As someone following the EV revolution quite closely, I was annoyed and disappointed that the challenge segment was deliberately set up to propogate outdated and incorrect prejudice against electric vehicles:
- Range anxiety: they made a big deal about this, yet later it turned out they had delierately bought a thrashed old Leaf with a knackered battery! And I bet they had to look hard for one as well, since I've recently been reading that all EV battery life has been far better than predicted and that batteries outlast the vehicles, not the other way round. This car is exceptional; probably one where the owner abused the battery instead of charging it properly. Secondly, for normal use (commuting or shopping trips, overnight charging or charging at work) range is never an issue in real life. Again they set it up by staging a race to drain the charge and then immediately holding a short road trip. Which brings me onto the other point:
- Charging issues: 1: not enough charging points... complete rubbish since - and this is something the media constantly gets wrong - EV DRIVERS DO NOT NORMALLY CHARGE THEIR CARS AT CHARGING POINTS! There is this idea that you use an EV like a fossil-fuel car, i.e. charge it up at a public charging point, run it down, go to a charging point and fill it up again. In fact, you always leave it charging overnight or at work. The only time you will need to stop at a public charging point which isn't near your home or workplace is when you're on an unusually long road trip. Which leads to:
- Charging issues: 2: having to wait hours for it to charge. This was only ever an issue for early generations or when you plug in to a standard household socket - which almost no-one does. For any modern EV connected to any modern charging point (including those fitted at home) a typical top-up en route will take less than an hour and give you enough juice for another few hours driving. That means you drive for two or three hours, charge it while you grab lunch, then finish your journey. And even then, things are improving all the time. Last I heard, the next generation rolling out would serve up a full charge in around five minutes.
This was disappointing since instead of encouraging and reassuring viewers that EV stereotypes are all wrong, they went full-on into the cliches instead.
So after all that anti-EV bigotry, it was quite weird for the model 3 review to largely turn round and say "actually EVs are great after all!"
And they never once mentioned the one thing that everyone should know... they cost almost nothing to run! Pennies for the juice but also practically zero maintenance!