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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
Drive into the 21st century in an electric car With falling cost of ownership, expanded incentives for purchasing, and more model and body type options than ever, it may finally be time to retire the old gas-guzzler and dive into the world of electric car ownership. Electric Cars For Dummies is your guide to becoming lightning powered, reducing your carbon footprint, and saving money on gas while you do it. This book teaches you how to select the battery-charged vehicle that fits your need and budget. It also offers insight into how to maintain your electric car, including answering all your questions about charging your vehicle. Calculate the total cost of ownership, prep your home to become one huge charger, and demystify the battery, the tune-ups and more. * Learn the difference in cost of ownership and emissions between electric and gas-powered vehicles * Explore your options and find an electric car that fits in your budget * Know when and how to charge your vehicle, and what kind of maintenance it needs * Figure out how to charge your car on the go This is the perfect book for new and would-be electric car owners looking for guidance on buying and maintaining one of these super sleek machines.
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Seitenzahl: 612
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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Electric Cars For Dummies®
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2022 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2022942340
ISBN: 978-1-119-88735-5 (pbk); 978-1-119-88618-1 (ebk); 978-1-119-88619-8 (ebk)
Electric Cars For Dummies®
To view this book's Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “Electric Cars For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
About This Book
Foolish Assumptions
Icons Used in This Book
Beyond the Book
Where to Go from Here
Part 1: Getting In On the Popularity of Electric Cars
Chapter 1: So You’re Thinking About Buying an Electric Car
Why Buy an Electric Car?
The Disruption of Better Tech
Acronyms and Abbreviations That Make You Sound Smrt
Drawing the Line between Electric and Gas-Powered Vehicles
Yeah, but Gas Cars Aren’t Going Anywhere for a While — Wait, What?
TL;DR: Your Top Questions about Electric Cars, Answered
Chapter 2: The Fascinating Tech That’s (Sort of) Under the Hood
Recognizing That Induction Motors Mean Instant Energy
Seeing What Happens When You Hit “the Gas”
Comparing Torque and Horsepower
Letting Physics Do the Braking
Making More Room for the Fun Stuff
Knowing What to Do When There’s (Almost) Nothing Under the Hood
Driving an iPad with Wheels
Chapter 3: Electric Vehicles and a Safer Drive
Why You Might Be Under the Impression That EVs Are Unsafe
A Brief — and Instructive — History of ICE Vehicle Safety
A Short History of Everything (Car-Safety-Related) in 2 Minutes
Examining Safety Features (and Statistics) for Electric Vehicles
Exploring the Possibility of a Car Fire (ICE versus EV)
A Car That Gets Safer Over Time
Part 2: Buying Wisely
Chapter 4: Consider the Cost (of an Electric Vehicle)
The Price of an Automobile: An Analysis Using Numbers
Gas versus Electric: A Comparison Using Numbers
EVs and Maintenance: An Estimation Using Numbers
Whoa — EVs Seem Expensive! Maybe We Should Look at the Numbers
Bottom Line: Estimating (Using Numbers) the Total Cost of Ownership
Chapter 5: Researching Your EV Options
An Overview of the EV Market
Separating the Wheat from the Chaff
Deciding When (or Whether) to Buy a Used Electric Car
Chapter 6: Buying Your New Electric Car
Exploring the Differences between Buying an ICE and an EV
Navigating (or Avoiding) the Dealership
Insuring Your Electric Wheels
Part 3: Maintaining Your Newfangled Horseless Carriage
Chapter 7: Charge ’Er Up!
Onions Have Layers, and Charging Has Levels
Getting Up to Speed with Level 1 Charging
Turning Things Up with Level 2 Charging
Getting a Wicked-Fast Charge with Level 3 Charging
Chapter 8: Protecting the Battery (and Your Investment)
Seeing Which Batteries Actually Power Cars
Counting Up the Kilowatt-Hours
Recognizing That Too Much of a Good Thing Is a Bad Thing
Dealing with Battery Death
Going the Extra Mile
Seeing Where EV Batteries Go When They Die
Dealing with Battery Pack Replacements
Chapter 9: Keeping Your Car in Top Shape
Getting Your Hands Dirty (or Not)
Tracking Down EV Service Locations
Keeping Your EV Exterior in the Pink
Keeping Your EV Interior Shipshape
Knowing What You Don’t Need to Do
Things You'll Never Have to Add to Your To-Do List
Part 4: Futurethink and Fun with EV Engineering
Chapter 10: Faster, Farther, and More Fun
Living Out Your Speed Racer Fantasies
Staying Out of Jail
Can an EV Power Your House?
Will EV Prices Ever Come Down? When?
Renewable Energy and the Electric Car World
Next-Gen Batteries
Chapter 11: Our Autonomous Future
Adding Up the Self-Driving Benefits
Listing the Key ADAS Benefits
Can These Cars Drive Themselves — or What?
Doing the Vision Thing
Recognizing the Challenges
Gazing into the EV Crystal Ball
Chapter 12: Other Vehicles That Are Going Electric
Going Mobile with Electric Buses
Keep On Truckin' (with Electric Long-Haul Trucks)
Delivering the Goods (with Electric Delivery Vans)
I Sing the Lawn Mower Electric
Chapter 13: The Best Car Is No Car: Electric Bikes and the Morning Commute
Making the Trip by Bike
Looking at the Three Classes of Ebikes
Scouting Out the More Notable Ebike Companies
Hey! I’m Giving Away Ebikes!
Part 5: The Part of Tens
Chapter 14: Ten Countries Leading the Way — and What They’re Doing
Norway
Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands
Germany
China
United States
California
UK
New Zealand
Mexico
India
Japan
Chapter 15: Ten Companies Leading the Way — and a Look at What They’re Doing
Tesla
Xpeng Motors
Lucid and Rivian
Volkswagen
GM and Ford
Geeley/Polestar
Hyundai
BYD
SIAC
Everyone Else
Chapter 16: Ten Predictions from EV Insiders (with Plenty of Commentary and Opinion Because It’s My Book There, Bub)
When New EVs Will Cost $25,000
When Robotaxis Will Make Their Grand Entrance
When Electric Planes (or Flying Cars) Will Make
Their
Grand Entrance
Which Companies Will Thrive (and Which Ones Won’t)
When You Will See Electric Semis (and What It Will Mean)
Future Battery Tech for Your Car
When You’ll (Hopefully) See an Impact on Parking and City Design
Connected Cars
The Last ICE Sale Will Take Place Sometime in 2030 — for California
Index
About the Author
Advertisement Page
Connect with Dummies
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Index
About the Author
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Introduction
So you’re thinking about buying an electric car?
Congrats!
You’ve come to the right place. Also, you’ve come to the right person, or at least I think you’ll agree that’s the case by the time you’re done reading this intro. (Oh, and note to self: That first intro sentence might make a great chapter title.)
I won’t hold it against you if you skip ahead right now to start getting answers to questions about vehicle range, charging, and cost of operation, especially when compared to internal combustion vehicles.
Don’t worry. By the end of this book, you’ll have explored almost every topic that someone new to electric cars might have on their mind. You'll get up close and personal with some fascinating engineering and future-looking topics, like why electric cars go so damn fast, why they tend to be much safer, what to expect in terms of battery longevity, and how and why the car you buy today is likely to improve over time.
Along with the topics covering the purchase and ownership experience — information especially relevant if you’re new to the idea of electric cars — you can find a wealth of ancillary material about everything from autonomous driving, regen braking, electric trucks and bikes, all the way to suggestions about YouTubers that would be worth a follow as you continue down the electrification rabbit hole.
I’ll even work in an anecdote about the Norwegian pop band A-ha and how their lead singer fits into humanity’s movement toward electric transportation. Trust me: It’ll make sense once we get there.
Most of all, here’s what I want you to know about the person writing about the current landscape of electric vehicles — a confession that should provide some insight into your tour guide’s brain.
I’m not really a car guy.
Instead, I’m more of an easier-way-to-get-from-point-A-to-B guy. I’m also an amazed-at-what-human-ingenuity-has-been-able-to-pull-off-and-we’re-just-getting-started guy.
Here’s what I mean: We humans are amazing creatures. Of course, plenty of said humans vex and frustrate on the daily, but to get a sense of what I’m talking about, simply look up the next time you’re out for a drive.
When you pause to glance toward the horizon, you’re likely to see majestic buildings of glass and rock and steel. You might see a metal tube hovering in midair, carrying people from one cluster of buildings to another cluster half a world away. You might see bridges spanning otherwise uncrossable bodies of water. You might notice towers carrying currents of electricity. These currents are capable of making toast, or lighting up the dark, or powering massive cars and trains. You might notice other towers that can send more information than a single human can read in a lifetime into the palm of your hand — all in a matter of seconds.
Amazing. More amazing still? We’ve made all these things by digging them out of the mud.
I’m a technical writer at Lucid Motors, a relatively new company that manufactures electric-only vehicles. My wife is a software engineer at Tesla Motors, another relatively new company that only makes electric vehicles (EVs, for short). We also drive these very same vehicles, having begun our journey of EV ownership starting in 2018. What I’ve realized over the past couple of years, however, is that the most important part of all the astounding things humans make — all the buildings and bridges and phones and planes — isn’t the glass, steel, rubber, or silicon. Not by a long shot.
So, what is the most important part?
Information.
At its core, an electric vehicle — as it is with a laptop, suspension bridge, or life-saving medical implant — is an idea. All these inventions, along with everything else that humans have plucked out of the mud, have started with, and are perpetuated by, someone putting an idea on a page.
What makes my job so fulfilling is that I get to be part of a team that captures Lucid’s idea for electric transportation. This idea is bigger and more enduring than any one man or woman. In fact, it’s bigger than any one company. Lucid and Tesla and everyone else builds its electric vehicles by leveraging ideas that have been around for over a century.
The idea of an electric vehicle can therefore be revised, enhanced, or added to. Complementary technologies can converge for a multiplier effect. A more efficient motor can make use of a denser battery pack, which can increase car range and reduce costs, which can result in more EV purchases, which can incentivize further electric motor improvement — a true virtuous cycle of innovation.
Over time, the superfluous or useless can be cast aside while the better parts endure. Because the most important part of a good idea is that it survives, that the idea is passed from group to group, from generation to generation, and that those who succeed us will make the idea their own.
That’s my mindset as we begin: I get to capture and present the ideas surrounding electric transportation as I think most directly relates to you, and I couldn’t be more excited about this opportunity. I’ll do the best I can to present the same kinds of information I’ve been exposed to over the past several years that have left me, a non-car guy, so enthusiastic about the future of electric mobility, and in turn cautiously optimistic about the future of humankind.
So buckle up, adjust the seats and mirrors, and prepare for an exhilarating ride as we take the idea of electric vehicles out for a spin.
About This Book
Books in the For Dummies brand are organized in a modular, easy-to-access format that lets you use the book more or less the way you would an owner’s manual for a car. I guess the conceptual difference is that, rather than serve as the owner’s manual for one EV, this is an owner’s manual for any EV.
Because electric transportation is a spectrum of topics, and each of these topics is relevant at different stages of the electric-car-ownership experience, you can think of this book as a road map or guidebook to several of the considerations facing electric-car purchase and operation. Some of the topics, for example, are most relevant when considering an EV for the first time. On the other hand, some are more relevant after having owned an EV for a few months. Others still are of interest when thinking about your next EV.
This book’s chapters are organized to first address common questions and concerns about EV ownership and then to move to more in-depth considerations. For example, Chapter 3 addresses questions of EV safety; everyone wants a safe vehicle — whether it’s powered by batteries, hydrogen, or a flux capacitor — and Chapter 3 talks about just how safe most of today’s electric vehicles are.
Still, it’s not critical that you read the book from cover to cover in the chapter order presented. (I do, however, think you’ll enjoy experiencing the book in its entirety.) You suffer no penalty for heading directly to concepts that interest you the most, although there's a chance you might need to jump to earlier chapters to review basic ideas or gain foundational context. I guess the penalty may be a cognitive one.
Anyway, web addresses, which are cited frequently as sources, appear in their own distinctive font. If you’re reading a digital version of this book on a device connected to the Internet, you can click a web address to visit that website, like this: www.dummies.com.
Foolish Assumptions
For one existential reason above all others, I’d argue that the idea of electric transportation is relevant to nearly every human on the planet today — especially to those humans who are either too young to research electric vehicles or who may not have the financial wherewithal to purchase a personal vehicle.
That said, I’m working on the assumption that at least 95 percent of readers drawn to this title are now driving some kind of internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle and are considering purchasing an EV as their next car, which I also assume will be sometime in the next three to six months.
A subset within that group of 95 percent may not be interested in an EV anytime soon, but may instead be looking for a single source of information about electric vehicles that will satisfy their curiosity without having to spend hours sifting through a trove of articles. Rest assured, I’ve done the research so that you don’t have to. If this describes you, this book should do a very good job of addressing questions like these: “What’s all this EV fuss about, anyway?” “Should I install upgraded electrical service in the garage of the house I rent out on Airbnb?” “My pension plan has a stake in three EV makers — is that gonna be good or bad for my retirement plans?”
For the other 5 percent: Why are you reading? I’d be curious to know, so feel free to drop me a line. My personal email is: [email protected].
Icons Used in This Book
As you make your way through this book (if that's how you're reading it), you see the following icons in the margins:
The Tip icon marks bits of information you will find particularly helpful. When you’re skimming the book, these tips should pop out to give you a quick grasp of the topic.
Remember icons mark information that is important to keep in mind. Some of them review topics from earlier in the book that are relevant to the information being presented.
The Technical Stuff icon marks information of a technical nature that is more important to someone working in the field and who might need a bit more depth.
The Warning icon points out bits of information you can use to avoid problems you might encounter.
Beyond the Book
Because electric transportation is an evolving and complex field, there’s no single source or best place to go for more information. Throughout this book, I leave you sources and suggestions for further reading and research. For example, I don’t know exactly what cars will be offered by which manufacturers three years from now, or even which manufacturers will still be in business by that time, but I can point you to a few places where you will likely find the latest-and-greatest info — websites are easier to update than giant manufacturing outfits.
In addition to the introduction you’re reading right now, this book comes with a free, access-anywhere Cheat Sheet containing information worth remembering about the joys of owing an electric car. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and type Electric Cars For Dummies Cheat Sheet in the Search box.
And in Chapter 13, I mention a specific website, which is also mentioned here — www.brianculp.com — and I’ll use that space to keep you apprised of ongoing developments. The challenge of a book whose subject is a rapidly evolving, and indeed revolutionary, is that mentions of a specific make or model or incentive or price point can become dated by the time the pages have been glued together.
Where possible, I keep the subject matter focused on topics that should prove most relevant to EV buyers today as well as five years from now. For example, people buying today will want to know about range and battery life and how and where to charge. People buying in 2025 will want to have the answer to the same questions.
For everything else — the things that do change rapidly— there’s the website.
Where to Go from Here
Get started reading Chapters 1 through 3 to help answer some of the most common concerns that people have when considering an electric car: what the main advantages are over internal combustion vehicles, how things like regen braking and over-the-air updates will keep the car performing better over time, and why an EV is likely the safest vehicle choice you can make.
Chapters 4 through 6 dive into the nitty-gritty details about an electric-vehicle purchase: what to consider when comparison shopping, weighing a battery-only vehicle against a plug-in hybrid electric car, insurance options, and even the age-old buying-versus-leasing dilemma.
Chapters 7 through 9 are where you go after that new EV is in your garage, or at least after you’re seriously considering parking one there in the first place. Chapter 7 in particular covers everything a new EV owner needs to know about charging — how, where, and how fast. Chapter 8 provides advice about prolonging the battery pack, and Chapter 9 dispenses some best practices for keeping the EV in top form over the life of ownership.
Chapters 10 and 11 were a joy to write, because they deal mostly with the future. I talk there about what might be on the horizon when it comes to battery technology. I talk about that future day when none of us will have to drive a car any more than we have to drive an elevator. (Did you know that elevator operators used to be a thing? They were.) Most of the technologies presented in these two chapters likely won’t come to pass, or at least not in their current iterations, but it doesn’t make the speculation any less fun. (And also informative: one of the main takeaways from Chapters 10 and 11 is that it probably doesn’t make much sense to wait for the technology that’s “just around the corner,” because the future tends to have plans different from ours.)
Finally, I delve into the topics of electric trucking and electric bicycles — electric bikes possibly proving to be humanity’s most important electric vehicle yet.
We’ll finish with some Parts of Ten that identify companies and countries that are leading the transformation (and name names about which are lagging), and even leave room for some EV predictions, most of which we can look back and laugh about come 2032.
Enjoy.
Part 1
Getting In On the Popularity of Electric Cars
IN THIS PART …
Get your basic questions answered
Explore the technology behind EV innovation
Work with over-the-air updates
Determine exactly how safe electric vehicles are
Chapter 1
So You’re Thinking About Buying an Electric Car
IN THIS CHAPTER
Why buying an electric car makes perfect sense
Benefitting from tech disruption
Learning the lingo
Seeing the key differences in owning an electric versus a gas-powered car
Realizing that gas-powered cars won’t be around forever
Answering your top questions about electric cars
With the aid of about 50 years of hindsight, I can unequivocally make this statement:
Life-changing moments rarely seem so at the time.
For me, one of the biggest events in my adult life went like this: In the summer of 2017, I went out for sushi and it changed my life.
Was the sushi really that good? No. But the drive to the sushi spot took place in a Tesla Model X — shout-out to Jonathan Guy and Ian Martinez for setting things up — and the experience lit my brain on fire.
Roughly one year after I took that first ride in an electric vehicle (EV, for short), subsequent events have led to some remarkable personal and professional transformations. There is a straight, bright line between that ride and a change of employers for my wife and me — we both now work for electric-only vehicle manufacturers. That ride also led to the purchase of — not one, but — three electric vehicles (with pending reservations for others) and the absolute certainty that we’ll never own an internal combustion vehicle again, mostly for reasons that really have nothing to do with the environment, although we’re certainly grateful about that added benefit of electric transportation. More about all that later.
That one night out eventually caused our family to leave our roots in Kansas City for the EV opportunities in San Francisco. (Yes, we miss the family and the barbecue, but we now spend weekends hiking among redwoods, taking our dog for walks on the beach, and taking advantage of our membership at a Sonoma winery — let’s call it a wash.) That drive in that electric car led me to explore topics I’d never been interested in. It sparked a curiosity about electrical engineering and energy generation and rare earth metals and artificial intelligence and neural networks and even tangential subjects like city design and walkable communities and …
I’m getting ahead of myself.
As you can see, I get excited when I think about the transformative impact of electric vehicles, on both a personal scale and the global scale. And, because writing is thinking, I’m sure I’ll have a hard time containing that excitement as I put the story of electric transportation on the page. I promise I’ll do the best I can, given the time and space constraints of a For Dummies book. (Note that such constraints are entirely appropriate; no single resource can cover all issues related to EVs. There are single paragraphs in this book that are the focus of multiple years of university study. What’s more, any resource that even tried to be a compendium on electric transportation would be hopelessly out of date by the time it was ready for publication.)
Oh, and I almost forgot: That sushi dinner led to this book.
In the pages that follow, I have the chance to share some of the experiences I’ve had with electric cars over the past four years, experience being the best teacher of what EV ownership is like. Additionally, I share some of the “inside baseball” details I’ve gathered by way of thousands of conversations with really, really smart engineers while working for three years at one particular electric car manufacturer (and talking about another manufacturer most evenings with a spouse who is also a really, really smart engineer).
To say that I’m excited about the pages that follow would be an understatement of gigawatt-hour proportions.
So, will picking up this book be as transformative for you as that first ride in an electric vehicle was for me in the summer of 2017?
Only one way to find out.
Why Buy an Electric Car?
Hmm … the answer to the question of why you should buy an electric car would fill many, many pages — 384 of them, to be exact — which science has proven is the perfect number of pages for a book on the topic of electric cars.
The short answer is that there are dozens of reasons it would make sense for your next car to run on electricity (or, in the case of a plug-in hybrid, to run on electricity for at least a significant chunk of its daily travels). You could buy an EV because you want to reduce the costs to fuel the car, leaving you more spending power every month. You might want only to visit a convenience store for the coffee, and not for the experience of handling a gas pump in either the freezing cold or the rotisserie-chicken heat. You might even be mindful of the geopolitical implications of buying gasoline — where it comes from and what kinds of activities your purchase might be helping to fund — concluding, à la the movie WarGames (kids, it’s a 1980s film about the futility of nuclear war), that the only way to win is not to play. You might be motivated to spend less time in the shop, waiting for repairs and maintenance. Or, it might simply be time to replace an old beater and you want to take advantage of the tax incentives. You might even be one of those serious-car-enthusiast types who wants bragging rights over all your muscle car friends when talking about 0-to-60 times. (See Figure 1-1.)
FIGURE 1-1: One of these cars has 707 horsepower, performs amazingly well on a drag strip, and is popular among performance car bros. The other car is about to easily win a drag race.
And, of course, you might be sitting across the dinner table one night from your 12-year-old child — maybe you’ll take your son or daughter out for sushi — when you’ll suddenly ask yourself: What kind of planet will this child be living in when they’re my age? I may not be able to change the world all by myself, but if I can play some small part in humanity’s job of reducing its collective carbon footprint, don’t I owe it to the child to make that effort? “I’m sorry it's 140 degrees outside and that most of the planet’s crops have failed, son, but you should see my 401k!”
So, there are lots of reasons to drive an EV, and you'll get a chance to explore each one of them in the chapters ahead. But, for now, you don’t even have to take my word for it — no less an automotive authority than the American Lung Association also recommends that humans with lungs, or at least humans who have other humans they care about who rely on lungs, make the switch to an EV because “… EVs are pleasant to drive. EVs generally have a lower center of gravity, which offers better handling, comfort, and responsiveness. The electric engine provides smooth acceleration and deceleration, and a quiet ride, which all leads to a better driving experience.”
So there. Cancel your subscriptions to Motor Trend and Car and Driver magazines, you serious-car-enthusiast types. And stop browsing articles on Electrek and Greencarreports, you curious-consumer-who’s-just-researching-some-options types. If the American Lung Association says to drive an EV, then let’s get with the program here, people.
Because, at the end of the day, all these reasons to buy an electric car that the American Lung Association cites are reasons because of one simple fact:
It’s a better technology.
The Disruption of Better Tech
Throughout the course of human history, better technology disrupts — and eventually replaces — the older technology. The printing press disrupted handwritten books and papers. Vaccinees disrupted millions of people dying of smallpox and measles. Gunpowder disrupted calvary charges on horseback as an effective battleground tactic except in Lord of the Rings movies. Speaking of film: Digital cameras disrupted the film processing business, and smartphones disrupted digital cameras.
And, cars disrupted both the horse-and-carriage and farrier industries. You get the idea.
Even calling things disruptive is, um, disruptive. The term, at least as applied to existing technology and value networks, is credited to the Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen and his work on the theory of disruptive innovation (published in Harvard Business Review in 1995), and it stems from his work on the disk drive industry. Hey, remember floppy disks? Remember when they were disrupted the zip drive made by a company called Iomega? Yeah, me, neither. I mean I’m not that old, except that I am. (Curious about Mr. Christensen? You can check out the original article at https://hbr.org/2015/12/what-is-disruptive-innovation.)
So, whether you decide to purchase an electric vehicle within a few weeks or within a few years after reading this book, or perhaps you decide not to buy a car at all, in favor of ride-hailing and/or per-use rentals, you and the rest of humanity will be either driving or riding in electric vehicles relatively soon. (If it hasn’t already happened, that is. I trust that some of my audience will have just purchased their first EV and will have come here for a few pointers — and then will stay for the sparkling prose throughout.)
Why will humanity choose electric vehicles (EVs) over internal combustion engines (ICEs)? Is it because all of humanity will rally together to save the planet, collectively deciding to do everything they can to live more sustainably?
As much as I’d like that to be the case, I have been sentient these past ten years or so (sometimes regrettably so) and have grown rather pessimistic about our collective human ability to cooperate on issues whose benefits would be enjoyed by future generations.
Fortunately, the benefits of driving electric will accrue to even the most self-centered among us. The rate of electric adoption will increase between the years 2022–2030, for two main reasons:
Electrics are cheaper to own and operate.
Electrics are
way
more fun to drive.
So the real answer to the question of why choose EVs over ICEs is the same as it is for why choose the iPhone over Blackberry or why choose Netflix over Blockbuster.
Because it’s better tech, resulting in a better consumer experience.
In other words, consider the inevitability of electric transportation in terms of the inevitability of smartphones (over landlines), broadband Internet (over dial-up), streaming music (over compact discs), or any of several dozen other technologies that have been replaced over the years by better, cheaper, faster, or more convenient alternatives.
What is technology, anyway? People use the term often in oral and written communication, but they seldom stop to consider its implication. Briefly defined, technology is applied science.
For example, science is learning, through trial-and-error (while trying to control for only one variable at a time), that certain metals react to heat such that they can be shaped or even melted, or that other metals are good at storing negatively charged ions.
Technology is engineering something that’s based on that science, like shaping molten steel into a plow in order to improve agriculture or using lithium in the manufacturing of a battery capable of being recharged, which in turn improves mobility.
Or, for the Adam Smith laissez-faire capitalists in the audience, you can answer the question of “why EVs?” using a purely market-driven framework. Companies like Tesla, Rivian, Nio, XPeng, and Lucid have recently burst onto the scene (at least in terms of public awareness; each has been around for many years) while giant, established automakers like Ford, Chevy, Volkswagen, and Hyundai have announced either majority-electric or all-electric futures. (Figure 1-2 shows Adam Smith in all his 18th Century glory.)
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
FIGURE 1-2: “Rational self-interest says you will drive an EV,” is not a direct quote from Adam Smith, but at the same time it is so Adam Smith.
They’re not making these multi-hundred-billion-dollar commitments simply to garner headlines, or to flex about their green street cred. They’re doing it because they think electric cars are what consumers will demand over the long term. As with any other company, these auto manufacturers’ sole purpose is ultimately to meet consumers where they are and eventually make a profit by meeting that demand. I do acknowledge that this is a combination of art and science, which involves varying degrees of market research — looking backward to spot patterns — and market forecasting — either using the patterns identified in market research to project future needs, or just having a strong conviction about something you think people will love. There was no market study that would have supported Howard Shultz’s opening a specialty coffee shop selling espressos and lattes for example, but here we are, with a Starbucks on every corner.
And speaking of disruption: I use a couple of acronyms in the earlier section on disruption — namely, EV and ICE — which I assume are common knowledge to those curious about electric transportation. That said, that won’t be the last time you see an acronym in this book. So I’m going to disrupt the train of thinking about EVs that just connected farriers, Netflix, Adam Smith, and, by inference, Starbucks Coffee and lay out a few of the acronyms that will facilitate a better understanding of the topic at hand. All so that you won’t be disrupted every time you come across an acronym.
Plus, it all connects with Homer Simpson because — why not? (I warned you I can be enthusiastic about this stuff.)
Acronyms and Abbreviations That Make You Sound Smrt
As a technical writer, I tend to detest acronyms, mostly because of the assumptions baked into their use.
That said, there are a couple of abbreviations that I end up using throughout this book — abbreviations I expect you to know as a matter of course. ICE, for example, which I use in the previous section, is the acronym for internal combustion engine, and this is probably the only time I’ll pause to point that out. I will assume that 99 percent of that audience for a book about cars has encountered the acronym ICE and wasn’t thinking of frozen water when seeing it here.
In case you’re wondering, the section heading is borrowed from a single Homer Simpson line, which he sings after being accepted to college. Google the phrase Homer Simpson I am smart to feel at one with all the cool kids who picked up on the reference immediately.
Besides setting the foundation for what follows, another reason I'm pausing for this brief reference section is that I assume this won’t be the only source of electric vehicle information you ever consult and that many of those sources will use these same abbreviations. Knowing these acronyms helps you better absorb these other sources of information. You’re welcome.
The following list, then, covers many of the more common acronyms you’ll find when learning about EVs:
EV:
Electric vehicle (
see also
BEV, a couple of lines down)
ICE:
Internal combustion vehicle
BEV:
Battery electric vehicle — a 100 percent electric vehicle
PHEV:
Plug-in hybrid vehicle — a vehicle whose drivetrain can be powered by a battery as well as by a gasoline engine
HEV:
Hybrid electric vehicle — an ICE-first vehicle that also has the capability of running off a limited battery. Hybrids don’t have a plug. They generate all the electricity stored in the battery from the power generated by the combustion engine, and through regenerative braking
Figure 1-3 shows in graphical form how these vehicles differ.
Source: VectorMine / Adobe Stock
FIGURE 1-3: EV means no ICE. PHEV means EV and ICE.
Most of the book you’re holding deals with battery-only electric vehicles. When you hear EV, the generally accepted definition is that it’s referring to a battery-only automobile or truck.
Now that you have confidence that you won’t be tripped up by the acronyms in a phrase like “EV versus ICE,” turn your attention back to the main business of this introductory chapter and indeed the entire book. Let’s examine some of the differences between the two kinds of vehicles.
Drawing the Line between Electric and Gas-Powered Vehicles
Before I even try to describe in words how EVs and ICEs differ, just know that anything I write here ultimately doesn’t matter nearly as much as the tactile experience of getting behind the wheel of an electric car and driving it for yourself.
I say that with the confidence that comes from knowing in my bones that one particular aspect of human behavior is true, even though I have no study I can direct you to that will back up my claim, nor am I even aware that this particular aspect has an official name.
So I’m giving it an unofficial name: It’s Brian’s Book of Boba Fett Law. (It’s a corollary to the Law Governing All Consumer Products and Mass Entertainment, which is yet another law that exists entirely in my head.)
Brian’s BOBF Law goes like this:
People don't know what they want until you show it to them.
If you’re thinking right now that Steve Jobs uttered something similar during some speech given somewhere and that I just stole that line and repackaged it with a pop culture reference, know that you could be right — about the stolen line, that is — but there doesn’t seem to be an authoritative answer about whether Jobs actually said this, or whether the quote is apocryphal.
In the same purported speech from Steve Jobs, he also purportedly quoted Henry Ford, who purportedly expressed something similar, saying “If I'd have asked people what they wanted, they'd have said faster horses.” Except Ford definitely never uttered that phrase, despite being famous for it today. So thank you, Internet — I guess. In any event, researching all this took me two Inception levels down into the Internet’s dreamworld of quote misattribution. Should you explore that second level, you’ll emerge assuming that anything in an email signature attributed to Einstein, Gandhi, Ben Franklin, Steve Jobs, or a dozen other leaders and thinkers has been entirely made up. There is no fact-checking embedded in a copy/paste operation.
For the purposes of discussing electric cars, it doesn’t matter.
Brian’s Book of Boba Fett Law posits that audiences don’t want to see a series about Boba Fett. Rather, they want to feel the same sensations they felt when experiencing Boba Fett onscreen for the first time in 1982. They want that sense of awe, excitement, and possibility.
Driving an electric car for the first time is like seeing Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back. (See Figure 1-4.) After experiencing an EV, subsequent drives in ICE vehicles feel like seeing Boba Fett in The Book of Boba Fett.
Anna Lurye / Adobe Stock
FIGURE 1-4: Because an actual pic of Boba Fett is a sure fire way to get sued by Disney, we’re using this photo instead and asking you to conjure an image of old Boba in your head. The imaginative result is the Star Wars equivalent of thinking that people want faster horses.
Beyond that, I’m going to spend the next 300+ pages exploring the differences between an electric car versus a gas-powered car. If you read this book from start to finish, you’ll have a lot of information that you didn’t have when you began. What will be almost impossible for me to replicate, however, is the sense of awe, excitement, and possibility you’ll feel when you get behind the wheel of an EV for the first time.
When you drive one, you’ll get it. You’ll understand that this is the thing you wanted — it’s just that no one has showed it to you until now.
And, of course, none of this is new in terms of humans and their technology. People don’t know what’s on technology’s next page, yet they often like the words written once they get there. For example, people didn't know they wanted a refrigerator to replace their iceboxes. They didn't know they wanted air conditioners or backup cameras or seat heaters or Bluetooth connectivity in their cars … until the first time someone installed one. And I was perfectly happy with the occasional coffee from a convenience store until I walked into a Seattle coffeehouse named after a character in Moby Dick. (True story: The first time I visited a Starbucks, it was the original Seattle Public Market location.)
So, as I said, I have another 300+ pages to unearth all the glorious details about the differences between EVs and ICE.
I’ll close the thought, then, by referring to something Steve Jobs definitely did say, when talking about the Macintosh in 1985:
“We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren't going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build.”
(You can find those lines in a write-up in Inc. magazine about Jobs’ approach to keeping the customer satisfied (www.inc.com/jason-aten/this-was-steve-jobs-most-controversial-legacy-it-was-also-his-most-brilliant.html), although it’s secondhand. The actual quote comes from, believe it or not, a Playboy magazine interview.)
If you built a car — any car — you’d likely build a car that was quicker than the one you have now. You’d (likely) build one that’s quieter — one that’s safer if it gets into an accident. You’d build a machine that emits zero greenhouse gases and is also much cheaper to maintain and much cheaper to fuel and can even be refueled from the comfort of your own home. You'd want a car you can upgrade with a new operating system, like your phone — a car that can improve characteristics like range and speed with a few lines of code. And you might even build one that can drive itself around so that you can use drive time to catch up on work.
In short, you’d build the best thing you can build. And you’d start that building process with an electric motor and a battery. And then, after you’d built that new, great thing, here’s what you’d tell others about it. Here’s what you’d answer when people asked you why they should drive your automobile and not the one they already have:
EVs are better to drive: That battery-and-electric-motor contraption in your driveway is an absolute blast to drive. And, if you’re parting with your cash in exchange for a driving machine, you might as well get the best driving experience your money will buy. They’re quiet. They’re quick. They tend to handle exceptionally well, thanks to their low center of gravity.
EVs provide the kind of driving performance I'm talking about in the places where it’s most keenly felt by most people: when pulling away from a stoplight (the Camaro, Mustang, and Challenger don’t stand a chance against most EVs) or merging into highway traffic at speed or quickly passing in the highway’s fast lane.
