Are EV's just going to win?

A response to Noahpinion

If you are of a certain age, you know about the battle between Betamax and VHS video tapes. Betamax provided a better picture and sound with a smaller tape. VHS was cheaper and could record up to 4 hours compared to 1-2 hours with Betamax. Which was the superior technology? This depends on your priorities. In the end, VHS won despite poorer picture quality. Cheaper and longer record times basically won out. Digital eventually took the place of the video tape.

I was immediately skeptical when Noahpinion posted EVs are just going to win: Because they're a superior technology, and superior technologies win. (10/20/2024) What constitutes superior technology isn’t always so clear, so he must have a great argument. Not so much. He makes points about convenience, less maintenance, faster acceleration, and being quiet. I’ll make some comments on these but first let’s focus on this:

Very few Americans drive their cars for more than 100 miles a day! The number is less than 1%. In fact, the average miles driven per day is around 40. Which means that as an EV owner, on all those days when you don’t drive over 100 miles, you will never have to visit a charging station at all, any more than you now visit charging stations for your phone.

The first article he references is a 2013 study, and yes, it showed that the average miles per day is around 40. I take this as a true statement today even though the study is over 10 years old. The second reference has this to say:

Only 0.8% of average daily trips in the US in November 2021 were of 100 or more miles in distance, according to data from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Again, I take this as fact, and I’ll use data from the same Department of Transportation source below. Both of these quotes miss the point. Here is the second sentence of the second source (bold mine):

And less than 0.1% of average trips were of 500 or more miles of range, which makes sense as that translates to only 1 out of 1,000 daily trips in essence being categorized as a “road trip” — something most US drivers only do a few times per year.

I would say Noahpinion is using a mean when he should really be using a maximum. In other words, do you buy a car to take care of your average daily trip, or do you buy a car to cover all of your trips? Do people really want to rent a car every time they want to take a longer trip ““a few times per year”? I don’t think so.

Let’s put some of this in perspective using the U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The data is Trips by Distance—National. The data is collected by tracking phones. A trip is defined as

. . . movements that include a stay of longer than 10 minutes at an anonymized location away from home. Home locations are imputed on a weekly basis. A movement with multiple stays of longer than 10 minutes before returning home is counted as multiple trips. Trips capture travel by all modes of transportation. including driving, rail, transit, and air.

Overall, the data estimates all trips of different lengths. The data is for years starting in 2019, but I only used 2021-2023 due to the influence of COVID. Let’s go to the data.

Figure 1 is the number of trips under 10 miles each month. The data shows us coming out of COVID with the increase of these shorter trips in 2021. That alone is interesting. In all graphs, we will see more trips in 2023 than in the previous two years, and I don’t have an explanation for that. In Figure 1, there is some variation by month but not a lot. We take a lot of these shorter trips—up to 35 billion of them. EVs are fine for these trips, but so is an electric bike, so maybe we should argue for them?

Figure 1. Data from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics

Now let’s jump to trips that are getting a bit long for EVs in Figure 2. Note that since months have different days, I normalized the total to 30 days for each month by first averaging the daily trip count and then multiplying by 30. Just so each month gets a fair comparison.

First note the magnitude here is much smaller, under a half a billion trips compared to the up to 35 billion in Figure 1. Still, there are a lot of trips that EV’s aren’t well designed for. Notice that the peak month is July, which we would expect as the most common road trip month. This can’t be solved with rental cars. If everyone owned an EV, most of these trips would need a rented ICE car or some other means of travel. I say most, since some of these trips are by other means. But we don’t take too many air flights under 250 miles, while we also have a limited train and bus system. Do we really think that Americans are going to easily give up there ICE car and take a bus when they want to vacation or visit relatives? I don’t think so.

The next two Figures, 3 and 4, are trips of longer distances. For Figure 3, we again see a peak in July for all years, and the 250-500 mile range is still likely to be mostly by car and not air. In Figure 4, we don’t have a peak in July for 2023. This is interesting, and I don’t have an explanation. In both graphs, we have fewer trips than the previous graphs but still on the order of 65 million and 45 million trips per month, respectively.

Figure 3. Data from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics

Figure 4. Data from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics

The point here is that each month there are millions of trips that aren’t suitable for EVs. It is a small percentage of overall trips but still a large number. This makes the average trip small, but the distribution of trips for any individual is likely skewed right, with a maximum trip not suitable for an EV.

In other words, EVs aren’t the superior technology for individuals that take a long trip or two a year. EVs aren’t just going to win out here. In fact, it makes sense, for example, for a couple that owns two cars to have at least one ICE car. For individuals, it depends on their travel habits. I don’t see how EVs just win out.

There is a lot we don’t know here. Ideally, I’d want data that gives me a distribution of trip length for each person each year. If I can’t get that, I’d like to know at least the maximum trip length. The data presented here provides some insight, and Noahpinion's average is at best misleading. We really need to know the answer to the question of how many people don’t ever need an ICE car and how often do the rest need (or would prefer) an ICE for a longer trip.

Let’s look at some of the other arguments in “favor” of EVs being superior.

Convenience The main argument here is that you will never have to fill up your car as you will charge it at night. Unless, of course, the power goes out or you forget. A bigger problem is cold, as EV owners in Chicago found out last January. If you do have to “fill up” during the day, you’ll need to stop somewhere for 30-60 minutes.

Consider this: suppose everyone you see filling up at a gas station on a highway has an EV. A gas car takes 5 minutes to refuel. If we are generous, we need 30 minutes for an EV. So, multiply the number of “pumps” by 12 or more realistically by 24. That’s a lot of electricity that needs to be supplied to a lot of chargers that need more space. EVs have plusses but also minuses, if we are honest, and scaling up is not inevitable.

Less maintenance Fair enough here. They are simpler and take less maintenance. But modern ICE cars aren’t that bad, and so I’m not sure how much this will influence people. But I do know that all you need is enough “horror” stories of expensive repairs to turn people off, and if something goes wrong with the battery, it is expensive to replace.

Faster acceleration and quiet Again true, but will this matter?

Now for a big downside. They still cost more and require more money upfront. They are still highly subsidized and Robert Bryce keeps pointing out that Ford continues to lose money on EVs. Most recently, in his post, Ford Lost Another $1.2 Billion in 3Q On EVs. (10/28/202) This turns out to be over $58,000 lost per EV sold.

In the IEA’s 2024 EV global outlook, they note this (bold mine)

In 2023, upfront retail prices for electric cars were generally higher than for their ICE equivalents, which increased their TCO in relative terms. On the upside, higher fuel efficiency and lower maintenance costs enable fuel cost savings for electric cars, lowering their TCO. This is especially true in periods when fuel prices are high, in places where electricity prices are not too closely correlated to fossil fuel prices. Depreciation is also a major factor in determining TCO: As a car ages, it loses value, and depreciation for electric cars tends to be faster than for ICE equivalents, further increasing their TCO. Accelerated depreciation could, however, prove beneficial for the development of second-hand markets.

EVs are more expensive to buy and depreciate faster (most likely due to the battery). Further, they are more expensive to insure. Here is what Progressive says:

Insurance costs for EVs and hybrid cars can be higher than for internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles largely because they can be more expensive to repair and replace. For example, a new EV battery ranges between $4,000 and $20,000 depending on the make and model of your EV, compared to $100-200 for an ICE car battery. If the battery of an EV is damaged in an accident, that's a significantly more expensive replacement cost.

In the end, the total cost of ownership (TCO) for an EV isn’t clearly better, and that is with subsidies. Further, the high up-front cost is difficult for the average consumer.

In the end, fossil fuels are finite, so ICE cars will lose eventually, but when that is isn’t clear. Meanwhile, EVs are a long way off from winning, whatever that means. If costs come down enough and culture changes, there is a place for them. But we are far away from even half the cars on the road being EVs. I addressed the EV hype in the post EV growth hype vs reality (7/16/2024). Noahpinion’s piece is more propaganda than a meaningful analysis. Personally, I don’t think this helps the world, as it is a one-sided piece without any nuance or caveats, but maybe that is what his readers want.

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Comments

Please point out if you think something was expressed wrongly or misinterpreted. I'd rather know the truth and understand the world than be correct. I welcome comments and disagreement. We should all be forced to express our opinions and change our minds, but we should also know how to respectfully disagree and move on. Send me article ideas, feedback, or other thoughts at briefedbydata@substack.com.

Bio

I am a tenured mathematics professor at Ithaca College (PhD Math: Stochastic Processes, MS Applied Statistics, MS Math, BS Math, BS Exercise Science), and I consider myself an accidental academic (opinions are my own). I'm a gardener, drummer, rower, runner, inline skater, 46er, and R user. I’ve written the textbooks R for College Mathematics and Statistics and Applied Calculus with R. I welcome any collaborations.