I quite enjoy helping people and in the spirit of the holidays I took on the daughnting task of helping my friends and family with their difficult tech questions. I usually enjoy this but, what I don’t like is having to deal with the constant stream of questions from my friends and family in search of “gift advice”. “What do you know about tablets?” “What’s the best features for a GPS?”
The one question I do like however is: “Which car is good?” I particularly like this game of suggesting cars to match the needs of whoever needs them mostly because I wish it was me buying a new car. This holiday break was different though. I was asked “Which electric car is good?”
I swear. I almost dropped the phone. I knew this day was coming because I had been avoiding it ever since hybrids started to emerge. I’m not against technology by any means but you won’t ever see me running out the door to buy the next iPod. I prefer to wait things out and let the market test something I would seriously consider buying. So when hybrids came out I snubbed my nose at them.
Long term costs, I predicted, would ultimately be the end of their reign so I knew that purchasing one for long term ownership would be pointless. The second those batteries dried up the car would likely end up in a scrap yard. But oh well, if people want to drive insane and still get 25 miles per gallon then good for them. They are the perfect candidate for a hybrid. But for electric cars, I don’t think I know of one person who could make use out of such an inefficient mode of transportation.
Where to begin? I could go on and on about boring statistics such as not one of these electric cars on the market has enough room for anything practical — like passengers, or how the build qualities of most of these cars is lacking and uninspired. But I think I will focus on one issue that I found with most of the electric cars I have driven. They will leave you stranded. At some point in time down the road of owning an electric car you will be stuck somewhere with your now dead car waiting for a charge.
You see the problem with things that rely solely on batteries is that when there is no more juice there is no more function to the device. Take for instance a bicycle with an electric motor attached to it and an electric powered scooter. The scooter may be pretty snazzy as all you have to do is sit and twist your wrist and you’re moving. You never have to pay for gas and it’s cheap. But the second the scooter runs out of power you’re left to walk it home or hope you can plug it into something. The bike, however, when drained of electricity becomes, well, a bike and nothing really changes except you may lose a few calories but you can still peddle home.
Electric cars, like the scooter, seem like a good idea at first. They get around 50 mpg. They don’t need gas and they’re relatively cheap. They produce zero emissions (except the emissions from the power plant.) The appeal is pretty tempting I must admit. Owning a sub 40 mpg car can really strain your wallet but so would having to buy another car because you can’t go anywhere while waiting the 20 hours it takes for the Nissan Leaf, Nissan’s premier electric car, to charge. Just about every electric car available in the U.S. suffers from this problem. They get about 100 miles of range on a charge and take about an entire day to charge back up.
Electric cars are great ideas in theory but they are not ready yet. BMW is doing extensive testing on a new prototype that will take far shorter time to charge and more efficiently use its limited range but that won’t be ready until 2015.
Until then if you’re looking for a car you can plug in I suggest the Chevy Volt. It’s a hybrid electric that uses its electric motor mostly with a gasoline engine to charge it. The car boasts impressive mpg and would take well over 600 miles before it leaves you stranded on the side of the road.
