But reading the room leads me to believe that there are a lot of people in your target demographic who think that EVs are for city dwellers.
The biggest issues for getting from 10% to ~50% are communication, price, and availability.
- Has a 400 mile range
- Can stop anywhere and refuel in just a few minutes, including very isolated areas
- Plays all the music I want
- Hauls anything I want (ie. I don't care if I trash the interior with a pile of mulch on a plastic tarp)
- I can sleep in the back
- Fits in nicely in my lower middle class neighborhood
- Has plenty of spare parts at the junkyard if I need to repair it
On top of that, it doesn't require a #$@# subscription, doesn't force me into some plutocrat's idea of an infotainment system, isn't tracked remotely, with that data being sold to randos, and doesn't cost as much as a Master's degree. Last thing is that while EVs are probably more environmentally friendly than a new ICE car, they still don't compete with a used one from the aughts over their lifetime.
Nevermind that half of the EVs out there don't have conventional mechanical door latches to let people out of the car should the power fail. EVs are far heavier than standard cars. I heard that they don't crumple as much either, to protect the battery from causing a bigger disaster. Rigid vehicles cause much more harsh deceleration in a crash, which is likely much worse for the people in the car. Look up the Youtube channels MGUY Australia or Geoff Buys Cars if you want some real dirt on EVs.
Passenger EVs are barely practical, risky, and not nearly as environmentally sustainable as the marketing says. EV trucks (consumer and commercial) are a sick joke.
I never said EVs in good condition are ready to spontaneously combust. That has happened of course, but it is rare. The trouble is with crashes. The fire risk is by far the worst. An EV catching fire can ignite any vehicles near it, causing a chain of unextinguishable toxic fires. No wonder many repair shops want nothing to do with damaged EVs. I've seen several firefighters talk about how horrible these fires are. Of course, a chain of fires in a city parking garage is the worst case.
Safety stats for EVs are hard to come by, at least ones that could effectively answer my questions. There are confounding factors, such as the high prices of EVs, that would make EVs look safer.
You are right about safety ratings being gamed. EVs have a separate set of regulations they have to conform to. That's what I was alluding to. I've only heard about how EV safety ratings favor structural integrity of the battery over the occupants indirectly though. If you want to know more, the Youtube channels I mentioned discuss news articles about it. I don't have a bibliography, and search engines bury most anti-EV stuff.
I've read enough media to see the opposite. Tiny numbers of car fires are constantly getting exaggerated, meanwhile the steady stream of gas car fires get no discussion.
Even after the recall work was done, we had local surface lots that banned the Chevy Bolt. They didn't ban gas or diesel trucks with active recalls for car fires while parked. The differences in risk for a parking lot like that are negligible, but the constant barrage of media scare stories got to them.
As to fires, the data is interesting. They are less likely to catch fire overall. On average they are slightly more likely to catch fire while parked, but somewhat less likely to catch fire post collision.
Interestingly, the current data seems to imply lower overall risk of fires causing personal injury in an EV vs an ICE. Thankfully the odds of both are so low as to make the difference a rounding error.
For what it's worth, Tesla fans say the exact opposite.
Of course, they are just quoting so it isn't lying, but sometimes it seems like they intentionally do the bare minimum research to keep from finding out the truth of a story.
The Vibe isn't bad at all, though. I wouldn't switch just for safety ratings.
Also a lot of what makes modern cars 'safer' is the inclusion of nannyTech such as stability control, automatic braking, etc. All of this is great, but if you were already a safe driver, there's little additional safety for you personally.
I was referring more to the large vehicle arms race.
> Right now I'm focusing on the first 2 R's of the 3 R's > I'm reducing my footprint by reusing an existing car and fixing it with used parts when I can.
I'd agree that's probably the most environmentally conscious approach. I'm somewhat similar, holding on to an old car, but more almost out of spite than any sort of rational consideration haha.
Your Vibe fills up in your garage while you are sleeping? Cool.
I would simplify this down to just price. Price is a signaling mechanism in the market, which takes care of both communication and availability.
Nobody would need to communicate the virtues of an EV if it's priced like a Toyota Corolla with sufficient range.
You might not know if it you haven't seen the discussions with people who have 0 experience with EVs, but there's a ton of misinformation being actively spread.
Considering the debacle that was the Energy Secretary's 650-mile EV road trip[0], perhaps the misinformation isn't quite that. It doesn't matter if you can go 10% to 80% in 20 minutes, if none of the four EV chargers at a highway stop are free.
I personally rented an EV for a weekend trip to a major coastal metropolis (certainly one that professes to embrace the energy transition) a few months back. I picked a hotel that claimed that it had EV chargers. The reality on the ground was that only one of eight or so chargers was working, and that one was occupied by the same car during my entire stay.
[0]: https://www.npr.org/2023/09/10/1187224861/electric-vehicles-...
CCS networks are terrible. I rarely see one that is more than 75% operational. "EA" is so bad in places that they look like literal sabotage.
The supercharger network is a totally different world. And yes, I've done both to compare. :)