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Clearing up facts about electric vehicles

May 9, 2022

I am responding to a letter published in the Cape Gazette on May 3 titled, “Carney’s electric vehicle plan is a pipe dream,” submitted by Edwin Heibsch. In his letter, he pans electric vehicles with a series of facts that are, in fact, just not so.

He writes that, “you must buy special tires for an EV due to the torque the motors deliver” and that, “[t]hose special tires will cost you somewhere around $500 to $800 each!” Not so. I have owned a Tesla Model 3 for four years and 50,000-plus miles. I have replaced the tires once, at 45,000 miles, with new ones costing $200 each.

As for charging electric cars, most owners have installed in-home chargers at their own expense. The savings, over time, more than compensate for the higher prices paid to Tesla or other for-profit companies that install their own stations – at their own expense. The author of the letter cites Bryan Leyland, a consulting engineer from New Zealand. A simple Google search shows him to specialize in developing countries; he has also written extensively in opposition to the concept of global warming. Perhaps not the most qualified consulting engineer on charging stations in U.S. cities. I have, in fact, found chargers all up and down the East Coast, most often in shopping malls and regular gas stations. While some of these may become more crowded with time, charging times per vehicle are falling. Twenty minutes will easily get me over 100 miles.

What goes unstated are the benefits of EVs. Apart from having my tires mounted, my car has never entered a repair shop. The few times a switch needs replacing, Tesla sent their mechanic to me. There is no regular maintenance required, no oil to change or engines to tune. I just get 300 miles on a charge for perhaps $8, while a conventional vehicle getting 20 miles per gallon is spending 20 cents per mile. And the battery life? Mr. Heibsch asserts that they will need replacing every three years. Also not true. EVs can go far more than 100,000 miles before the battery needs replacement; mine is halfway there and holds a charge unchanged from when I first brought it home.

I won’t belabor the reader with more, other than to note that Heibsch thanks members of the International Climate Science Coalition for technical advice. Another simple Google search shows the ICSC to be funded by, among others, Murray Energy, and, through the Heartland Institute, by ExxonMobil.

Peter Zoll
Millsboro

 

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