Are Electric Cars Worth It?

Answer: Not yet.

Thanks for reading!

Oh... you want more of an explanation? I figured as much.

So you're in the market for a new car, or maybe you just want to be part of the change for a better environment? You find yourself at a local car dealer and the salesman is trying to sell you a brand new... Nissan Leaf. You think to yourself, "Why would I want a go-kart like that? It's tiny and barley has any power. I want a car I can have some fun in, drive around longer than 170 km!" (I actually looked that up, you're welcome).

Well, hold your horse..power.. get it? I know, horrible joke, why do I even try.

Why do people think electric cars aren't great? Is it the range? Tell me when you drive further than 170 km unless you're travelling out of town? Is it power? Tell me when you need a car that has over 150 horse power (answer is never in case you were wondering). Even brand new cars like corollas and civics don't have 150 hp. The Leaf has 107 hp and NO EMISSIONS! Electric cars also have 100% torque whenever you're on pedal. I get it, you may not be a car person and know what that means, so I'll tell you. In a gas car, there is a delay between pressing the gas pedal and the car moving, and the more you press down the pedal, the faster the car goes. In an electric car, you touch that pedal and get sent flying into your seat in a roller coaster type rush. So the fun argument goes out the window. Looks like there isn't too much of a downside to electric cars yet.

Oh, you say cost? Just in the province I'm from, and there are similar credits all over North America from what I've seen, just for buying an electric car, you can get up to $8500 in credits from the government! Yes, you spend $30,000 and automatically get almost a third of it back. Plus never buying gas or regular maintenance like oil changes.

Let's do some quick math. We'll say 10 years is the baseline for a car's life, and making some assumptions such as 80 litres of gas per month at an average of $1 per litre. Over 10 years, that's about $10,000. So your $20,000 corolla ends up costing $30,000! Oh, and add an extra $1000 for oil changes.

So what am I trying to say? A gasoline powered car ends up becoming much more expensive than the initial purchase. I'll leave out all the extra maintenance a gas powered car goes through since electric cars may also have similar problems. I don't know, to me, it is looking pretty close, actually leaning toward electric to be honest.

Now let's explore the last major issue with electric cars, the electricity. 

So clearly 170 km is much less than 400 or 500 km, and charging something like the Leaf will take between 8 and 20 hours for a full charge (also looked that up.. sooo much extra work on this one). So it's safe to say this isn't like your measly cell phone battery. I agree that this is somewhat of a major issue. Filling your car's gas tank takes 5 minutes, so a car being rendered useless for 8 hours is a major turn off for electric cars.

As mentioned in the last post, you have inefficient battery technology to thank for that. But there is good news, batteries and battery technology are evolving into much more efficient super batteries, aka superconductors, and that is a huge kick forward for electric cars. 

You may be thinking, why Nissan Leaf? Well, honestly, because it's realistic. Not everyone has $90,000 to spend on the best electric car (Tesla Model S) which does have a longer range and screams luxury and performance, but like I said, I'm being realistic. Although if you can afford one, buy it, buy it now (I promise Tesla or Nissan didn't pay me for this). Tesla is leading the charge in the battery game (Ha, get it? Charge? Batteries..? That was pure gold) and even releasing a more realistic $30,000 model (Tesla Model 3) very soon.

So like I said all the way up at the top, are electric cars ready for the main stream yet? No. When will they be? Very, very soon, and that is something that excites me greatly.

There are tid-bits of noise around hydrogen powered cars, let's talk about those next....time.

Thanks for reading, I hope you learned something!

J