already in place charging network, it's just a recipe for disaster.
Even if it went from one percent to two percent next year in one year, that's going to double the number of electric vehicles on the road. If there's already lines waiting an hour or two to charge up your vehicle with one percent of cars on the road, if you double it, what's the wait time going to be? In addition, every single one of those consumers who were waiting at that charging station, even if there was no line and they could just pull up, plug in and charge up, they had a 40 to 50 minute wait at least to get their car charged up, even with a super fast charger. Every single one of those consumers was traveling in a way that it was okay to have a 40 or 15 minute - 40 or 50 minute delay in their travel plans.
Think about how many trips you take every day, every week, every month. How many of those trips are capable of withstanding putting an extra 40 or 50 minutes into the trip doing nothing? Some of them certainly - some of them you can add just leave early. Not every trip is capable of waiting 40 or 50 minutes, and that's a supercharger fast charger location. The normal charging stations might take two or three hours to charge up. Sure, you can get a half a charge in maybe an hour, hour and a half, but now you have to stop again if it's a long trip.
Now will some people charge at home? Yep, some people will park their car in their garage at night, plug in their car, they'll be charged up in the morning and they'll use that charge during the day. But that assumes a couple things. One thing it assumes you have a garage. If you live in an apartment, live in a condo, you may not have a garage with a charger. Even if you do, it assumes that you're going to be home the next night to plug it in again and in the meantime you didn't exceed the range of your vehicle.
Even a vehicle with a modest range of 150 or 200 miles - that's a few hours of driving. If you're on the road all day, you make a lot of stops, you either go a long distance or you're traveling around town making a lot of sales calls, you may not be able to do it. Now right now people who use vehicles in that fashion don't buy an electric vehicle. You just buy a gas vehicle and if you have to stop twice for gas during the day, so be it. Pull into a gas station - 60 seconds you're filled up, boom, you're on your way.
If you live in Washington state and it's 2030 and you're on the road as a salesperson and your range that day is going to take you more than 200 or 250 miles, you might have to stop for an hour for gas or charge again. Not saying that electric vehicles are right or wrong or good for the environment, bad for the environment - whole another conversation. The point is logistically, how do you make that happen? Are the regulations being put in place considering the fact that ain't gonna work all the time in every scenario? If a vehicle is not able to stop for an hour twice during the day to charge up, how do you accomplish that mission of that vehicle - sales, long distance, multiple stops, what have you? How do you accomplish that mission?
I think that those two news articles on the same day really paint the picture where there's a collision course for electric vehicles. And if you are a proponent of electric vehicles, which many people are, it might be wise to think about how to resolve that collision or keep it from happening. Because if you just are happy to see the news that Washington state says all electric vehicles within eight years, great, you could be happy with that news. But if it starts getting closer - 2026, 2027, 2028 - and there's no charging stations or solutions for people that need to be always on the go, they'll have to kick that can down the road and say well forget about 2030, let's do 2035, 2038. And at some point it may be impossible to meet any goal.
So if you are a proponent of electric vehicles in the future of EVs, it might be wise to start looking at are the stakeholders - government agencies, vehicle manufacturers, electric companies, municipalities - considering those use cases as they're putting together these plans and are they all talking to each other? And be aware of pre-existing deficiencies in the electric vehicle lifestyle. Do you have to wait at a charging station for an hour again with one percent of the vehicles on the road being electric plug-in vehicles? It's very difficult to already determine what the potential problems are. The problems could come up already after the cars are coming on the road. It's good to look at these things in advance.
If you are an opponent of electric vehicles and you want to just keep your gas car, well there's some issues there too. If you live in Washington state and your state says no gas cars after 2030, what if you have a three-year-old car right now? You have a 2018 vehicle. In five years it's going to be eight years old. Maybe it has 120, 130,000 miles on it. Maybe you normally trade your cars every five or six years. What do you do in 2027 when you have a gas car that's at the end of its life, or at least the life for you? You - somebody else may be able to use that car for another 10 years, but for your primary transportation you don't want to be driving around in a hundred and fifty thousand mile car.
What do you buy in 2027? You could buy a gas car because they're still for sale, but in two and a half years you're not going to be able to register it. Your plates expire, you go to re-register it - wrong, sorry, it's a gas car, you can't register in Washington. Do you move? Do you sell it for an electric vehicle? And if you do, what's it worth if gas vehicles are being banned? Do you buy an electric vehicle in 2027? What if your lifestyle doesn't allow it? These are potential conflicts in use and life that maybe are not being considered by most Americans, but no matter what side of the fence you are with electric vehicles, it's worthy of your thought because at some point this stuff's going to happen and thinking ahead can help you make decisions that could save you five or tens of thousands of dollars or at least plan your life in a way that does.
Another area that planning might help is charging stations at your residence. Even if you don't have an electric vehicle, we've talked about this before - an electric charging station in your house might cost you a couple grand right now and you might be able to get some rebates from the electric company. In 2028 when everybody's scrambling calling electricians to have EV charging stations built in their garage, the price might be six grand and no incentives from the electric company. So full cost of six grand versus two thousand minus five hundred rebate, 700 rebate might cost you twelve or fifteen hundred now versus six thousand in five years. Where are you going to get that kind of return on your money? If you put fifteen hundred in the bank it won't be worth six grand. Even if you put it into a stock or mutual fund, it may not be worth times four in six - in five years, right? Fifteen hundred to six thousand is a multiple of four. So it may be a good investment if you see this happening.
Again, it's all food for thought. A lot of ways to look at it, but being aware of what's happening with electric vehicles whether you're intending on getting one or not might be a good thing because it's not a fad, it's not a flash in the pan, it's something that's happening. There's big forces at work making noise about this, so being an informed consumer or informed with your finances can help you make plans for either mitigating annoyances when the time comes or relishing in the results when the time comes, whatever your opinion is.