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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“While planning a week-long trip...”
Well, stop right there. If they’ve never done this before they didn’t plan very well. What did they think? That there’d be charging stations a mile from anywhere they wanted to go? Some basic homework would expose the challenges.
EV’s have to be considered against their application. For me, I’ll probably get one for my driving around town day to day stuff. I’d like to avoid going to gas stations, getting oil changes, and ICE repairs. But to assume a long distance, week long, trip? Nope.
Same goes for other vehicles, I’m not sure EV’s are aligned with pickup trucks and how they’re utilized. Maybe for some, if just local hauling but I can think of many use cases where people specifically use trucks that isn’t going to be good for an EV.
It’s no different than me switching all my gardening tools to battery powered devices. Two chargers, 4 batteries, interchangeable across several tools gives me the ability to work perpetually - use one battery while charging the others. Drop a battery into a tool and go. No hassles, no pull strings, no mixing oil/gas, no carbs/plugs/filters issues, no oil changes. It meets the application.
The only challenge for EV’s is the battery technology. Which will continue to improve. I believe it is inevitable that they’ll dominate over time. I just don’t want idiots in D.C. to dictate them as some ‘savior’ for the environment, they’re not.
I don’t need any more batteries to keep charged.
My life has many daily instances of attending to charging batteries.
ABC -—> Always Be Charging
Yes, its all fun and games til the battery goes dead. 😉
The old adage, “You can tell what cars are crappy by looking on the 2nd tier used car lots.” fits....................
I expect to see a lot of them stuck on rural roads here in CT during the winter—with no Internet service—the drivers crying for help on the side of the road—unless they are locked in the vehicle—where nobody can hear you scream.
Had to check again just to make sure it wasn’t Jim Farley who wrote this.
I never met a battery I liked. B*strds always let you down just when you really, really need them.
My son ,in California ,just bought one for his wife. She commutes on the toll road every day and it’s worth it. He drives a Toyota Tundra but his company pays for his gas. My granddaughters share a big Lexus SUV, a real gas guzzler.
I was very impressed with the Tesla, smooth ride and a rocket ship.
We saw a Tesla on the side of the road last week up in the rural area where we have our compound. I don’t think there’s too many charging stations up there. Or any. 😄
Could have been written in 1925.
—Joe
My Mustang does 0-60 in 5.5 and that's good enough for me. I could add a pro-charger kit for $8K and make the 0-60 time 3.5 seconds but why bother?
There is no chance that anyone will mistake this for an article about puttering around town or going 10 miles to work and back.
Anything mildly like a road trip is going to be a PITA at least for these cars.
Your mention of desert drives where gasoline is harder to come by is way off the mark. How many more 150 mile drives are there than such desert trips? (Number of people actually making the trips).
Please go over to DU with your goofy advocacy.
> Zero to 60 in 3.5 seconds
Right up your home street. Dead kids.
Just what we need - more dangerous self indulgence.
Melt it all down. Back to 1954, I say.
Too many words. The article was very clear, and nicely condemns some fancy impractical junk.
Sounds like a nightmare!
Why is our tax money subsidizing these vehicles and their charging stations?
The author is so damned stupid that she probably has to constantly remind herself to breathe. She definitely doesn’t need a Tesla…I have concerns about her operating a motor vehicle, period.
Thats not good enough.
Actually, most people aren't.
Not to mention how bad they are for the environment. Wasn’t the point of these things to be clean and better for the environment? That’s not what I e seen and read.
What about when they catch on fire? Fire dept’s here in NorCA let them burn until they are out. Pretty awesome when one burning electric car can shut down one entire way out of the Lake Tahoe basin for 2 hours. Just read an article about a wife suing Elon because her husband hit a tree and the car burst into flames with her husband trapped inside. I’ve heard more than a few stores about either the fire dept not being able to get the doors open or the person inside not being able to open the door to get out. Jesus……….you can have those things. I’ll stick with my 2017 tundra and my 1969 Chevy K5 blazer.
Probably for the same reason they subsidize oil companies. It is less than 5% what oil gets.
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