Memo – Why EVs Are Not Selling (And Shouldn’t) | A CPA’s perspective

The government and auto industry wants us to believe that EVs are interchangeable with gas-powered vehicles.

EVs are not a “car” as we know them. EVs are experimental transportation devices that the government wants us to accept as a car replacement.

I believe the rollout of them was extremely premature. They look like cars, and seem to function like cars, but they are not cars.

Words and their traditional definitions matter.

Using the word car for an EV is misleading. I try to avoid it.

EVs are a completely different machine and when purchasing one that should be our mindset.

Replacements For Vital Machines (Evs For Cars) Must Outperform Their Predecessors To Be Universally Adopted

For a new product or invention, which an EV is, to replace a tried and true significant part of our daily lives, like our cars, it has to be a better choice.

Do EVs outperform cars in all important areas?

How should a car replacement be better?

1) Cheaper purchase price, lifetime maintenance and disposal.
2) Better performance, road handling and driving range.
3) As many or more locations to “refuel” and lower recharging times than refueling. Overall more convenient and time saving than gas powered vehicles.
4) Safer in all ways, including charging away from home.
5) Seamless and transparent replacement for our current experience with cars.
6) EVs should be less expensive to insure.
7) End of Life Disposal must be cheaper and more environmentally friendly.

How do EVs stack up in those five categories?

1) EVs are more expensive than gas-powered vehicles. Overall costs over time are much higher for EVs. Even if they were cheaper, the current negative impacts of the loss of convenience and functionality make EVs not worth replacing our cars with experimental replacements. Government subsidies paid to corporations and individuals approach $50,000 per EV. An EV is less functional, yet more expensive? Who thought of this great system?
2) EVs have much higher average horsepower, but other than that the driving experience is not much different and is sometimes deficient. Range anxiety is real and total miles available on a full charge falls terribly behind a full tank of gas.
3) Gas stations are much safer and more convenient than EV charging stations. On the road charging can average ten times longer than refueling with gasoline. EVs fail miserably here.
4) The level of danger using an unmanned EV charging station at night in a deserted parking lot is not tenable, compared to gas stations which have personnel, lights and security cameras. EV battery explosions are commonplace.
5) EVs are not a cheaper, more functional replacement for our cars.
6) A true car replacement would be cheaper to insure. Middle class families already can’t afford car insurance.
7) EV End of Life Disposal? Is there even a plan? What is the tested process for dismantling and disposing of the dead batteries? I am sure this will be very costly for the unfortunate consumer who is the last owner.

EVs fail on almost every measure.

This certainly does not make a great case for EVs.

Using EVs dramatically changes your entire driving experience, one of the most important parts of our daily lives.

There are so many unanswered questions about the impact on us if the government were to ban gas-powered vehicles in favor of EVs.

Mandating EVs will change our way of life.

As with other government experiments in the recent past, they want us to be the test subjects.

I propose we opt out of this government experiment and all others in the future.

Fad For Wealthier People

EVs are still a fad for wealthier people for the most part. Currently they are mostly an option for owners of free standing single family homes and less often owners of townhouses with a garage.

And even for those free standing single family homeowners, once you have more than one EV, it can quickly become impractical, cumbersome and unworkable.

There are government laws forcing apartment complex owners and townhouse communities to allow residents to install charging stations, but they are not widely used.

The vast majority of renters and townhouse owners don’t have the ability to purchase an EV as they can’t charge them nightly.

EVs require access to a power supply that can extend to your EV where they are parked overnight. While away from home needing a charge, you need to find a charging station.

For people who own free standing homes, with a traditional garage and driveway setup, this is relatively simple and most practical. But even then, a family with two or more EVs may not be able to charge all of them overnight. Once you expand beyond one EV, things begin to fall apart.

Many townhouse owners are in the same predicament as apartment renters.

Renters of any type of home usually don’t have the ability or finances to install the systems needed to charge an EV. They would also need permission from the landlord.

Even if an apartment complex or townhouse association installed a few, having this done on mass scale for all apartment and townhouse residents is not practical for decades to come, if at all.

Townhouses, although purchased as a residence, are more likely to be a temporary stop to a free standing home, and so installing a charging station may not be worth the investment.

Excluding these drivers will stall or make impossible the complete replacement of gas-powered vehicles with EVs. 

So, what percentage of drivers are in free standing single family homes? This is the true market for EVs on the consumer level. And, again, only for one EV in the family.

Let’s take a look at the chart below. It will tell us what % of us have severe barriers to entering the EV space.

86,000,000 out of 233,000,000 U.S. drivers cannot practially transition to EV use. 

As you read this memo, or listen to this podcast, this 37% of drivers who cannot use an EV is important to remember, as it impacts the rest of the problems I will discuss.

The Current Trend Is For Younger People Not Being Able To Own Their Own Home As Easily As Their Parents Did

This will also hinder the adoption of EVs. Home purchases being out of reach leads to EV purchases being impractical and also out of reach.

Price Is Not The Main Issue As Many Are Saying, Functionality And Reliability Are

Even with all the tax credits and other incentives, EVs are more expensive than gas-powered vehicles over their life cycle. More often, my clients discuss how impractical as an everyday driver EVs are if they go beyond light local travel, more than pricing.

My clients are much more concerned about the impact on the climate and also the human impact of the mining practices of the raw materials needed for EV batteries. When you research each of these, it may give you pause to invest in an EV. EVs are not climate change friendly.

Safety Issues At Charging Stations On The Road

Again, remember, we are imagining a world where gasoline is no longer needed and so gas stations would become a novelty.

So, with only EVs in everyday use, there will be times we need to charge away from home. Where will this take place? There is some EV charging infrastructure built out, but there are many problems. And this is with a very small percentage of EVs on the road.

Imagine, again, that only EVs were allowed. The infrastructure needed is unfathomable.

And what is the infrastructure for remote charging going to look like?

I have serious concerns here as should you.

When we need gas, we simply find an open gas station.

Gas stations have security cameras and personnel when they are open.

We take these well lit locations with employees and security cameras for granted. These safety features do not exist at EV charging locations. Most will be in parking lots of retail shopping centers with no attendants.

This decreases security and increases waiting times.  That is what they are proposing. We should not accept these severe regressions of course. 

Parents, let me ask you. Would you accept your children going into dark and empty parking lots, when retail stores are closed, to charge up for 20 or 30 minutes by themselves with no personnel on site?

Look closely at this picture. You can see a car charging in the distance on the left at midnight in an empty parking lot. No security. No one in government is talking about this. Remember, they want to eliminate the safe gas stations that are an integral part of our culture and replace them with this.

Of course you would not.

This is just another barrier I don’t hear anyone discussing.

EVs are not interchangeable with gas-powered vehicles. They are a completely different machine. They are not cars.

Consumers need to demand the same level of security measures and functionality that gas stations provide.

Range Anxiety Is Real. Outside Temperature And The Weight Of Passengers And Cargo Severely Lessen EV Range.

Another major consumer issue is the range associated with EVs.

According to surveys, consumers in the United States are very worried about draining the battery of an electric vehicle and then not being able to get to a charging station. A typical battery for EVs is the 40kWh lithium-ion battery pack, which can usually last for around 150 miles. The Tesla S Long Range is equipped with a 100kWh battery that has a real-world range of about 320 miles. The average range for any EV under $40k is 187 miles.

Meanwhile, the lowest range for a gas-powered vehicle is 240 miles, with some vehicles able to achieve up to 703 miles. Additionally, assuming ideal charging/discharging, the batteries will degrade by 2-3 percent per year for a reasonably priced EV, so the range would decrease over the lifetime of the vehicle.

The range of an EV is also known to decrease in colder temperatures. Cold weather slows down the underlying chemistry in the batteries, resulting in sluggish performance and inefficient discharge. Additionally, motors tend to operate less efficiently in colder weather.

Further, in gas-powered vehicles, the engine generates heat that can keep the cabin warm, but EVs will not have an engine to generate this heat; the heat will have to come from an electrical source, which will also cut into its range. Additional factors that deplete electricity are extended use of headlights during shorter days and defrosting windows from condensation.

Consumer Reports conducted an experiment using both a Tesla Model 3 and a Nissan Leaf, both of which are full EVs. They drove each vehicle for 64 miles around their test track when the temperature was between 32°F and 50°F. They found that with the Tesla, the EV had a remaining range of 189, although the EPA estimated total range for this Tesla model is 310 miles. That means that the vehicle used 121 miles worth of range to only travel 64 miles. Similarly, the Nissan has an EPA estimated total range of 151 miles. After the 64-mile journey, the vehicle displayed a remaining range of 10 miles. This means that the cold weather range dropped from 151 miles down to only 74 miles. This is slightly more than a 50% decrease.

We should demand real world range figures tested in normal conditions at different parts of the country. It is almost impossible to get the range figures advertised by the EV manufacturers.

This a major consumer protection and consumer fraud issue yet to be addressed.

Now, Let’s Talk About Other Practical Problems If Gas-Powered Vehicles Were Outlawed

Let’s discuss home fuse boxes, the power grid and charging cable length maximums.

Fact: 25 feet is the longest output cable length that can be provided on an EV charging station based on National Electric Code (section 625) requirements.

Even with upgrades, many fuse boxes cannot handle charging multiple EVs overnight.

Real World Example 1: A family of 4 with 4 Evs all need to charge their vehicles overnight. Two parents and two teenagers. The current and future electrical grid infrastructure, and home EV charging systems are not designed to accommodate this load. Wealthy people will be able to run higher capacity electrical lines to their homes possibly. But lower and middle class people won’t be able to. The charging capacity, even with the latest technology, is shared amongst the vehicles being charged. And all four vehicles need to be within 25 feet of the charging station. All 4 of these EVs will not be charged by morning. 

Real World Example 2: Single family home with one garage and a one car driveway. Family has three Evs. Is it lawful or desired to have electrical cords running from the house, over the sidewalk, to plug in two of your EVs? The answer is no. City codes would not allow it and your potential liability for someone tripping and getting injured is enormous. So we still need two gas-powered vehicles.

Remember, all vehicles need to be within 25 feet of the charging station anyway.

To summarize, these scenarios of two or more vehicles in a household, is a very common one in the USA, and could not be accommodated easily or practically from three points of view:

1) The home’s fuse box capacity
2) The electrical grid power consumption limit and
3) The EV’s physical proximity to the power source as described just a moment ago.

So, gas-powered vehicles will be needed for the foreseeable future and could not be logically outlawed.

The proponents of EVs are selling a very impractical product and hoping that future technology catches up. They are running a global experiment. This is always a disaster for the populace.

Remember, besides these real problems, at least 37% of drivers cannot use an EV at all. This multiple car problem only increases that percentage.

We Are Decades Away From Outfitting Suburban and Exurban Areas

Suburbs are areas just outside of cities and exurbs are further away than suburbs. The further you go away from cities and other densely populated areas, the more driving you need to do.

Imagine you are a suburban parent, where your daily driving related to your kids’ activities can really add up. Bringing your kids to and from school, soccer practice, activities, play dates, etc.

Let’s say your EV’s battery needs a charge midday. You will have to realize that instead of a five minute visit to a gas station, you may need an hour at home or an EV charging location during your busy day. If you will be using a charging station, you may have a long wait before you get your turn. This will quickly become impractical with a few children waiting in the car.

Also, the more suburban and exurban you become, the public charging stations will be less and less convenient as the number of them per square mile will naturally be less dense than in urban areas with more vehicle ownership.

Isn’t technology supposed to save us time and energy? Any technology that takes us more time to use, is less functional, and causes range anxiety may never be fully adopted, no matter how good it is for the environment.

Now imagine the previous scenarios on a ten degree day where your actual mileage range is 25% of what was advertised. For a normal family on a Saturday, this will not be acceptable.

Tradesmen, General Contractors, Depts of Public Works, etc. Need Gas-Powered Vehicles. EVs Cannot Replace Them

As of now, my tradesmen and contractor clients could never replace their gasoline and diesel powered trucks. EV pickup trucks are good for light homeowner use, but contractors, hauling tools, equipment and raw materials, at this time, could not stay in business if they were forced to use EVs.

Think practically. Could there be an EV powered commercial snow plow? Definitely not at this time.

All of my clients that bought EV pickup trucks returned them as they were useless even for their lightest full work days.

The electric pickup trucks seem to be a novelty item for white collar professionals to drive to Home Depot on a Saturday morning, not blue collar tradesmen with a 60 hour work week.

If An EV Runs Out Of Charge, It Must Be Towed, Gas Cans Are Useless

Overall Lifetime EV Costs Exceed Those of GPV (Gas Powered Vehicles)

The promises of lower overall lifetime EV operating costs are not reality.

A report published by Arthur D. Little in 2016 provided an analysis of costs over a 20-year lifetime of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) compared to gas-powered vehicles. They proposed that for compact gas-powered vehicles versus compact EVs, the EV had an overall cost that was 44% higher than the gas-powered vehicle. They also proposed an even larger increase in price of 60% for a mid-size EV compared to a mid-size gas-powered vehicle. This total cost analysis not only includes operational costs incurred by the consumer, but also the manufacturing and disposal costs at the end of the vehicle’s lifetime.

These differences will begin to lessen, but not disappear as the technology improves.

No one is talking about the disposal of used EV batteries and what that might cost and what impact it will have on our planet. Another similar issue is the coming wave of millions of solar panels that are reaching their useful lives of 25 years. Just like the EV batteries, there is no plan for the ecologically safe disposal of solar panels.

We need to be asking our elected officials these questions. Again, the EV push is extremely premature. We are even before a beta stage.

As consumers, I suggest that we boycott EV purchases until these major problems are worked out and the government proves to us that the problems I mentioned here will be remedied.

We have all seen what happens when the government does not require long term testing on mandated interventions produced by independent companies. Billions of us are living with this negligence and will for the rest of our lives.

From now on, when it comes to government mandates, we need to demand long term and thorough testing of the overall impacts.

With EVs, this testing may take decades.

As I stated earlier, the EV mandates are very premature. Related to this are the curtailments of natural gas appliances. The long term impact of this has not been tested either and will need decades of thorough testing before we are used as guinea pigs for climate activists. Phasing out a trusted and flexible source of energy we have used for decades safely, needs to be well thought out and the government needs to provide a justification for this inconvenience.

New technology is supposed to improve on its predecessor. EVs don’t do that on many measures.

EVs are not cars. They are experimental transportation devices that the government wants us to accept as a car replacement.

Buy and maintain quality gas-powered vehicles, even if it isn’t the trendy thing to do.