Five aspects of owning an EV that will change your life

“I don’t want the world to change; I like the way it is…”
– Bernard Sumner, lead singer for New Order

These words hold true for many of us. We do resist change, which is a problem in a world that is trying to reduce the devastating impact of a climate in crisis.

Buying more electric cars will help effect change for the better, but convincing consumers to stump up the cash for an EV is a tough task for the car companies of the world. Tell buyers they’re doing their bit to reduce an impending global climate disaster. Sure. Tell them that the purchase price of an EV is offset by much lower running costs. Also true. But are those two arguments enough?

What other reasons are there to buy an EV?

One of the hidden benefits of paying through the nose for an EV is the additional features offsetting the purchase price. These are inducements to buy when saving the world and streamlining the household budget aren’t enough. Some extras are pretty obvious, Tesla’s full-length UV-resistant glass roof being one example.

Your EV may come with a larger infotainment screen in a portrait format, a plethora of active safety features and wireless phone mirroring – to name just a few of the items that may encourage consumers to sign the dotted line. However, some not-so-obvious features may include exotic materials in the car’s construction, optimal weight distribution with the battery spread across the car’s floorpan, or better rear-seat accommodation relative to external dimensions.

Hybrid technology is extending the viable life of combustion engines into the future, possibly for decades to come. Every new generation of a volume-selling combustion-engined car brings with it significant powertrain tweaks.

That doesn’t happen with EVs, however. Electric motors are already at the peak of their development curve. A new EV may offer more comfort and convenience features, along with improved safety – and even a markedly new form of battery technology. But the motor of a new EV will typically only offer an incremental improvement on its predecessor. There’s no need to sell your EV in three to four years because the latest model won’t be much more efficient. Can you live without wireless CarPlay/Android Auto, level three autonomous motoring or recharging the battery fully in under 11 minutes? If so, you can hold on to the old banger ('old sparky’?) until it’s falling apart around you.

A decade from now, we’ll no doubt drive everywhere with the right foot nailed to the floor. Batteries will recharge from zilch to 100 per cent in 10 minutes while we’re inside the convenience store nuking a pie, grabbing a drink, and standing in a queue to pay for the whole lot.

Presently, however, range anxiety influences how we drive. EV drivers may reach their destination, only to find the public chargers aren’t working, or Tesla owners are hogging all of them. Driving an EV demands forward planning and driving for efficiency. Owning an EV becomes its own education program. EV drivers quickly learn to maintain longer braking distances and to coast up to traffic lights, anticipating the light ahead changing to green before the car has to come to a stop. Drivers also learn to slipstream behind trucks on freeways. And they fully exploit brake-energy recovery on steeper hills. EV owners should savour this moment in history because this is perhaps the last decade drivers will be so conversant with how their car’s motive power system operates.

Even a humble EV produces torque to shame a V8-engined passenger car. And the performance of an electric motor (or motors, plural) is easily tapped for effortless acceleration. EVs are easier to drive than internal combustion cars, and they take all the trepidation out of driving in traffic. No turbo lag, no kickdown, no peaky power delivery – just immediately exploitable torque. Ease of use and flexible performance build confidence in a driver. A confident driver – not an overconfident driver – is a safer, more relaxed driver. And our road network could surely do with more drivers like that.

Even the quietest internal combustion car cannot compare with a typical EV for suppression of powertrain noise. The benefit of the EV’s quieter drive system is mostly lost to tyre noise on country roads, but on freeways and urban roads, the EV reigns supreme for quiet motoring.

There is a downside of course; taking your kids and their friends to a Taylor Swift concert, you may prefer the tyre noise over the high-pitched excitability from the rear seats.

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