Posted on 08/21/2023 7:33:04 AM PDT by Red Badger
After test-driving one for an entire week, we learned we will never buy a Tesla or any electric vehicle as long as we have the option of gas-powered cars or even hybrids.
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While planning a week-long trip to the Seattle area recently, I wondered aloud to my husband if we should rent a Tesla. Neither of us had ever driven an electric vehicle before. The price difference between the long-range Tesla Model 3 and a standard mid-size gas-fueled vehicle was pretty negligible.
We agreed it would be an interesting learning experience despite our objections to the eco-agenda to phase out gas-powered vehicles. We also don’t believe EVs are particularly environmentally friendly since they need batteries that require the strip-mining of rare earth minerals such as lithium and cobalt. The World Economic Forum knows this very well and is likely looking for heavy limits on EV mobility after eliminating gas-powered vehicles.
But more people like us are also finding some very practical reasons to object to Teslas. There’s a glut of them on the market now despite subsidies and price reductions. After test-driving one for an entire week (instead of just 30 minutes,) we learned we will never buy a Tesla or any EV as long as we have the option of gas-powered vehicles or even hybrids. Read on for seven big reasons why. (Yes, “mileage may vary.”)
1. Battery Drainage Is Stress-Inducing
In the Tesla, stress is a given. The battery drains faster than you might think. Our Model 3 had an advertised range of about 300 miles, but that’s if you charge it to 100 percent (which no one does) and run it to 0 percent (which no one does). So the practical range is about 150-200 miles. We felt compelled to recharge after going just 150 miles versus refueling after about 450 miles in our Honda Accord. The battery even drained 10 percent just sitting in the driveway for about a day. Granted, we covered some distances in Washington state during our travels. But that confirms EVs are a poor choice for road trips unless you enjoy the risk of being stranded.
2. Few Charging Station Locations and Length of Time There
Yes, there are now more than 1,500 “supercharger” stations across the U.S. Regular chargers can be found at hotels, where guests at least have a room to stay in while charging for three to six hours. We plugged into a Tesla charger at a hotel for nearly three hours to get the battery up to 85 percent from about 30. Compare that with about 150,000 gas stations where we could fill up in less than five minutes and be on our way, ready for the next 500 miles. Even at a supercharger, we had to wait about 30 minutes to up the battery charge by 50 percent. And it’s all a matter of luck if there are amenities close by, especially if you need a charge when it’s late at night.
3. Personal Safety at Charging Locations Can Feel Dicey
It’s a good idea to plan the times at which you charge your vehicle. We had to stop on a Sunday evening at a supercharger located in an Ikea parking lot. Ikea was closed, and there were no walkable amenities around it. Ditto for our visit to another Tesla supercharger located across from a pawn shop. I got the uneasy feeling that many of these unsupervised locations — and the length of time required to be there — were crime scenes waiting to happen. Sure you can stop charging and be on your way. But on your way to where? To another supercharger.
4. Texting While Driving Is Required
Texting while driving is considered dangerous and mostly illegal. How ironic that in a Tesla, you are dependent upon the touch screen that sits between the driver and passenger seat like a big laptop. The interface is not intuitive, and autopilot is too new and unpredictable to use safely.
Luckily for us, there was always a passenger available to cope with the screen. We had to be in motion in order to check for a charging station nearby. There’s nothing intuitive about the air conditioning. Ditto for the radio, which we could only “turn off” by reducing the volume. The windshield wipers are supposed to be automatic, but when it started raining, we realized they were “turned off.” After fishing around the screen, we finally pulled over to consult YouTube to get them working again.
5. No Convenient Manual to Consult While Renting
Our Tesla rental was proudly “paperless.” It would have been worthwhile to have a hard copy manual on hand that didn’t put us at the mercy of a satellite signal. Hertz at the Seattle airport could provide no support in answering our questions about the vehicle. When I was able to flag employees down (twice), they were unable to help. We hoped to get a clue from a manual in the glove compartment, but what glove compartment? The employee at the checkout kiosk explained that the glove compartment was permanently locked shut. There’s no spare tire either, by the way.
6. How to Lock the Car?
This was not clear, not even with the Hertz tutorials on renting a Tesla. The key card operates like a hotel-room “smart” key, but (per YouTube) we discovered we needed to find the “sweet spot” by the window on the driver’s side, apparently the only place to lock the car. There are ways to lock from the inside as well, but it all depends on your tech-savviness, and willingness to risk locking yourself in, I suppose.
7. Don’t Expect the Cost of a Battery Charge to Always Be Lower than Gasoline
There are so many variables in fuel/charging costs, it’s hard to know if you’re getting a deal. When we tapped the “lightning bolt” image on the Tesla’s touch screen, we got a list of superchargers in the region as well as the cost per kilowatt hour, which varied from about 18 cents to about 50 cents. Our cheapest total charge was around $7 and ranged up to $25. We generally didn’t put more than a 50 percent charge into the car at any one time, and given the miles driven, the $25 charge was about the same as we would have paid for gas. Since there are government subsidies both for purchasing an EV and for charging, I would expect those prices to rise if everyone gets with the program and demand is up.
But pigs will fly before I buy an EV based on my Tesla experience/experiment. This conclusion is not based on a one-hour test drive but on an entire week of driving in an EV-friendly part of the country.
Granted, there are some moments of fun when driving a Tesla. “Regenerative braking” is a system that recharges the battery. So once your foot is off the accelerator, the car slows down quickly. We rarely needed to use the brake at all, even at red lights. And once you accelerate, expect a fast pick-up! The tinted glass roof was kind of cool. The seats were comfortable enough. But all in all, it was too much hassle and too much anxiety. I’m now totally sold on gas-powered vehicles.
Stella Morabito is a senior contributor at The Federalist. She is author of "The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer." Her essays have appeared in various publications, including the Washington Examiner, American Greatness, Townhall, Public Discourse, and The Human Life Review. In her previous work as an intelligence analyst, Morabito focused on various aspects of Russian and Soviet politics, including communist media and propaganda.
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Agreed. Nothing should be shoehorned by the government anyway. And my wife and I like our EV. We're in a situation that makes it work well for us (drive enough miles to save on gas and oil changes to warrant the extra costs, can charge at home, warm climate, almost any road trip we'd take has plenty of fast road-side chargers, have an ICE pickup for the few times an EV won't do). Yet it's easy to see how an EV wouldn't be good for family members we have living in other areas and having different driving demands.
Which is exactly what the Deep State wants. Driving out on the "open road" is so Twentieth Century!
Waiting for a car that runs on oxygen or water. The technology would extract hydrogen and safely use it as the fuel propulsion source. Until then gives me dat dead black dinosaur doo called fossil fuels.
It is as irresponsible to drive to fumes as it is to drive an EV to zero charge.
They can self-immolate at any time....and the fire dept can’t put it out.
Don’t park it near anything you value.
> This article is complete BS. It would be like writing an article about how you took your gas car on a cruise through the desert and will never do that again, since there were no gas stations, so you are going back to a camel like any sane person!
Seeing as how the EV is heavily pushed as suitable for getting around greater Seattle and shorter road trips by the rental companies, I disagree. The “sketchy location” aspect of charging stations is a big deal and is a realistic issue for travelers from out of town.
If you are traveling with your own EV, 450+ miles on the interstate is logistically equivalent to ferrying piston aircraft across the ocean - doable, but only with careful preparation.
And when the government forces the abandonment of ICE vehicles, EVERYONE will be limited. No more freedom of movement. That is exactly what they want.
They've made flying miserable.
Well, that's never going to happen.
“EVs are a new form of Slavery”
Yep, once they take our wheels and our guns, we will be toast.
You touched on something that IMHO ironically is liable to make an EV more practical for conservatives than liberals. Basically, more of us conservatives are married and need 2 cars anyway. My wife and I put most of our miles in our EV and it works well for us for almost all of our driving needs.
But I wouldn't have bought an EV unless I was married and need 2 cars anyway (in our case: one EV car and one ICE pickup). Since we need 2 cars anyway we can have an EV with the benefits it brings to the table, but also have an ICE car for the times an EV won't do. A single person (or family that needs just 1 car) trying to use an EV would have the frustration of the weaknesses of EV's.
Remember "Cash for Clunkers"?
Look what that did to the used car market.
Hypothetically true, but not likely given the current world political environment. I'd love to be an optimist. Long after I'm gone, there may be more efficient nuke power and maybe even fusion, plus super efficient capture of solar power from space. For now I can just read about it in SciFi novels and Michio Kaku books.
EV’s are ideal for a 15 minute city. Whereas an ICE vehicle will get a photo cam ticket when it leaves it’s designated area, an EV will be shut down as it crosses the line. Kind of like those buried shock collar boundries. (My humerous take:)
Like the massive blades from the wind machines that will never decompose. They’re being carted to “burial sites” near Indian Reservations because they would present an environmental hazard if buried close to big cities.
‘Face
;o]
We rented one a few months back, and I generally agree with these points. However, some would be less an issue as you gain familiarity with a Tesla. Traditional cars are like Windows... electric cars are like Apple.
Yeah, that’s a big rush!
The big problem with that 0-60 run in 3.5 seconds is that you have just used up 20% of your available energy, and your car still weighs the same, so your time cannot improve before you run out of juice after 5 runs and need to hook up to a genset in order to have enough power to get home.
“Electricity is going to get expensive”.
A stting (p)resident once said Americans don’t pay enough for energy.
I’m retired now, but if I still worked, I’d probably buy an EV.
1. I worked 55 miles from home.
2. My employer provided free charging stations. I wouldn’t even need to upgrade to a fast charger at home.
My range is 690 miles. 2016 Ford F150.
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