S4 E41 - Electric Vehicles Part 1: From Showroom to Junkyard

My Journey with Electric Vehicles: The Realities and Challenges

In this episode of 'The 10th Man,' we explore the practical challenges and realities of owning an electric vehicle (EV). From dealing with unexpected accidents and rushed purchases to navigating the complexities of charging infrastructure and utility scams, this discussion covers a broad spectrum of EV ownership experiences. We delve into the hidden costs, the benefits, and the lifestyle changes that come with transitioning to electric vehicles. Tune in to understand what the EV industry delivers versus what it promises and where the future might take us.

00:00 Introduction: The Unexpected Car Crisis

00:33 Deer Accidents and Car Replacements

02:13 The Electric Vehicle Dilemma

03:46 Choosing the Right EV: A Personal Journey

08:01 The Charging Experience: Trials and Tribulations

12:13 Home Charging Challenges

20:11 Traveling with an EV: The Realities

25:01 Conclusion: The EV Learning Curve

Commentary on trending issues brought to you with a moderate perspective.

Transcript

0:12

The Body Shop just called to say that, dear, you hit totaled your new electric vehicle and you need a new car. Think fast. Would you buy another EV today? On the 10th, man, we talked earlier about the plague of deer sweeping across America and the real hazards they bring destroying cars and even taking lives. And while I've never caused a traffic accident in my life. I've now totaled three cars in two years. A little over two years ago, my Chevy tracks hit a deer and every airbag detonated, so the interior was wrecked and the car was totaled. We replaced that with a Buick Regal, which is a really nice re-badged opal built in Germany, then one night. We encountered a man drunk, or allegedly drunk, I'm forced to say, sitting in the middle of the road popping up just like the deer out of nowhere. And that car was totaled too. For the second time we had to make a rushed purchase. So now. Two weeks ago, another deer, second one in two years, third lifetime. So during the ruing season, this dough is sprinting across the road, no doubt chased by a buck. And our 2024 Hyundai Ionic six, our battery electric car took the hit, the original purchase, and now replacement of that car being the topic of this episode. It was a small deer end. It didn't look like that much damage. But after a couple weeks and an assessment, and maybe in part because it is an ev, they declared it unrepairable. Now one more dear fact you'll never hear in the news is you are more likely to be killed by a deer than you are in a mass shooting. Around 400 Americans a year die in car deer collisions. So I recommend you go listen to the last episode of the 10th Man and be careful. So once again, we're back in car buying mode, but forced car buying mode, because shopping for a car can be fun. When it's your dream and you plan for it, and it's optional, but when it's mandatory and it's holiday season and you've gotta pay a rental car bill every day you search, unless you get it done in the two weeks, they allow you, it becomes a chore. Very fast. Now after the Regal was wrecked last year, 2024, we wanted another big fast sedan, but we're kind of a GM family, and Buick and Chevrolet don't make cars anymore. They only make those shrunken minivans that they call SUVs. And if you like them, that's fine. But the funny thing is it's the same thing everywhere. The car business is almost hilarious in its uniformity. Have you ever noticed that you can watch any movie scene with traffic in it for any movie and instantly know the approximate year the film was made? Because all the cars look the same for any given year and from manufacturer to manufacturer. There's very little difference at all. And not just in the looks either, but also in the mechanicals. Now, the year 2024 was the era of vanishing sedans and of companies going all electric. And while our punch list sedan V six, 300 horse all wheel drive didn't seem that tough, but it no longer existed in GM's lineup or hardly anywhere else. Fine. We said, everyone's saying you should go electric and a lot of people are recommending the plugin, hybrids, P EVs, or Fevs. Uh, FEV gives you a smaller battery, good for about 30 miles of electric driving, you know, for everyday use. Get you to work and back or to work where you plug in again and drive home, plus a gas engine for that. Uh, time when the electricity runs out and the original modern FEV was the Chevy Volt and people mocked. Its 30 mile electric electric range. Ignoring the most important part, the absence of any range anxiety, because it had a gas engine too. But GM apparently took the criticism very personally. So then in 2024, they were actually the only manufacturer offering zero plugin hybrids. Everybody else had at least one, so we looked elsewhere. But that's when we found the great FEV bait and switch. We ended up at Hyundai because we liked the Tucson. I think that was the one. But you'll find that when you try to locate one, you'll either see on their website that it's not sold in your state, or you'd find that there's none in stock. Well, okay.'cause then you see where Kia makes the same vehicle under a different name and they've got one Exactly. One in the state and it's 200 miles away and the color is refrigerator white. Well, they call it something else, but. Yeah, that's what it is. So it seems none of the companies actually want to sell plugin hybrids and General Motors is just the one that's most honest about it. But while we were at the dealer, we saw this Hyundai Iion six and it's a, it was in the showroom and it's a very nice looking car, resembles a four door Porsche. And the salesman said, well, you might as well test drive it'cause you're here. So we did. And this car checked every box. It was fast, it was all wheel drive. It was fast. It was a three box sedan in a world of two box SUVs, and it was fast. So here we were on Monday, we'd never heard of the car, and by Wednesday we owned one or leased it actually. And with that time pressure, we actually wondered whether we had rushed the purchase, but any buyers' remorse evaporated. A few days later when I was driving down the road and heard a noose commentator say that EVs are not gonna catch on until they can go 300 miles. On a charge and they can charge in under 30 minutes and they cost under$50,000. And there's only one car in America that meets all three criteria. The Hyundai Iion six. Well, what do you know? I had not known any of that, but here I bought the right car. Anyway. Now let me give you a little tip about EV attitudes in others out where we live. They're not exactly tree huggers. And all of our friends that have EVs, they always say, we didn't buy it to save the planet. They wanna be very clear on that. We just really like the car. And that's one of the safe things to say when people ask you how you like your car.'cause you might find yourself in that position and whether you think it saves the planet or not. So if someone asks you how you like it. Don't really go all in and take a strong position and tell them you love it. Just shrug and say, well, it's a car. It's okay. In fact, that's gonna be kind of my point to give it away, but it gets us from point A to point B, things like that. Because most of the people who ask you, they just want their chance to say, I would never buy one of those. Most, but not all.'cause the other kind of person is the cult member and those are the Tesla owners, at least some of them. They're the ones who are gonna ask you why you didn't buy a Tesla instead. And the best answer to that is because they're ugly and they're not eligible for the government rebate. Eight. Of course, you could also say it's because only the Tesla owners have to worry about someone setting their car on fire because they're automatically more controversial since. All Teslas are electric, but if your EV is a Hyundai or a Ford or a Chevy, no one really knows that it's an EV until they look close at the badges. And now since I gave you that hot tip, you do me a favor and tell a friend about the 10th Man Podcast. You can trust me and your friends trust you. So. You need to let them know about. Face it. This juicy nugget of a podcast. So what about charging? Now, when we picked up the ionic, it was fully charged. So we took it for a drive, showed it to family, took them for a spin, and then on the way home we said, well, let's use the onboard navigation. Since we were a little ways from home, you know, maybe 40 miles. And so there would be plenty of different. Buy ways we might take to find a charger and then basically get our ticket punched on getting through our first charge. So that's where our education began. We asked for a charger in the navigation system and it showed up with dozens of them. Dozens. I was surprised. So where were we gonna go? We picked one and I think I ended up driving by it by mistake, but we went, went to a different one. It wasn't that far so close, but here's what we found. All of these chargers that are listed are basically the same low level power charger that comes free with a car. It just looks like a cord with a brick in the middle. It's called a level one charger, and it plugs into household voltage. And some of the charging pylons you see are apparently to me, just a level one charger inside a big cabinet. Now, a low capacity charger such as this might be useful to top up or to leave it plugged in while you go shopping. You might as well if it's cheap and you're gonna be parked there anyway. Or if it were one of those plug-in hybrids that we talked about with the 30 mile range battery, not the 300 mile, but these chargers are really just Green New Deal window dressing people put'em in into look good to say we installed a new EV charger down at the library because to get any charging done quickly, you must find a fast charge. And that's a level. Three charger, and we'll talk about level two in a minute. So you need a level three, and the apps are terrible at telling you which is which. Oh, it's in there, but you've gotta manually sort them out. But this was my first time, so I plugged into this thing and it's plugged in for a while and I'm squinting at the screen and saying, huh, 12 amps. I don't think that's very fast. Probably sound like a rube if you've got an EV now. And then I look at the timing and it says how many minutes it would be, or, or hours. And I convert that to, to, to days. And it's going, oh, that's a day and a half. And shoot, I wasn't desperate. I didn't have to charge right then. So I just drove it on home and plugged it into the free level one charger while the car was in the garage and just drove it for a couple days. So now, a few days later, I said, well, we're getting low. I, I need to go charge it up. I'll just drive down to the mall where the nearest fast charger is. So I go down there, go out back, back where the semis and the loading docks are, and I'm out in the middle of the parking lot in a bitter wind, figuring out how the charger interface works. So I download the app, join their club, punch some buttons, and I start charging. Now you actually can just swipe a credit card and we'll talk about that later in part two. So with that done, I walked a hundred or 200 yards to the mall and, and that's'cause the fast charging seems to always put you at the coldest, darkest, wettest and windiest corner of America. That's the EV experience. If you're driving a gas car, you're gonna pull into a brightly lit. Uh, depending on where you are, a Speedway or a Circle, KA seven 11, or a Wawa or a regular Chevron mobile, but there's no charges in those and there's none at Bucky's either, by the way. Well, maybe few of'em have them now, but generally speaking, no. Generally you're gonna be driving into a wilderness behind Walmart where you're gonna have to find a bay and back into it. Then either sit in the car or hike around the building uphill with no sidewalk. What about the handicapped To do some shopping while it charges with more time than you need to just go to the bathroom, but not enough time to do any real shopping. But on the other hand, most of the time you're gonna be charging at home indoors. So you really don't have to go to the charging station much unless circumstances dictate. But we didn't have a home charger, at least not yet. And let's talk about that word charger anyways. When we talk about a fast charger, a little bit of techno here, that's the only true charger because that delivers DC straight to the battery, takes acs from the power lines, from the utility company, converts to dc, shoves it right into the battery fast. A battery can only take or give direct current, so that fast charger, also known as a level three charger, delivers that direct current, and we'll show how important this is for future growth. Now, the home charger, whether it's the big one, you hang on the wall, a level two or the little level one you keep in the trunk. They just deliver AC to the car, and the car is converting it internally, and the reason that matters is that box you hang on the wall, the thing that we're calling a charger, it's not doing any charging at all. It's just kind of a glorified smart switch, like the free level one that comes with a car. It just regulates the power, turns it on and off according to programming, which makes you wonder why it doesn't work better, is more reliable and cost less. And lemme throw out a little tip for you. If you get an EV and already have any two 40 volt outlets in your garage safe for your stationary power tools, you can get a convertible charger. Looks like a level one, but it can also plug into 240 volt. So the charge speed nearly triples and you may not need anything else. But we were all in, so we bought one. It's by NL X-ray a juice box. A very popular, highly rated charger. In fact, this was the brand sold by both of the utilities in our our area, depending which side of the road you live on in some cases. I wired it in temporarily to set it up, and as I'm configuring it, the application says, oh, there's an update to the x-ray app. Do you want to install it? And I said, sure. Instantly the juice box was bricked. It never worked again. Actually, it never did work. So we eventually got a warranty replacement and I got it installed. But a few months later, in October, 2024 and L x-Ray announced they were pulling out of the US market entirely. A European company, and they just pulled outta the us leaving all the customers with no support and no updates. The app you use to control it with on your phone just stopped working. So the smart features, like the scheduling, the nighttime charging, that was just frozen in place, so most people had them programmed to charge at night when the rates were slightly. But you see if you come home from a long trip and need to go out right away or in a few hours because your battery's low, well, you wanna pull out your phone and say. Hey, override the timer settings and turn on the charger. Can't do it. Your charger's permanently locked into a time lock and some people gave up and bought new ones. Others just live with it. I suppose. We found out how to force a factory reset and make it into a dumb charger, so all the features you're paying for aren't there. It just works all the time. You plug it in, it's charging. And people are out four to$600 for these things. We all became orphans instantly. Now, don't you wonder here, where is our great government? Where are all the Green New Deal people? The people who love this stuff and love regulations when things like this happen? And that's not to mention the shenanigans of the utility companies. Now we are on the border between two utilities and one utility requires you to buy a smart charger, like the juice box, so that they can both monitor it for the time of use to see when you're charging, and in an emergency they can turn it off remotely by wifi. For load shedding and then you give the, uh, get a much lower electric rate. Now our company sells the juice box, but they don't have that system. Instead, they require you to buy a separate meter that meters it separately. Now that can be expensive, especially if your meter is a long ways from the point of use, and in our case, unnecessary because we already have 2 40 volts available in the garage. So again, where's the government? Because there ought to be a law requiring them to use whatever option is cheaper. These things are expensive enough, and, uh, actually why does, does the customer even have to pay for the upgrade if they want us to do it? But at least you get a rebate on the cost of installation, right? Yes. There's the rebate scam. Your utility company. To show how green they are, and we can't blame'em. They offer you a$500 rebate on the cost of installing your EV charger. Now this rebate, just like anything the government does, as soon as you offer free money for anything, it instantly becomes a scam. Whether it's the electric vehicle chargers or food stamps, they all become a scam. And let me explain this one to you. I went through the application process, consuming much valuable time, filled out their applications, sent plans, photos, told'em how far everything away was, how far from the meter to the panel map panel to sub-panel to installation, spot bought, and I expected them to pad the actual cost of, I guessed a thousand dollars and to charge me 2000. But if I could get away with doing it for 2000 and getting a$500 rebate or a total of 1500, then I would do it. And I think those numbers are about right. So after waiting, I get a quote from the utility approved electrical contractor saying, we'll install your charger for$5,000. Now this just amounts to hanging a box on the wall 10 feet from the electrical panel and running wires to it. They wanted$5,000 for that. Here's what I'm sure those suppliers are doing. They glance at the specs and throw out a quick estimate, and it's the same one for everybody,$5,000, and then they expect to make a ton of money on most of them, and a little money on all of them. Well, I would've done it for 1500, but even though I did not need another project, I wasn't gonna spend 5,000 just so I could get 500 back and file paperwork and have to babysit the electrician while he was here. So I went to the electrical supply house, bought some one inch conduit, a couple of boxes, the proper NEMA outlet. I actually already had a 50 amp breaker, so I think I spent 150 bucks in parts and I put it in myself in, I don't know, three or four hours hating every minute of it. By the way, the outlet, just to note on that, I'm not an electrician. Do not do anything just'cause I'm doing it. But if you decide to do this yourself, the electric vehicle outlet looks just like an electric range outlet. It will plug into one, but the receptacle for your stove, your range, it's not designed to supply maximum current continuously for six to 10 hours at a stretch. Your elements in your stove cycle on and off intermittently and might all be on at once, but are not usually. So get the correct receptacle, it's expensive, and avoid burning your house down. Now think about this. I installed this in my garage, but remember supposing you, you live somewhere else, some kind of community housing, some sort of apartment, or a trailer park or a condo, or maybe there's a homeowner's association. This whole process becomes impossible in many cases. That's'cause the whole usage model for EVs. It's a complete lifestyle shift. The whole history of motor vehicles. You went and bought your gas somewhere, then you came home and parked your car anywhere you wanted in your yard or your driveway, in the garage, on the patio, or down by the beach if you wanted to hear music. The fueling process never regulated your parking situation, but now parking your vehicle, it has to be next to the charger. And it becomes more complicated if you have two EVs, or for example, in our case, in the summer, our collector car goes in the garage and I put in a little fixture so that the cord can snake under the garage door, made sure the cord was long enough and mounted a bracket on the wall outside to hang up the nozzle when it's not being used. And while all this is manageable, some of it is unnecessarily annoying and some of it is a scam. And it seems that none of it has been taken into account by the people promoting these vehicles. So let's talk about travel. People worry about taking a long trip in an ev and I know some people who never do in theirs, and there are some frustrations, but they're not deal breakers. But they're bad enough to make you grumble a little bit. But here's the biggest shock and another scam. Electricity pricing. You know, I never knew my electric rate until I owned an ev. I could have taken an educated guess at it, I suppose, but I sure know it now. It's about 16 cents a kilowatt hour at home off peak. It could go down to 13 cents if I put in the special meter, but it's already lower at night for everybody. But on the road, do you have any idea what you're gonna pay? Now remember, you have economies of scale, so we should be thinking low, a low number, right? Uh, they're, and they're buying in bulk and they're taking the electrical load off of the subdivisions. There's a lot of benefits. So when you pull up to the pump with your ev, okay, it's 16 cents at home. So on the road, what would it be? 20. 25, 30? Nope. 52 cents. 52 cents a kilowatt hour. Uh, it varies actually, but that's a number I see a lot. Three to four times what you're paying at home. It's about the same price as gasoline. And with our Hyundai Lease, we do get two years of free charging at the Electrify America stations. And, but the lease is three years and the nearest Electrify America is nowhere close to our house. Uh, but there are some on the way to places that I go and I have made use of them. But apart from the rant about the price. It's just that people don't understand the whole paradigm shift, and that is what happens when you are stopping the charge on the road on the way back from a trip. So I make a trip to see relatives regularly, and I come back and I can make it there and halfway back to the house on the original charge. That means when I stop, I'm not gonna stop and say, fill her up, not at 52 cents when I can get it for 16 cents at home. I only want to charge enough just to get home with about 15 miles to spare. Then I'll plug it in at home and go in inside the house and put my feet up. As a matter of fact, I don't even go to the free charger because it's about three to four miles out of my way, and I don't need a full charge. So I go to the more convenient location'cause there are actually some, this one is at a gas station and it has nice restrooms, a well-lit parking lot, convenient location to the pump. And most important, it has excellent pizza. So I pull in and plug in. But here's the thing, with all of the computers involved in this situation, none of them, not the Hyundai navigation, not the phone. Not Google Maps or Apple CarPlay, not the display on the pump. None of them tell me how long do I plug in just to get enough charge to get home. They all tell you so many more minutes until you get full. Well, full is the last thing I want. It's not like with gas when you're in this situation, you just want to get in and get out. So I find myself sitting with a pencil and paper saying, okay, it looks like it's charging about 10 miles every two minutes. I haven't done this in a while. That might be the wrong number. So I've got, uh, 80 miles to go. That means I need to sit here about, and, and it's usually like 12 to 15 minutes, and I've come pretty close every time and, and managed to get home. Now, to be fair, the Tesla owners might say that Tesla has this all figured out, but there are other disadvantages to the Teslas and their cars are still ugly. So now here's another thing. They don't tell you the ionic charges quickly, and that's important, like we said, and that's because it can take 300 amps at a time. I think it's actually 311, but. The Chargers capacities are often smaller and they're all different, and I've never once seen the meter flow at 300 amps no matter what the actual capacity of the unit was. And many of these chargers maxed out at 150 amps and some at less. And I know these numbers might be meaningless to you now, but they will become more meaningful as you as we go along. So. You've got your charger masking out at 150 amps and some of those, including the one that I stop at the most, it's actually 150 amps if no one else is using the other station. 150 amps total. It's shared between two stalls. So if someone is else is charging next to you and they're also capable of drawing all the power, you're both just gonna get 75 amps. But the good news, if you're just topping off, not on a long trip, even at half speed, I can still walk in, use the restroom, get a slice of pizza, and depending on how fast it's going, I might eat the pizza in the car or eat it at the little cocktail table and walk back out and the car's ready to go. Now. I haven't done any charging for the last couple weeks, and I kind of missed it yesterday as I was gassing up the rental car in a snow storm. So you're probably wondering, would I buy another ev? Well, I'm gonna tell you this. Electric vehicles. They're not a miracle car, but they're not evil either, and they're certainly not the salvation of the planet. They're simply a new set of machines with a new set of rules, which aren't that complicated, and yet the experts on them don't seem to understand their own product. The media and the politicians talk about range. They talk about emissions and climate control, and advocates talk about the future. But almost nobody talks about the infrastructure nightmare, the utility games, the charger scams, or in general, just don't respond to the real issues. Last but not least, they don't have a grasp of the lifestyle rewiring and the general learning curve baked into the ownership experience. I mean, it's not hard, but it is a curve. EVs are good. Not great, just different. And in part two, we'll dive into more of the unmet expectations, what the EV industry promised versus what it delivers and where the technology could realistically go, including what it could deliver. But the industry has oddly failed to anticipate for that, you need the 10th man.