Electric Vehicles Are NOT For Everyone... But Here's How To Find Out

Electric Vehicles Are NOT For Everyone… But Here’s How To Find Out

EVS are not suitable for everyone wow did Dave just say that I’ve said it before it’s a simple fact some people might find that an EV is not the best vehicle for them I’m Dave welcome to Dave takes it on so let’s have a look at

Who is who is not suitable and most importantly how you can find out now we’ve been used to petrol cars for over 100 years years I mean no not personally I haven’t been driving for 100 years but petrol cars have been around for over a 100 years and for most

Of us it’s the only type of car that we’ve ever driven in our lives we grew up with them as kids they were lot was more basic back then but we were traveling in them as uh uh while our parents drove uh when we bought our first car it

Was usually either petrol or diesel and we’ve been driving petrol or diesel ever since alongside that the there’s grown up an infrastructure and that includes things like petrol stations but servicing repairs exhaust centers Tire Centers clutch centers gearbox uh body workshops everything that’s been built up it’s massive

Industry and then on top of that there’s an ancillary industry which is things like accessories for your cars cushions for the seats fairy dice sphere interior mirror there’s a load of things that we have and it’s a massive industry today and we have just got so used to it we

Never question it it’s just become second nature yeah it’s always in the background in our mind we actually still have a problem with it from time to time last year the breakdown Services reported that they attended 750,000 drivers who had run out of fuel

Out on the road and had to call them for assistance now it’s interesting to note they’re the ones who actually called the breakdown services for assistant so we still have a problem with fueling petrol cars after a 100 years and then in addition to that I don’t know if you’ve

Seen them but there are fuel doctor Vans springing up all over the place you see the Vans everywhere and these are for the people who when they get to the fuel station without running out accidentally then put in the wrong fuel well I have to say there’s only a choice of two

Petrol or diesel how can you get it wrong but 250,000 people a year are using the fuel doctor services but the figures are astounding that most of us at some time or other will either run out of fuel or put the wrong fuel in so now when it comes to looky TVs

Everything’s different and that upsets some people and they understand understand it it’s just a new technology why should I change driven petrol diesel cars on my life I like them I’m quite happy with them I’m used to them why should I have to change and start worrying about range anxiety why should

I have to worry about where I charge what plug have I got on my car what’s on the end of the cable how much is it going to cost me why should I bother and the answer for some people is don’t stick with what you’ve got no one at

This stage is forcing you to buy EVS there’s a lot of encouragement going on and we’re going to come back to that in a minute but at this stage you can happily go and buy a brand new fully petrol or fully diesel car no problem

You can also get down to your local used car dealer and buy a petrol or diesel car there you’ll be able to do that for as long as probably as long as you stay alive what we have to think about is it’s just a different way of thinking the other important thing is

The infrastructure it’s not yet there there are EV charges now and there’s plenty of them last count there are over 400,000 people able to charge the cars at any one time and these include a wide variety of charges obviously the Rapids the ultra Rapids the fast charges um

These are not all out on the road so you can go to your supermarket and fill up but these are in a relatively small number by far the vast majority of charges out there are home charges and some homes will have a dedicated charger others will just have a

Weatherproof waterproof plug socket out on the uh end of the the garage or the house wall and they’ll just plug into that using the 13 amp uh cable that comes with your car that’s still charging at home it’s still a point for charging so we can already charge cars

But the infrastructure is still building don’t forget first electric cars of any sort only arrived about 12 years ago this was this Leafs the zo’s and then the Teslas but they never sold in a huge number back then if you look back at 10 years ago they were probably only a

Couple of thousand EVS on the road in the whole of the UK it’s that recent and most of those early cars did not have rapid or Ultra rapid charging they were just used locally for commuting most of the people who bought an L could charge at home what they found was something

Quite incredible just before you go to bed you plug your car in at cheap rate off peak when you wake up it’s full it’s just a totally different way of fueling your car with a petrol car you have to go to a petrol station of

Some form with an EV you don’t have to go to a public charger a lot of people can charge it home and they found they were really good because for most driving we only do about 8 to 10,000 miles a year most people don’t do vast long distances so charging on the the

Road for many people was not such an issue and if you’re commuting backwards and forwards and you can plug in every night wow cars ready every day with a full charge that worked really well for those people so people out there the EV haters and deniers who say that EVS

Don’t work they do actually already for a very large number of people not everyone but a large number but in the meantime the technolog has moved on and since the first cars they’ve got much bigger better faster and more able to cover a longer range most cars today

Hover around the 300 mile Mark but you’ve got to believe that the average driver doing just 8,000 mil a year 140 mil a week even 200 miles in the winter is easily capable in a single charge in the summer obviously that goes up to well over 300 so getting back to the original

Question who who is an ev4 well that really comes down to you and your style of driving and your facilities but I would say if you don’t do regular I mean daily long drives if you’re not a rep on the road or delivery driver or you’re regular Drive once a

Day to visit your ATI 100 mile away uh if you’re just doing normal driving 20 30 miles a day commuting go to the shops and back at the weekend um and then at the weekend also have a trip out maybe going to the seaside or going to a

Country park or National Trust property maybe 30 40 miles away 50 60 m round trip most of you are actually perfectly fine for EVS now it’s all very well and good me telling you all this I’ve got an e and I’m obviously biased so how can we find

Out whether an EV is right for you well obviously the first thing is just do loads of homework right do a bit of research you’re going to make a big investment M the cheapest of EVS are about 25,000 most of them are 30 40 50,000 some are 100,000 so you’re going

To be spending a lot of money whether you’re buying it whether it’s on a lease or cash doesn’t matter it’s a big investment so do some research go on Google and ask questions on there about your worries go on YouTube you know there are videos on YouTube well you’re

Watching one anyway uh I’m not talking about the car Wows uh people like Matt Watson uh hilarious videos you know pitting a Tesla Model 3 Performance against a Ferrari or Lamborghini yeah they’re great but they don’t tell you anything that you want to know about how

You would manage with an EV but there are plenty of personal experience videos on YouTube these are people who have EVS uh who are just sharing their experience they’re telling what their worries were before and what they found once they got one and the same for me I

I’ve started doing interviews now with new EV owners and these are literally uh people who’ve just bought an EV have asking questions like what made you buy an EV uh what what did you what were your fears what were your worries how did you go about it what did you

Find okay so look for those personal experiences most of those are actually genuine they’re not Sensational but they don’t tell you anything about you driving any V as your only car for your normal life for the next three or four years or however long you keep a car for so I would suggest

First of all do your research and decide whether an EV might be suitable for you I’d have to say for the vast majority of people in the UK whatever your fears or worries or negative thoughts they are actually quite good for you so what’s my

Final bit of advice you can do all the research in the world doesn’t tell you what driving a car an EV is like and here I would suggest that going for a test drive with a Salesman sat alongside you is definitely not the best thing for

You to do if you got the pressure of a Salesman gabbing in your ear telling you how good it is trying to sell you a car because he’s on commission you’re first of all in a strange car you don’t know what you’re doing you never been in an

EV before you got a guy shouting in your ear you’re off on a drive you don’t want to make a fool of yourself particularly if your wife’s in the car as well uh your wife or partner um and so you need to get away from that

Now Tesla go a little bit further they will do a one-hour drive and they do not accompany you uh if you want to test drive a Tesla you go to one of the dealers you book it in and they hand you the key and they set you off and they

Always tell you there’s a saav here if you press this button it will navigate you back home if you get lost so that’s better but still only an hour and the problem is during that hour I can guarantee the car will have a full battery charge and you won’t need to

Charge so you learn nothing about charging it so what else could you do now my brother lives over in the states he’s a petrol head he lives in Philadelphia he’s had such cars I it’s America a big V8 and everything and a family car was a big station wagon with

A I think it was a 5.6 ler V8 petrol engine take you anywhere total petrol head and uh been in the states for a while and um what he’s decided now is that he’s had enough of them first of all it’s a concern about pollution but also that’s big station wagon did about

10 m to the gallon and while it goes like a rocket petrol is cheap it’s not the best thing to do so he decided he ought to go and have a look at EVs and it’s so happened he was going to do a road trip with his wife down to a

Holiday place and ex exhibition and a couple of other things it was well planned in advance from Philadelphia down to Texas right partly business partly pleasure and it was a leisurely run U and it was going to take them a whole week so they were going to have a

Leisurely drive down there for two or three days stopping off along the way and then when he got there stayed there a couple of days then coming back stopping off along the way and what he did he went and hired a Tesla Model y This brilliant and is absolutely

Brilliant you’re thinking of investing 10 thousands of pounds yeah and we’re talking 40 50 60 70,000 in some cases then for goodness sake couple hundred quid or couple hundred dollars for a week’s higher of an EV and and you can take it out on a

Proper drive you can set off you can see what you like about it what you hate about it you learn about everything about the car the performance the range everything else and when it does come time to stop when your batter’s going down you’ve got to go and find a charger

And and you learn about charging you learn pretty quick cuz otherwise you’re stuck in a charging station so it’s a real experience and they find a hotel and they find that the hotels over there some of them have the fast charges overnight so you can charge there as

Well so he not only learned a lot about the car and driving an EV he learns a lot about charging when he got to his destination he was a bit of an old hand and they uh they stayed in the hotel they used the car there backwards and

Forwards exhibitions and whatever it was they were doing and when they got back he made two decisions the first decision was he wanted an EV he decided that the features the benefits The Experience everything was absolutely right for him he loved it his wife loved it as well

And they decided yes we need an EV he also decided the Tesla Model y was definitely not for him what did he buy well he went out and bought a BMW M50 and I don’t know what they cost over there I think they’re about 80 to $100,000 everything he wanted in the car

The minute he got into it he knew this was the EV for him wasn’t any long question of whether he had an EV it was just which car he had BMWs before and when he got into this one it was exactly what he wanted now he was aware that

With the some things missing well for example he did quote that he knows he can’t use the Tesla superchargers with a BMW well that’s not quite true they are switching them over to open to all and in time he should be able to use at least some of them uh but that’s another

Story but he has to use other charges and he actually found out how good or bad they actually are um and he found out they weren’t very good however apart from this one road trip most of his motoring is just local so he also found out with the

BMW he got two years totally free charging with Electrify America now it’s restricted he can charge anything up to 30 minutes at a session and it’s totally free if you go beyond 30 minutes uh you pay for the session uh so he just got straight into the habit of using of

Going out going to a charger plugging in 29 minutes grab a Starbucks coffee and drive home now in the meantime he’s gone and ordered a home charger uh over there the voltage system is weird and to get a decent charge you have to get anyway

Long story uh but he’s now got a home charger installed well if he’s got any sense he’s not going to use it because he has got two years absolutely free motoring and even if he does another road trip he just has to stop and charge every time he charges for less than 30

Minutes so he might have an extra one or two stops but can you imagine that driving from Philadelphia to Texas and not paying for it not a penny that is stunning but what this proves is that he thought the model y might be the best car for him because he’d heard so much

About it it is the best selling car in the world but when he took it on the road trip there were certain things about it that he hated I mean one of them was he really didn’t like the central display with nothing in front of him that really bugged him and I

Understand that I’ve got the central display and I’ve got a display in front of me on the model S but the model 3 and Y don’t have that and I can understand for some people they don’t like it I think the main reason he chose the BMW was purely one of

Quality now some of the early model wise were I wouldn’t say appalling but they were not good quality uh um and compared to a BMW they’re really poor but of course there’s a huge difference in the price now the model Y in America is $40 to $50,000 and there’s the IRA the

Inflation reduction act which is $75,000 so the price he would actually pay for a model y over there say a long range would be somewhere 30 or $40,000 that’s it Now in America the BMW M50 he did eventually buy is between 80 and 100,000 in America and that means because it’s that

Price there is no Ira subsidy towards it so you comparing buying a model Y at $40,000 less against a BMW xm50 at $100,000 if there wasn’t a quality difference I’d be absolutely horrified because what else is the money being used for he’s paying for BMW’s Decades of experience in building high quality

Cars with all the goodsy bits features everything you like soundproofing heads up display double glazing really comfortable seats all the goodies you could possibly imagine the important message here he found out before he made a mistake and spent $40 ,000 on a Model Y and instead learned that the best car

For him was to spend twice as much on a BMW he’s happy loves it loves EV loves the decision he’s made so my advice to you do what he did don’t go to America and drive from Philadelphia to Texas now that’s being silly what you need to do

Is just go and find uh somewhere to hire one well I’ve done recently I’ve just gone on the Herz rental site and I found they have EVS for higher and the amazing thing is these are about the same price as hiring an equivalent petrol car now I

Don’t know when you’re going or or what car you want but let me just give you advice I logged in onto the her renter car site I chose at random because there’s more uh more Choice uh location of heo airport you can pick anywhere I suppose prices are probably similar I

Don’t know so I’ve picked from the 13th of February which is a Tuesday to the following Monday that’s a whole week and includes a weekend okay now when you look at the price you look at what you’re getting they are a lot lower than I anticipated so in this instance you

Could get a Tesla Model 3 for about2 200 for a week it’s got 1,800 mile limit that’s included you can get a Pulstar too for 240 a week that’s amazing you get a voxal Corsa e for about £40 a week these are not expensive rates so my

Advice to you is do your research make a sure decide first of all whether EVS are for you or not if they are then make a short list of the cars that you’re thinking of buying or leasing okay so go and book whatever you’ve chosen as your

Best car your best EV what you want to drive around in okay book it for a week pay for a week the thing most people don’t realize about uh rental cars is at any time you want you can take it back and swap it for another one don’t have

To have an excuse if you you take for example a Tesla Model 3 and you drive it for a couple of days whether you like it or not we come back to that in a minute go and swap it in swap it in for a uh

500 e corer e or a pstar 2 it doesn’t matter do that for a couple of days go back again change it again for something different so at the end of that week you will have charged it at a charging station somewhere you might have plugged

It in a home into a 13 amp socket which you should already have uh in your garage maybe or youve used you’d have charged on a public charger and I would recommend even if you can charge at home that during that week you go and plug it

Into a public charger and see what it’s actually like okay so anyway so you get back at the end of the week and the first thing you’ll know for a fact is whether an EV is for you if you’ve hated every minute of the experience then don’t have an EV just

Stick with your petrol cars you absolutely fine you’ve saved yourself a load of money on buying a car that you really don’t want now I’m assuming at this point that uh for whatever reason you did get on with at least one of those models now if

One of those models stood out as really better different than the others really improved this is what you want uh could be anything at all that made you think that then what you need to do is go buy that one or lease that one that’s your car done you’ve worked out whether you

Want an eeve you’ve now worked out which one’s best for you and that’s fine on the other hand what you might find is you like them all you’ve driven three or four cars and you can’t find anything different between them all so you now need to pick whatever CR criteria is

Most important to you so for example I personally do a lot of longdistance Motoring I got a trip down to Coral shortly do some filming got another one up to Scotland do some filming quite often go to London go to Lake District go to East angland I drive a lot so I do

A lot of longdistance Motoring so for me that means I need a car that has a massively impressive impressive charging structure are either Tesla superchargers and it also means I’m very critical of cars range and economy so I like a car that does a lot of miles per kilowatt

Hour and I want one I can charge quickly when I get to one of the rapid charges in one of the many places that are available for me if if what you do is drive six miles to work and six miles back every single day then on the Sunday

Uh go out to Country Park or whatever uh 30 mile away and come back you don’t need to worry about range doesn’t matter whether you’re in charge at home or not you don’t need to worry about range because most cars will do that easily in

A week if you hire a car for a week go back as many times you want they really don’t mind make sure that you do all the research that you can get yourself right so you’ve decided the best car for you once you’ve decided what the best car

For you is go and get one now you might find for instance that you like a particular car but it has faults let’s say um you choose a Foxhall corser e and you find that uh the range you’re getting a bit worried it is a little bit

Close to what you use it for then you might find there’s a bigger model with a bigger battery I don’t think there is on an e but you know the principle uh you might find if you like the Tesla Model 3 three um but you find it as you get

Older a little bit more difficult to get in it is a very low Sleek sedan uh it’s not a hatchback and you might find that while you like everything about the Tesla you don’t like getting in and out of it you don’t like the small uh aperture for getting into the boot which

Once you’re in there is massive uh so you might choose a Tesla Model Y which you haven’t test driven but you now know Tesla’s a car for you you know the model Y is based exactly the same as on a Tesla Model 3 it’s just got an SUV body

Which means you get up into it instead of down into it and you got big hatchback so you might be able to find tune so although you might have driven a higher car of a particular model you might end up buying a different model of the same

Make but what it means at the end of the day you’ve got what you want now there are some people worried about outdated technology oh if I buy a car now is it going to be out of date in a year’s time and I’m going to be stuck with something

I can’t resell because it’s so uh basic Tech well no forget it okay uh technology is changing rapidly batteries are getting much better range is increasing speed and everything else it’s all getting better mine is a seven-year-old car is made in in 2016 eight years now coming up this year and

Yet mine has still got features that uh other budget EVS don’t have yet so if you get a good model it will last you a while but if you have doubts lease a car uh if you lease a 2-year lease a threeyear lease what will happen is Tech

Techology will move on during those three years or two years right but with a lease the right lease anyhow it means at the end of it just hand it back doesn’t matter what the whe what the value of the car is whether it’s dropped or gone up it’s absolutely no worries

With a lease uh you just hand the car back at the end of it walk away but you can hand it back now if technology has moved on and there are better cars on the market I’m guarantee there’ll be a higher price but you might look at them

When you realize you’ve now got a bigger range and if you you can find the one you want you’ve now got two or three years of um driving an EV experience then you’re going to be much better placed for picking your replacement model so my advice to you do your

Research go on Google go on YouTube then when you’ve got a short list go and hire a car for a week not a day hire it for a week go do test drive if you’re happy or not happy if you’re delighted with it I’d still swap it

Anyhow for something else to see if that one’s even better uh but swap it during the week go back swap it for a bigger one smaller one A different one and at the end of the week you will know from your research and eeve is probably good for you from your

Weeks experience you’ll know it is good for you and from the test drives that you did you know you’ve got the right car that will cost you around 200 when you’re spending 30 40 50 60 70 80,000 on a car I think that’s a superb investment well thanks very much for watching if

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As much as I like to talk about the benefits of electric vehicles, they’re not for everybody. But it’s important to understand if that applies to you. So to find out what’s going on, stick around as Dave Takes It On.

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Dave Takes It On was founded in 2023 and focuses primarily on content about electric vehicles and issues that impact drivers. Dave is based in the North West of the UK and owns a Tesla Model S. He regularly travels around the country, so if you see him feel free to say hello. The channel is supported by his son Jonas, who supports with thumbnails, titles, and technical aspects of the channel.

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