We got our first EV (pictured), and while we were out on a Boston Harbor booze cruise celebrating a couple’s fiftieth birthdays (yes, you can go back to your twenties, but trust me, you don’t want to), I struck up a conversation with another guest who told me a long list of reasons why EVs are so terrible. It turned out that his reasoning was based entirely on misinformation from fossil fuel companies that he had encountered while web surfing. As a longtime proponent of EVs due to their efficiency, simplicity, and lower environmental impact, and now an owner, I’d like to set the record straight for anyone else who is considering one.

First, let me get past how much fun our EV is to drive. It is an entirely different experience from our gas cars, and I mean that in every good way possible. Our EV is to our gas cars like what an iPhone is to coffee cans connected by string (okay, maybe more like an old rotary phone with no call-waiting). The acceleration is unreal, the driving is so smooth, and the car is loaded with technology. Interior functions are voice-activated. We can set the interior temperature in the car before going somewhere using an app on our phones. We no longer have to plug addresses into a map; we just ask the car to plot the best course to a destination. A video screen puts the maps in our line of sight, eliminating the need to look at a phone stuck in a holder. There’s never a need to stop for gas or maintenance. One-pedal driving (one of two driving modes) means we rarely ever need to use the brakes. And did I mention the acceleration? It’s like being on a roller coaster dropping into a free fall.

But let’s talk about the misinformation. The first negative thing the partygoer mentioned was the pollution from the tires. This one always makes me laugh (and cry). Tires have been on cars since 1888, cars have been generating millions of tons of microplastic pollution from tire wear annually for decades, and this is suddenly an EV problem? While early EVs did wear down tires faster than gas cars due to their weight (and probably from people having too much fun driving them), tire manufacturers have reformulated passenger vehicle tires for EVs so they have a harder compound. In other words, they are now no worse than gas cars.

Another bit of misinformation is the risk of fire. EVs catch fire at far lower rates than gasoline cars. Gas cars are 60 times more likely to catch fire than an EV (1,500 fires per 100K gas cars vs. 25 per 100K EVs, 2022 data). The issue with EV fires has to do with the difficulty in putting them out. But battery technology is improving all the time; this problem will soon be a thing of the past.

My new friend also mentioned that charging a car is more polluting since the electricity comes from the grid. This is also not true. Gas cars are extremely inefficient (only 25% of the energy in gasoline moves the car vs. 90% of the energy in an EV battery). And the energy required to generate and deliver electricity through the grid is far less than the energy needed to get oil out of the ground, refine it, and transport it to local gas stations. On top of that, we buy 100% renewable energy for our home. While the electricity we get comes from the grid and is technically the same mix as the sources for the entire grid, our purchase of 100% renewable drives demand for that form of energy, which creates incentives to build more renewable power sources, lowers costs, and leads to the shutdown of power generators that are not as economically feasible, such as coal plants. (No, it’s not Crooked Joe Biden’s fault that coal plants are shutting down; it’s that it’s too expensive, relatively speaking, to blow the top off a mountain, load the coal into trucks, drive it to a train, carry it to a coal plant, burn it, try to capture some of the mercury pollution released, and find a place to put the ash that doesn’t kill fish or wildlife or contaminate nearby drinking water. Compare that to a solar energy plant, which involves setting up a few rows of panels and running a thick wire.)

And finally, range anxiety. There are loads of scary stories out there about the lack of public charging infrastructure and those chargers that are out there being in a poor state of repair. I agree that there is a woeful lack of infrastructure (our town only has six public chargers, and two are broken). But the answer is to install a charger at home. Like many people, 99.9% of our trips are less than 10 miles. Our EV can go 220 miles per charge. We only need to charge our car once a week, and it only takes about 6 hours, so we do it overnight. If we ever do need to use a public charger, our car will tell us exactly where the functioning ones are and whether they are free or occupied. But with this car, I’m not sure we’ll ever need to use one.

That’s our EV story. If you are considering an EV, do yourself a favor: get off of social media and just take one for a drive.