I feel a need to state the obvious here - EV's are still in the "early adopters" phase. "Mass produced" modern EV's as we know them today only really started in 2011 with the Leaf. (2010 if you count the i-Miev which was produced in small numbers) That's less than a decade. To put that into perspective when I moved to the UK in 2009 EV's really weren't a thing at the time and it has all happened since then.
Depending on your usage requirements they are not currently a direct substitute for petrol or diesel cars, at least not as an only car. Switching to an EV is not like switching between petrol and diesel, it is a significantly different mindset and way of doing things.
They currently cost more up front (at least new) have shorter range and take longer to fuel than petrol/diesel cars. The public charging infrastructure is still very immature. There are lots of charging locations but there are not enough chargers per site, and they are not nearly as reliable or user friendly as they should be. There is too much fragmentation between different networks and too many networks wanting you to treat their chargers as a loyalty scheme with a membership card instead of just offering contactless payment. Heaters on EV's use power and reduce range in winter while heating on ICE vehicles is "free" due to the engine throwing away so much waste heat. Batteries on EV's do degrade and lose range over time and are also the most expensive part of the car by far, at least at the moment.
But EV's have their advantages too, even now, otherwise nobody would buy them. If you have a driveway and can install a charger and drive within the range of the car you may never need to visit a service station again - you can have a full "tank" every morning if you like, and at less than 1/4th of the cost of diesel per mile.
Aside from no tailpipe emissions and no worries about a failed emissions test, they have very low (almost no) maintenance requirements - regular maintenance for most EV's is pretty much just wiper blades, screen wash, tyres and pollen filter. Eventually at a higher mileage brake discs/pads will need doing, suspension joints/shock absorbers etc.
But none of the regular maintenance and repairs associated with an ICE engine, gearbox or exhaust system. No turbos to blow. No EGR system. No expensive catalytic converters, no DPF to block up, no exhausts to rot away and need replacing, no oil, filter and coolant changes, no emissions systems like Adblue, no spark plugs, no leaky diesel injectors, no timing or auxillary belt to snap or replace, no head gasket to blow, no power steering rack to spring a leak, (all EV's use electric power steering) no clutch to wear out and need replacing, no highly complex automatic gearbox with a limited life span which is very expensive to overhaul and so on. There is a long list of things which go wrong on ICE cars that we all take for granted that simply don't exist or have an analogue on an EV.
The motor has one moving part - a rotor with a couple of bearings supporting it. The gearbox is a simple single speed reduction - usually consisting of an input and output gear with an idler gear in between them, followed by a normal differential. No mechanism to support changing gear ratios, no clutch. A gear isn't even needed for reverse - the motor just spins backwards! The motor and gearbox in most EV's is maintenance free and bullet proof and almost never fails even at very high mileages.
While the heater in an EV uses power, a heat pump reduces the power required greatly, and you have the advantage that you can "pre-heat" the car while still plugged in (no more scraping ice in the mornings, just jump into a defrosted toasty warm car) and can also run the heater or AC while you're parked waiting for someone without "idling" an engine. (you can stay warm or cool in no-idling areas with little noise and no emissions...)
BEV's are in general, much nicer and more relaxing to drive than their ICE counterparts especially in commuting traffic. Maybe not as "exciting" and viceral if you like the roar of a combustion engine, but super smooth, extremely responsive to the throttle and very quiet, even in something as common as a Nissan Leaf. There is no doubt that my Leaf is a much quieter car than the Xanita, and has a much smoother drivetrain. (The Xantia handily beats it on ride smoothness however)
While I still enjoy driving the V6 petrol, I also enjoy the smooth responsive, effortless torque of an electric motor, even on the relatively modest 80kW motor in the Leaf. I certainly don't enjoy driving a small 1.3 litre 3 cylinder turbo petrol, nor do I enjoy driving a Diesel. While there are some fine examples of higher performance combustion engines that are fun to drive the reality is that most people drive diesel or small petrol engines that are not fun to drive - they're noisy, they vibrate a lot, (especially 3 cylinders) they have grabby clutches that are hard to master and easy to stall, they just don't sound nice like a V6 etc... The loaner 208 I've had from Peugeot a couple of times was a nice enough car hobbled by a horrible gutless noisy motor and rough gearbox, these are the kinds of cars a lot of people drive and for them, the effortless smooth torque of an EV would be a true revelation. The low to mid performance versions of the 208 are not even in the same league as a bog standard Leaf in refinement, smoothness, effortless torque and quietness.
A lot of people who start driving EV's find it difficult to switch back, and I put myself in that category. I will keep my Xantia for as long as I can and enjoy its lovely V6 engine and sublime ride and handling, but it will be a weekend and occasional use car, while the Leaf will be the daily driver. And I can't imagine going back to having no EV at all. When it was time for the Ion to go it was not a matter of wheter I replaced it with another EV, just what kind of EV.
EV's have their limitations at the moment but things are improving by the day. New prices will come down, (demand exceeding supply is keeping them artificially high at the moment) range is steadily going up, such that something like a Kia e-Niro can do a genuine 250-300 miles with ease, charging speeds are getting faster so charging times are going down, (150kW chargers are starting to go in where 50kW was the norm before) battery longevity is improving due to increased battery size and active cooling, (many hundreds of thousands of miles are possible with the latest batteries) batteries are getting smaller, cheaper and lighter, and have already improved by a factor of 5 in the last 10 years, and with batteries being an area of intense research it will continue to improve.
The public charging situation is a bit of a mess at the moment but it will sort itself out. In a few years chargers will all be accessible with contactless payment, will be in clusters, will be faster, more reliable and easier to use. To the point where you just wave a debit card at the machine and put the plug in the car - which is exactly how Instavolt already is today. And if you have home charging you would only use the public charging network occasionally on long trips anyway and do the majority of your charging overnight at home when you're tucked up in bed as I do.
Performance is going up and up - even the Kia - not a brand you associate with high performance is offering 150kW and 395Nm of torque on what is a small family crossover SUV not much larger than a Leaf - it's faster in a straight line than the Xantia V6 - a lot faster... and lets not even mention Tesla, who don't make any slow cars.
If you extrapolate the trends it's not too many years away until nearly all the current shortcomings of EV's and the infrastructure around them are addressed and the question then becomes trying to justify why a car purchase should be an ICE instead of an EV...
For those who can charge at home and have modest range requirements, such as me, even a 2nd hand EV like the Leaf can do 95% of all my driving, with minimal if any inconvenience and many benefits. For those with more demanding needs its only a matter of when, not if, EV's can meet those needs.
