Title text:
Now that I've finally gotten an electric vehicle, I'm never going back to an acoustic one.
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Source: https://xkcd.com/3214/
this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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As an EV owner, I have recieved an interesting amount of reasons why people won't buy them:
After this, they usually proceed to make absurd claims like "I don't care, I just don't trust EVs.
Very much similar to my own experience. The blackout is the funniest, because gas stations don't work in a blackout, while solar panels do (assuming you disconnect them from the grid).
I would add one:
Oh, yeah! I forgot that one!
When you ask them how many times they found themselves with a thermic car doing 1000km without stopping they usually tell you: never, but what if I had to?
Bitch, if you need to do 1000km without stopping, you should be taking a train or a plane. Driving 10-12 hours without a single stop is bad and dangerous.
This was something I realized when we drive to my wife’s parents. It’s 2,000 km each way from our house in the US to where they are in rural Quebec, Canada and we usually drive it twice a year. The charging times sound long, but even with our petrol car most of our stops end up being between 15 to 30 minutes anyways between fueling the car, taking the dog to grass, taking turns going to the toilet so the dog isn’t alone in the car, getting food and giving me a chance to eat so I’m not trying to drive and eat at the same time.
I think the real challenge of electric range anxiety is that it still takes planning, at least in some parts of the US. There are areas on our route where it might be 100 kilometers to the next fast charger, and there’s no guarantee that all of them will be working or compatible with a car’s fastest charging speeds. We don’t really have to think about where we’ll get gasoline; there’s pretty much always a station, often several, within the next few miles. Usually if we’re waiting to stop for fuel it’s because we’re looking for the best price, looking for a place that might have decent toilets, and/or might have an appealing food option along with the gasoline. That’s all manageable in electric but might need some advanced planning, and many American drivers aren’t used to doing that kind of route planning in advance anymore.
How many cars in Europe can drive 1,000 km without stopping anyways? The only ones I can think of offhand are large American pickup trucks intended for towing large trailers long distances. I wouldn’t expect to see them in Europe.
Any diesel can drive more than 1000 km with a full deposit. But laws forbid in some countries to drive more than 2 hours or 300 km without stopping.
What if a comet was headed for your town and it has a radius of 500KM? Check and mate, libtard!
The only somewhat valid use case for "driving 1.000km without a stop" would be several people in the car taking turns on the driver's seat. While you'd technically need to stop to switch drivers this in itself is way quicker than even a quick charge on paper.
BUT: considering traffic jams, speed limits and such - a 1.000km trip would take around 10+ hours anyway. You're not going to tell me that you do not even stop to pee or stretch a bit for 10+ hours, do you?
While growing up my family once a year would take a 20 hour car trip to visit extended family for a couple weeks then 20 hours back. Parents would do five hour shifts and get the whole thing done in one go. Shift changes meant refuel, bathroom, that's it. Other than that there was no stopping unless it was a "the next bump in the road I will 100% shit myself" kind of an emergency
Now personally I'd argue maybe we shouldn't have been taking road trips in that manner because it's like putting your body through a meat grinder. But if trips like that are someone's goal I doubt there are many charging stations in the middle of absolutely nowhere that can fully charge an EV in the time it takes to pee. I'm hoping though maybe a shift to EVs will change the way people approach long road trips to actually force them to take breaks
It takes just one small change …. My family did similar, but those stops were planned for mealtimes. We either did fast food or brought a camping stove, but always ate outside the car. Kids were encouraged to “run down to the end of that path with the dog”. Anyhow, the presence of even a fast food meal meant that there would have been plenty of time to charge.
My father in-law uses that added argument all the time. Who the hell needs to drive for 10 hours straight without taking a 30 minute break.
...do US statioms not have their own generators?
How are you going to fill those generators if the pump has no power?
Checkmate atheists
No idea about the US, but not in Europe. It was a major problem with the last blackout in Spain and Portugal.
Another point to add for 9, all the EV parts can be recycled. The metal body is recycled in to new cars and battery components are also recycled in to new batteries.
Relevant technology connections video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM
My reason for not buying an EV: it's still a fucking car. Bit less shit, but still shit.
That should be Number 1 Reason to not buy an EV!
Agreed! EVs are certainly superior to ICE cars, but they're a band aid instead of a solution.
Bring back public transit!
I mean, technically, an eBike is an Electric Vehicle, and not a fucking car. Otherwise, hard agree.
Well yeah if you can avoid it you shouldn't buy a car, but if you have to buy a car you should buy electric
Fuck cars alright, but as long as I'm dependant on a car, my no.1 reason to get an EV is that I hate the oil industry even more. Fuck their oil and money and pollution and fuck their wars and politics.
With point 2 you can now use a real life case. Last year the Iberian peninsula had a blackout that lasted more than a day. The combustion engine cars could not pump petrol because guess what: pumps need electricity.
Eh? What if there's a gas supply issue? Can't fuel up. I've experienced this after a natural disaster disrupted gas deliveries. Lines for blocks. Days to wait.
Not to mention what if someone does something silly like start a war and push the price of oil up. Solar does not increase in price after it's made.
They couldn't refuel their ice car either or how do they think the fuel is made to flow "uphill" from the tank in the ground into their car.
My argument: When I can get a decent used EV for $5k, I'll do it. Until then, I'll just get a decent used ICE car for $5K.
I always thought this was one of the reasons for an EV incentive. Encourage more people like me to buy the expensive ones sooner to develop the market, guaranteed demand for manufacturers, but that also gets us faster to the point of cheap used EVs
My reason: the hybrid I have is still working fine and a new car and a new car won't be in my budget for the next 10 years or so. Also iirc about 33% of the energy a typical car will ever use is spend on its production, so it's better for the environment to use a car until it breaks down.
that's completely fine. If your car works, you shouldn't throw it away, that is wasteful.
For a lot of people it’s number 7 and I mean, that’s sad
1 is real though, and it can be a pain
There’s also the case where some areas are isolated and there’s no charger nearby and that can be a pain, and yea, that’s not a good spot to be in
Finally, if you can’t charge at home, you’re not really going to save on electricity price compared to fuel, so that’s not the best purchase, and it might be a pain to charge frequently outside if you have an cheap car that charges slowly
In the worst case scenario (very high KWh price), charging is almost the same price for the same distance. In the best case (at home) is 10x cheaper.
This might actually be true, I think I misremember my calculations but I know I compared it some time ago, and realized it was way cheaper at home, and comparing the prices I pay outside and those, it might very well be the case
It sounds crazy, but I'd sit and wait the five minutes, much like I've done for pumps on occasion.
I feel like some of those points are slightly more valid in rural areas (especially in the US, where a power pole being knocked over means that the power is out for hours) where the people making those points are more likely to have grown up. Then again if you are not in a rural point of the united states you are less likely to need a car.
If I lived in rural US where the power is not guaranteed I would install PV and use my car as a power backup.
That sounds rather expensive (if PV is photovoltaic). And I was not aware that cars were built to supply power like that.
Here’s a financial argument. The initial purchase price is too high for me, and the depreciation of electric vehicles is also very high. Overall cost of ownership per distance driven is lower if I drive a small gasoline-powered car.
I really don’t want it to be that way, but that’s the reality I have to deal with. Cheaper EVs are coming, but they still aren’t in my price range.
Update: Yes they are. Needed to update my data. Used EVs aren’t expensive trash any more. Some of them are actually quite reasonable.
Must be a Europe thing. I ran the numbers in America and avoiding gas cost (vs electric cost per mile) means the car paid for itself after 30k miles. And that's ignoring that it needs no maintenance.
I thought European gas was expensive. Is the electricity over there also really pricey?
It depends where you live. We have cheap gas and I live in an area with one of the more expensive prices for electricity (and there are worse), but “filling up” at home is much cheaper than “filling up” my ice car.
However
I wonder how many of those would not apply to hybrid cars.
Also, for 8: Making car go by burning fuel in a big optimised plant is likely more efficient than doing it in an engine that has to fit inside the car.
This is me. I have a hybrid car and I miss the stick every time I drive it.
The problem is those days are gone, even without EVs. Between modern automatics more efficient and longer lasting, and cheap reliable CVTs (also more efficient), manual transmissions have no future. I also prefer driving a stick, and frequently complained about limited availability in the US, but technology has passed it by
I've been there, I did manual -> hybrid -> electric.
I did miss the stick when I was driving an hybrid. In the hybrid it felt like was I had to give away some of the control I had on the car by not being able to change gear.
With the EV on the other hand it's totally different, the car is way more responsive, there is power the moment I press the pedal and the concept of gear disappear.
I don't miss driving with a stick when driving an EV
If it helps, my EV technically has a manual transmission. 100% of gear shifts are manual (it only has a single reduction gear).
2: I wonder what those people think a gas pump runs on?
If there is no electricity, then those won't pump either.