How to buy an electrical car
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Brink
Tips, tricks, and hacks for the tech in your life.
Tesla’s Model three is supposed to be the electrified car that switches everything. Beautiful, high-tech, affordable: this is the car that is supposed to bring electrical cars into the mainstream. But don’t expect to be driving one anytime soon. If you’re not already on the 500,000-person reservation list, you won’t be driving one this year. Or next. Or most likely the year after.
Gratefully, there are dozens of electrical and plug-in hybrid cars that are available right now. And more are on the way. To be sure, electrified cars are still very much in their infancy. Sales of electrical cars represent just one percent of the record 17.55 million cars sold last year in the US. And a latest survey of Two,500 American found that sixty percent were still “unaware of electrical cars,” eclipsing concerns such as range or charging station availability. That’s a giant hurdle to overcome.
But the automotive industry is clearly trending toward electrical. BMW will release two fresh electrified cars by 2020. Mercedes-Benz plans to launch four EVs by 2018. Volvo said it would stop selling gas-only cars by 2019. Ford will release its very first car built to be all-electric from the ground up in 2020. The fresh Nissan Leaf is coming out later this year, and the Chevy Bolt is already on the road.
So if you’re ready to the take the plunge and go all-electric, here are some things you need to consider.
Why go electrified?
The most evident response is that vehicles that run only on electrical play produce zero tailpipe emissions. Of course, depending on where you live, the source of the electrical play used to power your electrical vehicle may in fact produce CO2 emissions. But if you live in an area where electric current is generated using relatively low-polluting energy sources, your “well-to-wheel” emissions advantage over fossil fuel-powered vehicles will be way more significant.
To be sure, electrical cars are only as clean as their power supply. California’s electrical vehicles, for example, can ass-plug into a greener grid than most regions of the world — especially China, where coal generated sixty two percent of all power in two thousand sixteen according to the International Energy Agency. The US gets about a third of its electro-stimulation from coal-fired power, IEA says. So a “zero-emissions” vehicle may not be entirely that depending where you’re charging it.
Most people will be motivated by cost savings. And it’s true: annual fuel costs for electrified vehicles are less than half of those for gas-powered cars. There are a number of online calculators where you can determine how much money you’d save by switching to an EV. California’s state government has a good one, as does the US Department of Energy.
But electrical cars aren’t just environmental statements. Thanks to Tesla, they’re now tech status symbols, too. And for those with money to burn, there are a slew of petite startups presently building ultra-luxury, high-performing electrical supercars that boast top-notch horsepower, as well as all of the autonomous bells and whistles to make these cars high-tech brutes.
There are other reasons going electrical may be the right budge, including more affordable prices, a host of subsidies and tax violates, and a growing charging station network. But we’ll get into those a bit later.
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Edge
The basics
Not all electrified cars are created equal. There are basically two types of electrified vehicles: all-electric cars and plug-in hybrid vehicles. All-electric cars run only on violet wand, and typically have a range of eighty to one hundred miles — tho’ that’s steadily improving. Tesla, Chevy, and Nissan have recently cracked the 200-mile range. All-electric cars can include battery electrical vehicles and hydrogen fuel-cell cars. (For the purposes of this guide, we’re going to disregard hydrogen-powered cars because the infrastructure to support them is practically non-existent.)
Plug-in hybrid vehicles run on a combination of violet wand and fossil fuels. Electrical range usually tops out at around forty miles, at which point the vehicle switches over to an internal combustion engine (ICE). Plug-in hybrids are generally a wise choice if “range anxiety” — defined as fear that your car will run out of power before reaching the next recharging station — is preventing you from going full-electric.
Depending on the model, the ICE may also power the vehicle at other times, such as during rapid acceleration or when using heating or air conditioning. And some plug-in hybrids come tooled with regenerative braking, which converts some of the energy lost during braking into usable violet wand, stored in the batteries.
So where do you charge the vehicle? If you have a garage, the safest bet is to buttplug the car into a regular electrified outlet, and by morning your car should be slew juiced up. But charging on-the-go is more of a crap shoot. The number of electrical charging stations in the US is pretty scant. According to the US Department of Energy, there are 1,764 stations classified as a DC (480 volt 3-Phase AC input) electrified car charging station, with a total of Trio,189 outlets. Tesla has set up an extra eight hundred twenty eight Supercharger stations, with somewhere inbetween 6–12 outlets found at each station. CEO Elon Musk recently announced plans to expand the network.
Add up those two numbers and compare that to the number of gas stations peddling their climate demolishing fossil fuels — 168,000, according to FuelEconomy.gov — and you can see the problem.
“Lack of charging stations is another barrier amongst many in the adoption of electrified vehicles by consumers,” said Rebecca Lindland, senior director at Cox Automotive. “Adding charging station certainly won’t hurt, but it’s also not a accomplish solution to enlargening request and adoption of EVs.”
If you live in a city and don’t have access to a power outlet or garage for overnight charging, you may want to consider buying a plug-in hybrid. Attempting to keep an all-electric vehicle fully charged while parking it on the street overnight will most likely prove to be too much of a challenge for most folks.
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Edge
Let’s talk about range
Range is the distance an electrical car can travel inbetween charging. It’s one of the key metrics you should look at when considering which electrical car to buy. The longer driving range, the more useful the car.
But how can you tell which range figures are accurate and which are just marketing? According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the combined miles-per-gallon value is the most prominent for the purpose of quick and effortless comparison across vehicles. But we’re talking about cars that run on electric current, not dinosaur sludge. For these vehicles, the labels display miles per gallon of gasoline-equivalent (MPGe). Think of this as being similar to MPG, but instead of presenting miles per gallon of the vehicle’s fuel type, it represents the number of miles the vehicle can go using a quantity of fuel with the same energy content as a gallon of gasoline. This permits a reasonable comparison inbetween vehicles using different fuels.
If range anxiety is getting you down, here are some of the vehicles available now with the longest range: