Are Electric Cars Worth it?
The instant torque that electric cars produce can provide a lot of tyre burning fun even in a vehicle that isn’t very quick on paper.
As it stands the internal combustion engine’s (ICE) days are numbered. Many governments across the developed world, the UK included, have set a target for their ban on new sales from 2030, just over eight years away. Considering where we currently stand that’s a big ask. But why? Alarmed at the effects on greenhouse gas emissions, not just on the climate but also on people’s health within urban areas, this is all part of the push to move towards a greener world, and perhaps give legislators a chance to redeem themselves after the disaster that was Dieselgate. However, is the push towards electrification really worth it? Or is this just another motoring scandal in the making?
Manufactures are bringing more and more EV models to the market and the Taycan is Porsche’s opening salvo. It has already proved popular.
The 2030 deadline set by the government is being hotly discussed within the motoring industry.
When electric vehicles (EVs) first entered the market about a decade ago their range was rather pitiful, a first-generation Nissan Leaf could do just over seventy miles on full charge. Fine if you wanted to dodge the congestion charge in London on your daily commute, not so good if you wanted to go for a spontaneous day out, especially at a time when the supporting infrastructure was non-existent. Fast forward to today and things are looking a lot better. Even at the lower end of the market, cars are now able to produce (a claimed) 250 miles and at the higher end you can expect north of 350. These cars now have practical mileages and new charging points are popping up all the time. Is this now enough to say people could own an electric car as their only car? Well Aaron and I put this to the test when we took an MG5 EV press vehicle camping at this years’ Triumph & MG Weekend.
What better way to stress taste the real world usability of an EV than by taking it camping?
Perhaps unsurprisingly it wasn’t a stress-free experience. Unable to find anywhere to charge the car at the showground we spent a lot of the afternoon trying to find somewhere suitable offsite. The first place we stopped at had an older set of chargers that were a mere 7kW, perhaps fine for those original Leafs but we didn’t have the seven or eight hours free the car was saying it would take until full charged. Eventually we gave up there and found a fast charger at a hotel car park which gave us an almost full charge in about forty-five minutes. Convenient if you want to sit down and have a coffee, but this is obviously a lot slower than the five minutes spent filling up at a traditional petrol station.
Some of the current infrastructure is already largely obsolete. Even the parking spaces are too small.
You would need to have a full day out before the car fully charged on a 7kW charging station.
It wasn’t the smooth experience I had been hoping for and many other people I have spoken to have also mentioned the aspect of additional planning when going somewhere new. Always on the look out for charging points and having to plan journeys accordingly. This is not an issue if you are commuting the same fifty miles every day with fixed destinations, but for longer, more unpredictable, or spontaneous trips out the fossil fuel powered car is still much more convenient. Especially if you had to suddenly dash out due to an emergency.
GRIDSERVE’s electric forecourt near Braintree is the first of its kind in the UK. The plan is to have more of these sites across the country to service the growing number of electric cars.
Car manufactures are thankfully putting universal charging ports on their cars so you won’t be caught short when you reach a charging station.
Our experience also highlighted how some infrastructure is already out of date, which doesn’t bode well as that will also mean some of the infrastructure being built now will also be obsolete or have reached the end of its life as we reach 2030. It is positive to see more fast chargers of up to 150kW but if we want to be able to cope with the predicated ten million EVs on the roads in 2030 then we will likely need 400kW, 500kW or even 600kW chargers so people can charge quickly enough before handing over to the next person in the queue. Hopefully that can be offset by simply increasing the number of chargers, but we have a lot of work to do there. It is also worth mentioning that fast charging in of itself is damaging to an EV’s battery due to the excessive heat, which could be a limiting factor in how fast we will be able to charge and how frequently.
The design of car interiors is moving along with the theme of technological minimalism. Buttons and dials are being replaced with large screens.
However will it be economical to replace these digital displays when they break or will otherwise functioning cars be scrapped over not having a working speedometer?
Currently there is less than 40,000 chargers but we would need about 2.9M by 2030. That works out at about 800 a day and the number increases every day we don’t hit that. That’s before you get into how people who live in flats or town houses without off road parking can regularly charge their cars. Will local councils up and down the country have the money and time to dig up every residential road to provide charging (an exercise which certainly won’t be carbon neutral either)? At least there is a drive to standardise the charging ports on cars so these new installations will work for every new car.
Manufacturers are also developing the first generation of all electric hypercars like this Lotus Evija…
…and the Rimac Nevera, hailing from a pioneering company in Croatia (Rimac Automobile).
Of course, the big advantage of EVs is that there are no tailpipe emissions and what many people aren’t aware of is that as these cars will do up to 80% of their braking through KERS (kinetic energy recovery system) they also will produce significantly less brake dust. This is all great news for people worried about smoggy cities. But what about the emissions over a car’s lifetime? It is definitely true that EVs require more materials and energy during production than traditional ICE vehicles, but the studies so far do seem to point to the emissions reduction of 50% or more once the car has driven more than 100,000 miles when compared to an equivalent ICE vehicle.
Some are looking to convert classic cars to electric power so they can still be driven no matter what new legislation comes into place.
The engine is replaced by a large battery…
…and there’s more in the boot as well to give this car as much range as possible.
There are however two things that need to be considered here. The first is how the electricity is generated, in carbon intensive economies the gains will be lower, and secondly the types of vehicles people are buying. Currently the most popular ICE cars are still the traditional hatchbacks. However, the most popular electric cars tend to be bigger and heavier SUVs which will have higher production emissions again. I think this will ultimately be the sticking point, perhaps an EV will be greener than buying its equivalent but buying a brand new 2.5T SUV every three years will never be environmental. We also know little about the true-life span of these cars, if it isn’t much beyond ten years when an ICE car could go on much longer, then we may not see the kinds of gains many are hoping for. And that’s before you get into how complicated cars have become, where it is often more economical to simply replace the entire vehicle when something goes wrong instead of just fixing the issue. This will play out in a bigger way as these cars approach a decade in age, although this is already affecting ICE vehicles which are already full of a lot of electronics.
The Audi Q4 e-tron is emblematic of the electric SUVs people will be buying in big numbers over the next decade.
But as cars get bigger and bigger can we really say that they are more environmentally friendlier?
I think overall electric cars currently work best as a second city runaround car. Where you are making short and predictable journeys, often in urban areas where you would normally burn the most fuel. For everything else hybrid vehicles will be the best option for the foreseeable to fill the space that traditional ICE vehicles leave as they give the best of both worlds. Lower emissions combined with the practicality of fuel fill-ups. There’s a lot of work still left to do in providing the infrastructure to support large numbers of EVs on the road and it isn’t very clear who will be footing the bill. We also need to be crossing all our fingers and toes that the life span of EVs is better than many fear, otherwise we could quickly see a lot of electric junk lying around. Tackling carbon emissions is going to be a difficult task and it isn’t one we can simply consume our way out of. We need to try and extend the lifespan of what we buy as long as possible and not think that by purchasing the latest ‘low carbon’ fad we will be saving the planet. Thinking that and being swept up in marketing spiel could lead us to another Dieselgate.
One option will be to not just carry on as we are but to think about how we could travel differently. As cars get bigger, perhaps small quadricycles like this Citroen Ami will be how many get around urban areas in the future.
For a full write up on our experiences with the MG5 EV don’t forget to check out the latest issue of MG Enthusiast, available at all good newsagents.
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