Confused Dog Head Tilt

Once you have an EV, people inevitably want to talk to you about it.  Your friends, your family, your neighbors and even people you’ve never met.  In general it seems that people are intrigued by EVs, but many also have a bias towards EVs.  It seems to be due to a variety of things – from perception of range, whether an EV would meet their needs, battery replacement costs to the Chevy Volt being the GOP’s whipping boy.  None seem easy to overcome (only real world EV experience or an app like BMW Evolve can likely achieve that), but I do wonder if even us EV proponents are doing EVs a disservice in regards to promoting them.  What???  How could EV proponents be part of the issue?

Most people I’ve talked to are primarily exposed to EVs via the mainstream media - when they’ve approached me, it’s their first time seeing an EV up close or speaking to an owner of an EV.  These conversations have led me to believe that the way we present information isn’t helping the EV cause.  After the routine questions about range, battery replacement cost and the now prevalent ‘will it catch fire following an accident’, cost to drive is usually where the conversation leads.  And this is where I think we have a problem.  Finding common ground to discuss cost isn’t always easy.  MPG comparisons are difficult because most folks don’t understand MPG for an EV that doesn’t use gas.  While it’s not an industry standard, cost per mile is another of the typical means for comparison.  It hasn’t taken me long to come to the conclusion that quoting costs in $/mile confuses the heck out of your average person.  It seems straightforward enough, but somehow it just doesn’t resonate with most folks.

I’ve found that the cost question typically boils down to “How much does it cost to run compared to a ‘regular’ car?”.  Initially my answer had been ‘it depends’.  The factors are the mpg of that ‘regular car’, gasoline costs as well as the cost your utility company charges you per kWh.  On average you can expect it to cost anywhere from $0.10-0.20 per mile at current gas prices, while EVs typically cost $0.03-0.08 per mile depending on your utility rate and the efficiency of the EV and its driver.  And the reaction I get?  You know that look the dog gives you when it doesn’t understand what you just said?  This Confused Dog Head Tilt (CDHT) is usually followed by the statement, “Gee, it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of savings there.  I thought EVs were supposed to be cheaper to operate.”  It’s a damn good thing I wasn’t just handing people the DOE’s Comparing Energy Costs document – it could have turned into a scene from David Cronenberg’s Scanners.

I’ve seen the CDHT enough to know that I needed to change my approach to convey the point that EVs are cheaper to operate.  Today I’ve simplified my answer to something that at least seems like it’s resonating, and better conveys the operational cost savings.  My response is now, “My ActiveE has a typical range of 100 miles and it takes 28 kWh of energy to charge the batteries.  Since my utility company charges $0.14 per kW it generally costs <$4 to go 100 miles.  My previous vehicle got 20 mpg so it currently costs $4.23 x 5 or ~$21 to go the same 100 miles.”  A $17 savings per 100 miles seems to get people’s attention a whole lot better than 'you’ll save $0.02-0.17 per mile'.

With all the bias against EVs, it seems to me that we proponents need to be able to tout the benefits of the EV in ways that most people can identify with and that helps overcome their media induced perceptions of EVs – otherwise all we’re left with is the CDHT and a world full of ICE.