These Are Some of The Top EV Myths Debunked
Electric Vehicle Myths Debunked
Electric vehicles are top of the motoring agenda at the moment and while many people are making the switch to a battery-powered vehicle, there are plenty of motorists who still have some questions about the technology and how it works.
A lot of these questions are shrouded in myths and false truths, so we’re here to clear things up and explain some of the aspects of EV ownership that you may have heard about, but which aren’t true.
They’re not allowed in car washes and can’t be charged in the rain
Water and electricity aren’t famously a good mix, right? Well, in electric vehicles it’s slightly different. There has been quite a lot of chatter about electric vehicles not being allowed in car washes, but that simply isn’t true - they’re perfectly safe to be cleaned this way.
The same goes for charging. There’s no reason why you can’t plug in while there’s drizzle in the air as both car and charger are designed to protect the user against any kind of shock.
Electric vehicle batteries won’t last very long
We’ve all had experience of batteries fading over time and while electric vehicles do degrade over time, that doesn’t mean they’re going to pack up after five years - quite the opposite in fact.
We’ve already seen some early examples of Nissan’s Leaf pass well beyond the 150,000-mile marker and many electric vehicles are being put to the test through thousands of miles as private hire and taxi vehicles too.
There aren’t enough chargers to go around
While infrastructure in the UK has, in the past, been quite patchy, it has come on in leaps and bounds during recent years. The UK recently went past a 100,000 milestone for rapid public chargers, with these able to deliver a 10 to 80 per cent charge to compatible EVs in under half an hour.
But this doesn’t include all other types of chargers. Take these into account, and there are over 53,000 in the UK alone at 30,835 locations throughout the country.
Electric vehicles can’t go very far
The very earliest electric vehicles weren’t the best at long-distance driving and could only handle very short trips before needing to charge up. However, that isn’t the case for the latest EVs which, thanks to big developments in battery technology, can do some seriously long trips without requiring a charge.
The Mercedes EQS, for example, can travel for up to 452 miles while the Polestar 2 will be able to return just over 400 miles between trips to the plug.
The grid can’t handle the demand for electric vehicles
A lot of people think that if all of the electric vehicles on the roads needed to charge at exactly the same time, the grid would be overloaded and the lights would go out. However, that isn’t the case.
The National Grid has already stated that there’s enough capacity in the network to handle the current - and future - electric vehicle population. In fact, peak demand for electricity came during 2002, but since then it has fallen by 16 per cent as a result of better efficiency across the network. The National Grid estimates that even if the entire population switched to electric vehicles overnight, the demand would still be under that peak period during the early 2000s.
