By Eric Peters
For NMA
Would you be OK if a car you bought this year delivered 1-2 percent less gas mileage than it advertised by the end of the year? That’s what you’ll get if you buy an electric vehicle. But for some odd reason, there have been no recalls. No government “action.” Not even any calls for such “action.”
Fascinating.
If “1-2 percent” per year doesn’t sound like much to you, consider how much “1-2 percent” adds up to after about eight years or so. Now we’re up to about 15 percent. If we were talking about a gas-powered vehicle that advertised it goes 35 miles on a gallon of gas and it lost 15 percent of that after eight years or so, it’d only travel about 30 miles on the same gallon. After ten years, at the same rate, you’d be down into the high 20s.
Bad enough as such. But it’s worse when we’re dealing with EVs because most of them don’t go very far to begin with – before they begin to lose range at the rate of “1-2″percent annually. The 2025 Chevy Equinox EV, for instance, touts a fully charged range of 319 miles before it begins to lose “1-2 percent” of that each year. In its case, after eight years, it will have lost about 48 miles of its original range, which means you’d only have about 271 miles of range.
After ten, you’d be down into the mid 260s.
And as readers of this column already know, it’s functionally less than that – because it’s problematic to risk using up close to most of an EV’s maximum-remaining range because it is not like running low or out of gas. The latter is a minor inconvenience; the former a day-ruining disaster. You cannot carry a can of volts back to a discharged EV. The EV will have to be carried to a place where it can be charged. And once there, you will be obliged to wait for at least 20 minutes to get a partial charge, which won’t take you very far. See that part about not having much fully charged range to begin with and even less if you’ve suffered “1-2 percent” losses every year for a few years. Now reduce that by another 20 percent since you can only “fast” charge an EV’s battery to 80 percent before the charging reverts to very slow.
There’s another catch, too.
The “1-2 percent” degradation rate is optimistic; it assumes the EV’s owner takes care to “maintain the health” (this is the language used) of the battery. That entails not subjecting the battery to hard use, especially regular “fast” charging, which is hard on EV batteries just as it is hard on all electric batteries. It is why the recommendation is to slow-charge EV batteries (as at home) to “maintain the health” of EV batteries. The catch is that in order to “maintain the health” of the EV’s battery, one must be willing to plan one’s life around waiting hours for the EV battery to charge, which most people haven’t got time to do.
Especially if it’s in the middle of the day.
EV propagandists – who are also EV apologists – like to argue that they’re not actually waiting for a charge because they’re at home asleep. Of course, the fact that they are at home, asleep does not mean they aren’t waiting. It is like saying you’re not waiting for the plumber to show up because you’re doing some housework while you wait for him to show up.
And if they’re not at home – and need to be driving rather than waiting – then they have to rely on the “fast” charger if they don’t want to be waiting hours. There goes the “health of the battery.” No owner of a gas-powered vehicle ever had to worry about the “health” of the gas tank. If it held 15 gallons when the car was bought, this year, it will still hold 15 gallons in 20 years, barring a leak. Which is easily and cheaply fixed, even if it requires replacing the tank.
Not so much the battery.
But – returning to the main point – how is it that there’s no rictus of outrage emanating from the craws of people who bought EVs and are having to deal with losing range every year they own their device? Keep in mind that it’s not just range they’re bleeding but also value. One of the chief reasons EVs are worth less each year than vehicles that have engines and gas tanks rather than electric battery packs and motors is that the electric battery packs begin to degrade as soon as they are put into service and because the cost to replace an EV battery pack is enormous, typically amounting to $10,000 or more.
Yet, there is silent acceptance. As if this were normal. As if this were reasonable.
Arguably, these it’s all the result of the battering of the population into a state of dulled passivity by decades now – since 9/11 – of Fear This and Do That and don’t ask any questions about any of it.
It is as if everyone, just about, has joined a cult. And the fact is, most of them have. And the thing is, when you’re in a cult, you don’t think you’re in a cult.
Eric Peters lives in Virginia and enjoys driving cars and motorcycles. In the past, Eric worked as a car journalist for many prominent mainstream media outlets. Currently, he focuses his time writing auto history books, reviewing cars, and blogging about cars+ for his website EricPetersAutos.com.
Editor’s Note: The thoughts and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the National Motorists Association.
