From “the things we already knew” file, Consumer Reports has found that “Electric vehicle owners continue to report far more problems with their vehicles than owners of conventional cars or hybrids, according to their newly released annual car reliability survey.”
The survey reveals that, on average, EVs from the past three model years had 79 percent more problems than conventional cars. Based on owner responses on more than 330,000 vehicles, the survey covers 20 potential problem areas, including engine, transmission, electric motors, leaks, and infotainment systems.
“Most electric cars today are being manufactured by either legacy automakers that are new to EV technology, or by companies like Rivian that are new to making cars,” says Jake Fisher, senior director of auto testing at Consumer Reports. “It’s not surprising that they’re having growing pains and need some time to work out the bugs.” Fisher says some of the most common problems EV owners report are issues with electric drive motors, charging, and EV batteries.
Consumer Reports is, for the record, focused on the vehicles themselves and notes that owners did not report issues with home chargers but the cars and their batteries. Nor was it their mission or perhaps even their remit to get lost on the esoteric issues like lifetime emissions reductions that fail to account for the electric source or the vehicle’s beginning or end of life.
EVs are not great for the Environment.
We won’t revisit those here, but you can sift the 240-plus far-from-flattering articles we’ve published on EVs if a trip down memory lane suits you.
Hybrids came out as the winners in this report. Owners reported fewer problems than their combustion-only equivalents. I’m not advocating any vehicle with a lithium battery fire-trap in it, but the transportation transition folks should have stuck with those. Hybrids cost less to make than EVs, augment existing technology, and even manage to get better gas mileage than their gas-only counterparts. Not all. Not all the time. Some fuel-powered vehicles get outstanding mileage without any risks to the planet or the owner associated with a lithium power pack of that size.
I drive a Honda that can get 50+ MPG on the highway, and others do that and better, though they are much smaller, lighter, and offer much less protection in a collision. You can’t tow or haul with them, and that might have been an excellent place to do a Hybrid instead of an EV. Trucks. EV trucks are little more than a virtue signal driveway ornament for people who want to drive a truck but don’t need one. A Hybrid pickup is more practical as a transition innovation, but none of that mattered to the politicians and activists, and we know why.
They aren’t trying to get us all to drive EVs. They are trying to get us all riding bikes or public transport. Car makers only ventured down this path because of government-enforced fleet range mandates and financial incentives. But at the end of the day, the dealer has to manage the unruly customer, reliability issues, and the real problem of working on damaged EVs, which are an enormous fire risk and whose repair costs a small fortune.
One positive outcome, we can hope, is that people who were not paying attention but who read consumer reports (and who might be herded into thinking an EV was a good idea) will avoid EVs altogether. That market is already soft as startups collapse, investment in EV technology wanes, and legacy car makers announce a shift toward more conventional combustion vehicles.
They should leave the market to TESLA and work on improving mileage and emissions technology. It might also be in their best interest, especially the auto workers and their unions, to stop voting for Democrats. They want to end the car industry, and the sooner you work that out and vote for someone else, the longer you’ll get to keep your good-paying American job.
