EV Myths

People, at least Americans, hate EVs for varying reasons. One group of people hates them simply because the mainstream media hates them while pretending not to, so people get a flawed view, believing that the EV’s only advantage over gasoline is the environment and believing that they’re mostly inferior to gasoline; the media gives this erroneous impression. However, the environment is the very least of the EV’s advantages, at least to the car’s owner.
Republicans hate them because the president told them to hate them. The president told them that because the oil industry paid good money to get him elected.
The other group of EV haters has good reason to hate them: EVs will badly damage or destroy their professions. That’s auto manufacturers, automobile dealers, auto mechanics, auto parts stores, and everyone having anything whatever to do with the oil industry. They’re like the blacksmiths, oat farmers, and wagon and carriage makers a century ago when the auto industry destroyed or upended their industries.
The manufacturers and dealers won’t go out of business, at least not all, but they will lose their dealer to junkyard gravy train on maintenance and replacement parts; EVs don’t need them. The piston drive train is an unreliable Rube Goldberg contraption with thousands of moving parts that needs constant maintenance; the EV drive train has fewer than two dozen parts and needs no maintenance at all.
Why do the media hate them? Because the media are owned by the same people who own the industries EVs will damage and destroy, the industries they now advertise.
So the people whose jobs depend on oil and auto maintenance have understandably been fibbing about EVs. That includes the media, most of whom don’t actually publish “fake news,” their lies are mostly lies of omission and suggestion. “Social” media is where you’ll see the out and out lies, such as:
 
It’s a fancy golf cart!
My “golf cart” handles and brakes better than any other car I have ever driven, and I started driving in 1968; better handling because its center of gravity is under my feet, and braking because it has two sets of brakes that work together. And almost any EV will beat almost any gasoline car in the quarter mile. Lightning always outruns fire. And after driving a roomy EV, the same sized piston car feels as cramped as a golf cart.
The only difference between our cars is rather than a big heavy engine, transmission, and radiator in the front and a heavy sixteen gallon or more tank of liquid in the rear (ignoring the EV’s braking), those are all gone, replaced by a battery under the floorboard and a much smaller electric motor between the wheels that is far more powerful and efficient than your V-8.
The difference between an EV and a piston car isn’t the difference between an automobile and a golf cart, it’s the difference between a Model-T Ford and a horse-drawn buggy.
 
EVs are fire traps
The biggest lie is that EVs are fire traps that are constantly catching fire, and you can’t put them out.
They are more difficult to extinguish than gasoline, but piston cars are the fire traps; the media seldom mention gasoline fires, and nationwide media never do. For the longest time, every time an EV caught fire (strangely always Teslas), it was national news. But the truth of the matter is that in 2024, for every hundred thousand piston cars, 1,530 caught fire, while out of every hundred thousand electric cars, 25 caught fire. Gasoline is dangerous! EV fires are a myth.
 

If you’re stuck behind a wreck in the winter your battery will die and you’ll freeze
A gasoline car can travel farther on a tank of gas than a fully charged EV, and extreme cold does sharply reduce the EV’s mileage, but it takes far more energy to heat a gasoline car than an EV. The gasoline engine must remain running, burning enough fuel to keep the pistons pumping and the crankshaft turning; the heat is incidental, waste heat, and is a very small fraction of the energy needed to run the engine.
The EV sits there, its motor unmoving. The only energy used is for heat from the vents, the blower fan, and the seat warmer. The EV will keep you alive far longer than the gasoline car, with no threat of carbon monoxide poisoning as with gasoline.
 
They’re useless in winter
The truth, like the fire trap, is actually the opposite. Yes, an EV’s mileage goes down by a third to a half in extreme cold, but not so much as to make it useless. In fact, EVs really shine in the winter! You don’t have to stand there at a gas station in the freezing weather while the cashier inside sells a lottery ticket before turning the pump on, then babysit it for ten minutes while it fills. That was actually my reason for wanting an EV in the first place, freezing at the gas station. You park in your driveway, get the 110v (220 in Britain) charger out, plug it in, and go inside. Thirty seconds.
You actually have heat driving to the grocery store or to work rather than when you arrive; it doesn’t need a steel engine block to heat to seven hundred degrees Fahrenheit for the heater to work, it comes on as fast as the AC in the summer.
There’s no starter motor needing forty amps to turn a several hundred pound engine over. There’s a twelve volt battery, but it can start the computers with less than an amp. There’s no fear of it not starting in five degrees Fahrenheit cold.
You can heat your garage with your car if it’s electric! Just park it, and close the garage door with it still energized. Don’t try that with a gasoline car, you’ll die.
EVs shine in the winter.
 
The electrical infrastructure can’t handle EVs
In fact, the gasoline engine is so inefficient that Google says that an EV will go twenty miles on the electricity it takes to refine a gallon of gasoline! However, Snopes says it’s unknown but uses AI for the question rather than true human research.
When I bought a countertop dishwasher my electric bill went up noticeably. Not so when I bought the car. The difference in the bill was too small to notice, it’s amazing how much energy a small house uses.
If Google is correct and your car gets 35 mpg on the highway and most of your driving is in the city, your mileage will be less than 20 mpg and your pistons will use more electricity than an EV’s electromagnets. This will help when all the AI data centers go online, sucking more electricity than has ever been generated.
 
You have to spend thousands on a charger
This may have been true with early EVs, but today your car comes standard with a charger that plugs into any of your country’s outlets. In the US it’s a level 1 110v charger, but there are level 2 220v American chargers that cost about a hundred bucks and charge your car almost twice as fast. If you don’t have 220, the level 2 chargers come with an adapter that lets you use it with 110 at a slightly reduced charging speed.
 
It takes a long time to charge them
When charging at home, it’s true but meaningless. You don’t have to stand there and babysit it like a gasoline car, it charges overnight. If you’re traveling, a commercial fast charger will charge in twenty minutes or less.
 
They’re expensive to maintain
Actually, an EV is practically maintenance-free, with no scheduled maintenance like oil changes and tune ups at all. Its drive train is simple and elegant; when was the last time you have had maintenance on your ceiling fan? But the unreliable, inefficient piston drive train needs constant expensive maintenance. Check the oil and water, none of that is needed with an EV.
The piston drive train is a Rube Goldberg contraption with thousands of moving parts that need to work together and need adjustments and parts replacements. Maintaining it is an expensive pain, and a lot of work if you do it yourself.
You’ll likely never even need a brake job in an EV; it has two sets, the old friction driven disk brakes, and regenerative brakes that rather than converting motion to wasted heat, converts it to electricity. The disks are only used in panic stops or speeds under five miles an hour.
Your only likely maintenance is wiper blades and fluid, and tires. Maybe a wheel alignment if you travel on rough roads.
 
Only woke liberal Democrats drive EVs
Some of these arguments against EVs are just silly, including this one, the most idiotic. The first president I ever voted for was Nixon; I’ve always been a swing voter. If your choice of vehicle depends on your political party, I pity both you and your party, because that’s just stupid, plain and simple.
Most people who drive luxury and muscle cars are Republicans, because they’re the only ones who can afford them. But the only EVs are luxury vehicles and muscle cars!