People Who Say "F*** Electric Cars" Need To Grow Up And Move On
I’ll speak for everyone here and say that many of us have grown up with the phrase ‘Suck, Squeeze, Bang, Blow’ ringing in our ears. But these four cyles of an internal combustion engine are not the only four pillars on which we have built our love of cars. Freedom, speed, power, aesthetics, emotional attachment and learning new skills also play a big part, so why is it that some people are still hell bent on damning anything battery-powered?
The reason I ask this question is because I drove a Porsche Taycan Turbo S yesterday for a video you’ll see on the channel later this month. After a day behind the wheel, my overriding thought was ‘great, now everything else I drive will feel ruined’.
The reason for that is because the Porsche is astonishing in every conceivable way. For starters, I have never felt acceleration like it and neither had any of the guys on the shoot yesterday - it’s not a fast car, it’s time travel.
Videographer / Presenter Jack even went so far as to say “this has to be the ultimate car”, and that’s from a guy who owns a BMW E36 328i Coupe, E39 530d and Mazda MX-5 Turbo project car. I, meanwhile, can’t argue with his sentiment either (except for the fact that I could buy 150,000 £1 Volvos (a car I currently have on my driveway for the same outlay).
Anyway, I liked the Taycan so much, I even gushed over it on Instagram, after which a few of those comments starting pouring in. ‘Fk EVs’, ‘Too bad it’s electric’ and ‘Electric piece of shit’ were some of what I’ve read and the reason for my rant because:
- People who say ‘F* EVs’ clearly have no experience with them and presumably no driving licenses.
- ‘Too bad it’s electric’ makes absolutely no sense because if it wasn’t electric it wouldn’t tear your face off with every pull.
- ‘Electric piece of sh**’ might have been true 20 years ago, but EVs are now truly viable as one-size-fits-all cars because of +300-mile range models we’re seeing, great driving dynamics and a charging infrastructure that’s expanding at a rate of knots.
So to the people who moan and cry about electric cars, grow up and move on, because you’re making yourself look like an idiot (as I’m sure I have in the past when I was openly skeptical). Also, if you’ve got no experience of something (and I’m guessing all of the naysayers mentioned above don’t), then what qualifies you to bad mouth an EV, especially one as exciting and compelling as the Taycan?
Perhaps once lockdown is lifted, I’ll have to contact a few people, borrow the car again and see if I can change a few minds. I’m sure once they’ve realised they need a change of pants after 2.8-second 0-62mph launch control pulls they’ll come round to my way of thinking.
But until that day, what say you? Are you with me on this, or are you of the mind set that anything EV is automatically a POS?
Comments
I think a lot of people who hate on EVs are the same people who think the old school supra can beat anything at everything. which just isn’t true with out spending 10,000s on them.
I haven’t had a chance to experience an EV myself but if I had the money I would probably buy one in the next few years.
Eh, it’s just anti-change keyboard warriors. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll always love V10s and stuff because the noise and sensation of driving them is incredible. But EVs are incredible in their own way. That Turbo S is the first car to genuinely scare me as a driver. You know what’s coming and it still makes you clench.
And in everyday life, I’d rather have a quiet EV with punchy acceleration than another boring petrol with no torque and a crap sound.
Preserve the best combustion engines and embrace the future of electric. You can have both.
(Obviously there are questions to answer on infrastructure and how green the electricity is etc but talking purely as a car enthusiast above.)
No, we don’t. To me, having a clutch pedal is critical.
For the vast majority of people who are fine without one, though, your point makes perfect sense.
EVs are fun, yeah. But still nothing compares to an aspirated engine.
In an EV you have that burst of instant torque, but it drops quite quickly and it’s very noticeable. Quite uncomfortable too. Maybe, 400, 600, 800HP EVs don’t feel that way, but stuff around 200HP and lower aren’t that great. They are still fun and you can drift the i3S and iD.3, but yeah… The torque drop is very noticeable.
Instead, in an aspirated car, you have that little torque ramp at the begening, then constant torque all throughout the rev range (if it’s well optimized, ofc, and has no tq dips).
While an aspirated car feels like it wants to give more, accelerate and go harder, better, faster, stronger, an EV on the other hand just flattens out after 60-80kmh. flooring the “gas” pedal does nothing because it’s already digging a hole through the floor.
There’s some things normal ICEs has that EVs didn’t have (at least for now), ease of maintenance and tunability (like torque/horsepower upgrades).
But I also think that someday, at least in the next 15 years perhaps, some passionate EV car designers are going to find the way to put the DIY goodness into these “EV S___boxes”, or in other words, designing some kind of electric powertrain mechanism that is/are easy to fix/maintain and easy to tune by commoners or third party mechanics. For now, people didn’t like the current concept of EVs for being too complicated to be maintained or be worked (like “you have to disassemble the whole Taycan / Tesla to maintain the motor yourself” kind of excuse), maybe a long while later the EV motors are designed in a way that DIY maintenance/tuning is possible just like the current/past ICE cars did.
I think in the moment it’s like we have to live the early days of motorized carriages in 1890s, 1900s, 1910s 1920s and 1930s where most cars are large and rather seemingly hard to maintain, the only people who knows how to build engines (or powertrains in the current vocabulary) with high powers are people who build/design race cars for legitimate motorsports events of the time (mostly for bigtime car manufacturers of the time, not 3rd party racecar builders, hotrodders or tuners as we know today), hotrodding and tuning were completely on the uncharted area. But then, as the technology of the ICE grows, so as the mechanical know-how of the engineers and designers, as well as the ICEs has gone more simple over the years and people learned how to maintain the car themselves, as well as how to tune them. To me, the same thing might gonna happen with EVs, when the EV technology develops as well as the know-how surrounding the EVs, people who design EVs might want to design an electric motor that shares the ease-of-maintenance and tune-ability characteristics of a current ICE car. This might happen, we may never know.
I don‘t hate EVs. I just wouldn’t buy one. And the reason is the same why a g-wagon driver wouldn‘t buy an aston martin dbx. Personal preferences
Having driven them…
They may be fast but they dont ‘’feel’’ fast
They have no sound so become monotonous on longer journeys
You cannot upgrade or modify them performance wise, especially on the cheap
There are no manuals so it feels like a bumper car
They are overpriced for what they are
They are just as bad if not worse for the environment than many petrol or hybrid cars
They take too long to charge and have a small range
You cannot work on them yourself, and small garages will be put out of business
Tesla for example make sure nobody can get parts unless they go to tesla dealers (going against right to repair)
They aren’t exciting to see or drive
They are not built to last
In terms of the Taycan why call it a turbo?
The only good thing I can see is the instant torque and acceleration, which can easily get boring very quickly (And does)
April fool’s a month to early, Alex?
Electric cars offer zero driving pleasure to real car people. Acceleration means nothing.
The sound of the petrol engine, the sound of the exhaust. The feel of the power developing with the revs. The manual transmission, shifting of the gears. The rev matching, the heel and toe. The delicate control of the clutch, making the engine to deliver the power to the wheel exactly how you want… Nothing can replace that.
I will drive a petrol manual car until the day I die. I would rather drive a 50 year old petrol manual (like they do in Cuba) than any electric car (no matter how much faster and better it is).
How many of us actually can afford the good EV? The majority of us can only afford the sh!t EV that has been trending and shoving down our throats. I don’t hate EV but they are still not affordable/reasonably priced.
I do agree that a good/decent EV car like the Taycan is a very relevant car and I wouldn’t mind driving it.
But be realistic at your “not-bottomless” wallet, for the same amount of money spent for any EV, there is almost always exist a very-very good equivalent value ICE.
Even in your example here, locally just within the Porsche line-up. I’d rather pick up a GT3 over a Taycan Turbo, for the same dollar. The Taycan is better, but its value is very minimalist compare to the GT3.
Look at the trend, you already start seeing “Cell Phone Reviewers” reviewing EVs. That speaks enough how special EVs are… just like cell phones; they are disposable appliances.