Why America Isn’t Ready for the EV Takeover

Software glitches, inaccurate range estimates and clunky charging options all limit adoption

By Christopher Mims. Excerpts: 

"The way the Environmental Protection Agency tests electric vehicles can yield results that differ significantly from the actual range of the vehicle under real-world driving conditions, according to a recent paper on the subject"

"All kinds of conditions—from speed to changes in elevation—can have a big impact on how much energy a vehicle uses. In some contexts, like stop-and-go driving in a city, an EV can exceed its rated range. In others, like very cold weather, EVs can suffer a big drop in range—as much as 30%, according to another recent study."

"most drivers don’t learn this until they’ve had significant experience with an EV."

"While America has more fast chargers than ever, for those on road trips, or with longer commutes, the convenience of not having to stop frequently to recharge is neutralized when parking lots, hotels and restaurants don’t have charging stations. 

The Biden administration has committed $7.5 billion to increasing the number of chargers in the U.S."

"These efforts still don’t address the paucity of chargers in places people are already stopping for long stretches."

"EV fans are fond of saying that their vehicles are more reliable, and require less maintenance, than conventional autos, because they have far fewer moving parts. This is true, but they can also be more complicated in terms of the nature and amount of software they contain.

At one point on my trip, the Lucid Air I was driving refused to connect with my iPhone through Apple CarPlay, forcing me to ditch the safer hands-free mode of navigation I’d been relying on, and navigate with Waze on my phone. The only solution I found was restarting the car’s infotainment system—and unlike your phone or laptop, there’s no button to accomplish this. It took me a half-hour of fiddling to figure out that changing user profiles would force the Android Automotive software running on the car to restart, which solved my connectivity issue.

"But wait, how is it that my iPhone was connected to an Android system on this vehicle?

The short answer is that cars have become computers—or really, smartphones—on wheels. This means that some of the computers in our vehicle have become a battleground between Apple, Google and automakers themselves."

"Just as PCs run Windows, Macs run MacOS, and iPhones and Android phones run on iOS and Android, those big displays in new EVs need their own operating systems. Typically, these are separate from the systems in a car that absolutely can’t fail under any circumstances—like the drive-by-wire system that connects the steering wheel to the wheels—but in some ways they’re no less important."

"As Tesla has demonstrated, a car that can gain new abilities with a software update can become more useful over time, just like our phones. But this also opens up new security vulnerabilities, and has exposed the fact that many traditional automakers just aren’t that well equipped to create software for vehicles, says Mohit Sharma, a research analyst at Counterpoint Research who studies the automotive industry."

"when I arrived at a street charging station in Montreal, and discovered that I’d have to download an app and prepay for the electricity I wanted to use. Cell service was dodgy, and I had to find a better signal to download the app. Had I been unable to find a decent signal, I would have been out of luck. (Even once I downloaded the app, the first station I connected to didn’t work—another issue that sometimes comes up at charging stations.)"

"things that should be convenient—payments, reliable chargers—are still beset by the kinds of first-generation design issues that feel like they should have been worked out already."