The Expert Podcast

You definitely want to watch this before you consider buying an electric vehicle. Here's a really good narrative from an editor of Kelly Blue Book, one of the main automotive publications, about one of their editors who took a long trip in an electric vehicle and what the consequences of that were. Also, even the Toyota chief scientist says the world is not ready for EVs, and we'll talk about why they believe that. This matches a lot of stuff we've talked about in videos in the past. But first, this editor took an electric vehicle for a road trip, which is what people love to do in their cars—take road trips.

It talks about what the EV owner might encounter on a road trip, and this was a weekend trip. It was long distance; it went on a big circle throughout the Southeast, and they looked at five different problems. Here's their route: looks like they were in North Carolina, went through South Carolina, Georgia, western North Carolina, and might have gone into Tennessee before heading back. It was a weekend trip.

Lesson number one: Make a charging plan and an alternate plan because charging stations are not as ubiquitous as gas stations. If you have a pure plug-in electric vehicle with a range of, let's say, 200 miles, then every 200 miles, you have to stop to recharge. There are two other hidden dangers of that. First, whatever range the vehicle is supposed to have, it may not have that range. We did an investigation video last week where the average range was about 20 or 30 percent less in the real world than what is promoted by the company.

Number two is that the charging experience is not going to be like popping into a gas station and topping off your tank. It might take an hour or two or four to get range added to your vehicle. If you have to stop five times and it's three hours a piece, that's like an extra day on your trip. Also, if you want to go on back roads, you may not find charging stations. This editor said, "I prefer lesser-traveled scenic byways," but the EV road trip stuck to interstate highways because all you're going to find is electric vehicle charging stations on interstates. If you find one in a rural area, it might be a low-speed charging facility, meaning that it might take many, many hours to charge up, whereas the high-speed chargers are going to be fast charging on the interstates.

Number two: Don't rely on the range estimates. "I made a rookie mistake by assuming the accuracy of range estimates," the editor said. Mileage did vary. A lot of times, if you plan on getting to the next charging station and your EV meter starts going down to zero, you might have to make an alternate arrangement and hope there's a charging station nearby.

Number three: If you are an electric vehicle owner, you likely have a subscription to a charging network. Maybe you pay a monthly fee, maybe you pay an app fee, but you may not be able to find locations for your network everywhere you drive. So, prepare to use different networks that might cost you more money. If you're a Tesla owner, you might use other networks besides the Tesla Supercharger network.

Number four: Make the most of charging delays. This is kind of like making lemons out of lemonade. Nobody wants delays. If you're on a road trip, you want to enjoy your trip, not have to find things to do in some remote area. They talk about paying six dollars to go into a park or visiting places like "South of the Border" or other tourist attractions. But if you want to make a schedule for your vacation, you want it to be your schedule and go to places you actually want to visit. You don't want to be forced to find tourist attractions or tourist traps in some little rinky-dink town because you have to stop there to recharge for four or five hours.

Look at the stats: This road trip was 1,000 miles. It involved 26 hours of actual driving, which is fine. But there were 13 hours of charging time. Think about that—50% of the time was spent charging. That 13 hours was time not used for traveling to another place or being at a destination you wanted to be at. These are the numbers you can count on when planning for current electric vehicle capabilities.

So, what do the experts think? Well, the chief scientist for Toyota says the world is not ready for electric vehicles. This person does not think EVs should be rushed, and part of the reason why is the practicality of their use. They also believe that vehicles won't begin and end with EVs, suggesting that there may be something else in the works beyond electric vehicles.

This guy is no dummy—he's a chief scientist, an executive fellow for research at Toyota, and the robotics and computing head for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. He knows what he's talking about. He says lithium-ion vehicles are not without consequence—they're made from rare mined materials. His own experience feeds into that. He owns a Tesla, his wife owns a Tesla, and even though he's a Toyota engineer, they still own a Tesla. He was friends with the engineer of that car. "It's an incredible car," he says.

But he points out that his wife used to commute 30 miles a day, which meant 90% of the battery wasn't being used most of the time—just dragging around all these raw materials. Limited battery supply is an issue for electric vehicles. The bottom line, he says, is that the whole world won't arrive at the same time. Electric vehicles aren't the right answer for the whole world right now. They work for certain parts of the world, but not for everybody. The charging infrastructure isn't ready.

This validates what the road trip guy had to say, and he's not the only executive who thinks so. The CEO of Ford has also said that the charging infrastructure isn't up to scratch. This comes at a time when EVs are a small percentage of cars on the road. What happens when EVs become more popular?

Think about it—electric vehicles currently make up maybe two or three percent of the cars on the road, a very small percentage. Even if they go to six or seven percent, you might think, "Well, it's still a small percentage." However, going from three percent to six percent is doubling the number of electric vehicles. If you have twice as many EVs on the road with the same amount of infrastructure and electrical capacity, is that going to be a problem? Will you have to wait at charging stations just to plug in?

Look, electric vehicles are interesting in many ways. They have excellent performance, a lot of torque, and they're fun to drive. But the way that Americans use vehicles right now—for long road trips and quick gas stops—doesn't match the applicability of electric vehicles. So, people will either have to adapt, or the cars will have to change, or the entire automotive industry will have to adjust itself and evolve. Whether that's a good or bad thing remains to be seen, but these are the current realities.

Let us know what you think in the comments about electric vehicles and how they might apply to your lifestyle.