We’ve all heard them from the pseudo engineer neighbour or the barstool expert, but why do these EV myths still linger? And what can we do to dispel them?
“The batteries only last four years.”
This one dates back to the initial arrival of the earliest modern-day electric cars, back in 2010, and chiefly to the original Nissan Leaf. Back then, Nissan was playing things very safe and said that there was a chance that the battery pack might be exhausted within seven years (or that it would fall below 70 per cent of its original charging capacity).
EV critics leapt on that and continue to do so, but it’s simply not the case. Nissan was merely being – understandably – conservative in its estimates. Not only do batteries last way, way longer than that, but we recently had a spin in a decade-old Leaf, and it would still do 90km of its original 160km on a not-quite-full charge (and bear in mind that the original range estimate was done under the more lenient old NEDC test). Beyond that, batteries can be replaced – such as by Range Therapy in Kildare – and can even be replaced by more energy-dense, longer-range batteries while the old packs can often be reused as home energy storage, or they can be sent to be recycled into brand new batteries (try doing that with a litre of petrol).
“You can’t get to Donegal from Dublin in an EV, and there are no chargers up there.”
Absolutely not the case, in either sense. It’s 233km to drive from the centre of Dublin to Donegal town, and you could do that in a Hyundai Inster – the smallest and currently most affordable EV on the market – with range to spare. Once you’re in Donegal town and the surrounding area, there are more than a dozen charging locations, including ESB fast chargers with up to 200kW of DC charging power and slower kerbside chargers if you want to top up overnight. A 30-minute stop at a DC fast charger in most electric cars will give you plenty enough charge to get back to Dublin without stopping.
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“It costs more to run an EV than a petrol car.”
Wrong, wrong, wrong. With lots of home charging, The Irish Times has calculated that an average family-hatchback-sized EV can be powered up for 16,000km annually for around €800, and that includes a little bit of public fast charging for longer journeys. By comparison, an equivalent petrol-powered hatchback, averaging 6.0 litres per 100km, will set you back more than €1,800 in petrol costs at current pump prices.
“Electric cars are too expensive.”
That was true at one time. Carmakers front-loaded their electric tech (which, in fairness, is expensive to develop) into larger, more luxurious, and therefore more profitable models. Now, though, as batteries and their associated technology become much cheaper, in terms of wholesale costs, and the initial research and development cost starts to get soaked up, we’re seeing a positive glut of very affordable electric cars.
The Hyundai Inster – which is way more capable all-round than you’d think for such a small car – starts at €19,595. A Renault 5 E-Tech, with a 410km range, can be bought for €29,295. The new Volkswagen ID.Polo will be priced from around €20,000. A Peugeot E-3008 costs pretty much the same as the hybrid-engined version. Electric cars haven’t just become more affordable; they’ve actually become cheaper than their petrol-powered counterparts in many cases, and that’s before you factor in cheaper running costs.
“You can’t take an electric vehicle through the car wash or drive in a lightning storm.”
Don’t be silly. Batteries and motors are weather-sealed, so they’re actually less likely to be damaged by water than an air-breathing petrol or diesel engine. Electric cars are also better in flood conditions, up to a point, than their combustion counterparts, as there are no worries about sloshing water down the air intake (although you do need to be careful that grit and contaminants from dirty floodwater don’t damage the electric motor or get into high-voltage wires).
A car wash is absolutely fine. And a lightning storm? Quite apart from the fact that the batteries are fully sealed and the high-voltage components equally so, what lightning is trying to do is to find its way quickly to the ground, and cars – of any sort – don’t offer it an easy path. It’s not the rubber tyres; it’s actually the steel and aluminium structure, which acts as a Faraday cage, diverting electric current around the edges of the bodywork. You’re in far greater danger walking through a lightning storm than driving an EV.
“There aren’t enough public chargers.”
We will grade this as partially true. It’s certainly the case that public charging, both rapid and slow, still has a lot of work to do in building out the network, but according to estimates, Ireland is just about installing enough charging coverage to keep pace with the growth of EV sales. More would be nice, of course, and will definitely be needed in the near future as more and more of us switch to electric power. It’s a bit of a case of some done, lots to do.
“EVs are more likely to catch fire.”
Nope. It’s true that nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) batteries can, when damaged or when they overheat, enter a state called “thermal runaway”, which causes a catastrophic fire that is very hard to extinguish, as the burning battery chemicals actually make their own oxygen. Lithium-iron-phosphate batteries, though, are much less likely to suffer this, and they’re becoming much more common, and the switch to solid-state batteries, which will take place over the next decade, will eradicate the issue entirely.
In the meantime, EVs actually have a lower pro-rata rate of fire incidents than petrol or diesel cars – you are carrying around a 60 litre tank of highly flammable fluid, after all.
“I served in the fire service for 14 years, so I’m well aware of vehicle fires; I’ve first-hand experience,” says Nevo’s Derek Reilly. “The data globally shows that petrol and diesel fires are far more likely to happen. Yes, when an EV catches fire, there is a chance of thermal runaway, but fire services are adapting to this with new techniques and equipment. Manufacturers are also aware of this and developing less volatile battery chemistry make-ups, along with working with emergency services to allow easy access to flood the battery compartment.
“EVs take too long to charge.”
Again, partially true. There’s a complex dance to be carried out when you plug in, between the battery of your car and what sort of state it’s in, the charging system fitted to your car and the type of charger and the amount of power actually reaching it. It’s always an imperfect science, but when it works right, it’s brilliant.
We’ve done plenty of 10-80 per cent charges in fast-charging models such as the Kia EV6 and Audi e-Tron GT and were back on the road in little more than 20 minutes. Newer cars, such as the Mercedes CLA, can potentially add as much as 330km of extra range in just 10 minutes, and BYD is working on new ultra-fast chargers that can deliver a 97 per cent charge in just five minutes. In the meantime, it’s not really an issue for most EV drivers, who mostly charge – cheaply – at home overnight.
“EVs will crash the electricity grid when we all plug in.”
It’s true that if every driver in Ireland owned an electric car and all plugged in to charge at the exact same moment, there wouldn’t be enough power to go around. But that’s not how these things work. In fact, having lots of EVs connected to the grid can help the way engineers balance the demand load of the entire island. Already, Ohme chargers and the ESB are conducting experiments to see exactly how far they can push this, and equally, people are using their cars as power banks (or installing home storage batteries) to power their homes during power cuts or when there’s high demand on the system.
Electric cars charging up at night are also a fantastic way to make good use of wind energy generated at times when there’s not a lot of grid demand, so that energy won’t go to waste as it largely does now. If anything, having lots of EVs on the road is going to drastically improve Ireland’s power grid.
Derek Reilly has come across this myth a lot at Nevo’s various shows. “EirGrid have constantly confirmed that our network has plenty of capacity, especially for electric vehicles. It suits a grid perfectly because most of the charging happens overnight when we have excess energy with low demand and usually high renewable wind energy with nowhere else to go. In other markets we see the benefits of dynamic tariffs, but that’s for a different article.”
“EVs are no fun to drive.”
EVs are like any other type of car in this respect. Some are deeply dull to drive. Most are fine, but perhaps unexciting. A few are absolutely brilliant. The brilliant ones? The Renault 5 – Nissan Micra – Alpine A290 trio. The Audi e-Tron GT, Porsche Taycan and new Cayenne Turbo. The Porsche Macan. The Volkswagen ID.7 GTX. The BMW iX3. The Mercedes CLA and GLC. The Kia EV4, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and the Ioniq 6 (and no, not just the N versions). The Kia EV6. The Polestar 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Electricity is just a power source. What matters when it comes to driving fun is sharp steering, good body control, and well-tuned suspension. Plenty of EVs have all three, and many more are on the way.
The one that’s actually true: “You must install a home charger.”
Yup, this is an absolute, at least for the moment. With home charging, you unlock way more convenience (your car is full every time you walk out the door in the morning) and enormous cost savings. Equally, it means that you only need to use the – too often too expensive – public charging network, which can exceed €40 for a top-up depending on the car, and dependency on which can make an EV simply too expensive to run.
Does that mean that EV ownership will always be effectively restricted to those with a driveway? Not necessarily – some solutions for home charging have been introduced for those with apartments, and there are calls to equalise the VAT costs between home charging and public charging, which would bring down the cost of public charging quite a bit. There is also talk of discounted local community public charging being rolled out. Other solutions will be needed, but for now, yes, you’re better off with a home charger than without.
