The Benefits and Drawbacks of Electric Cars: A Personal Perspective

As I'm standing here with this BMW, I want to share my experience with electric cars and their batteries. This car comes with a charger, but it's a level one charger, which means it can only charge the tiny battery that powers the vehicle for about 70 miles. When you open the charger up, you'll plug in your car and wait for it to take around 10 hours to fully charge. However, if you have a larger battery, such as twice the size of this one, it could take 20 hours to charge.

I recently purchased an Autel level two charger that costs $455. I was lucky because the previous owner had already installed a 220-volt receptacle in their house for me. This allowed me to plug in my car and charge it quickly. However, I understand that not everyone has this luxury. The main problem is that you need to know where your power supply is coming from and how far out you have to move the charger to make it work. In some cases, it may require tearing apart the house, which can be expensive.

I'm not sure about the long-term viability of electric cars, but I do think they're an interesting option for people who want to reduce their carbon footprint. The bigger the battery, the more it weighs and takes longer to charge up. For example, a Tesla battery is five times the size of this one's battery, which would take around 5 days to fully charge with a 110-volt charger. Even with a level two charger, it could take 8 hours to fully charge.

Despite the challenges, I think electric cars are worth considering. If you lease an electric vehicle instead of buying it, you'll have more flexibility and can avoid the upfront cost of purchasing the car. Additionally, leasing allows you to try out the technology without committing to a purchase. However, if you do decide to buy an electric car, be aware that the technology is not yet fully developed and may not be economically viable.

In my experience, it's also important to consider the infrastructure for charging electric cars. Our electrical grid system is in disarray, and we don't have enough transformers to handle the power demand of widespread adoption. This means that you'll need to install a level two charger in your house, which can be expensive. The cost of installation varies depending on the location and the complexity of the job.

I recently spoke with a businessman who was renting a Tesla at his home. He told me that he wasn't willing to buy an electric car because he didn't want to deal with the maintenance costs. However, if you lease an electric vehicle, you can avoid these costs altogether. Leasing allows you to use the technology without committing to a purchase, which is especially appealing for people who don't want to fix something that's new.

Overall, electric cars are still in their infancy, and there are many challenges to overcome before they become a viable option for widespread adoption. However, if you're interested in reducing your carbon footprint or trying out new technology, leasing an electric vehicle might be worth considering.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enrev up your engin there's a lot of myths about electric cars out there so today I'm going to tell you the truth about electric cars and their batteries I don't build them I don't buy them I don't break them but I do fix them so here's the absolute truth about electric vehicles so you can make a wise choice yourself now you notice I said batteries not batteries because as you look under This Hood this is the frunk the front trunk of an electric BMW and if you take the stupid plastic piece off that's a regular car battery needless to say that tiny car battery does not drive the car the bigger battery that's inside under the seats does not directly operate the car when you start it up the engineers see that voltage is too high too dangerous so all electric cars I've ever seen have a regular small car battery and what it does is when you turn the key on to start it you push the start stop button you'll see it says ready now and what's happening is this the 12vt battery sending signals to various relays computer modules to check to see that everything is okay then it activates the circuitry so the large battery inside the car can now Drive the vehicle so just like a regular gasoline car it's got a regular car batter and if it goes bad does what the electric car won't work you still got a regular battery that you got to check every once in a while now granted that's the cheap battery right that's a regular car type battery un like every other normal car battery they're only good for maybe 3 four years you got to check them and replace them so it's real important if you got an electric car to test his battery every once in a while because if it's going out you want to change it sooner than later you don't want to get stranded somewhere now since these electric cars don't have gasoline motors with an alternator that runs off of a fan belt to charge the battery how the heck does this little battery get charged well it gets charged by the big battery there's power inverters that change the hundreds of volts of the big battery into the 12 volts of the little battery there's no other way of doing it it's got to use the battery power that's in there and of course the main worry of people with electric cars is how long is that electric battery going to last and how much is it going to cost to replace well this is a BMW 9 years old but it's only got 20 something, mil on it and this battery is starting to go it's lost a bit of its range can't go as far as it used to go for example I picked this up 25 miles away I drove it here I had 31 Mi of range left that means 56 mil of range the way I was driving obviously the batter is starting to wear out they lose their range as time goes on now this is a BMW so their electric batteries as you can imagine are super expensive now the batter itself is inside under the seats and stuff it's like a four 4 and a half hour job for a mechanic to replace the battery so not totally insane but if you're paying BMW labor that's going to be what like $700 labor well you might think well that's a lot to change the battery I can change mine in my regular car in 5 minutes well that's just the tip of the iceberg baby this BMW large electric battery is actually a bunch of different modules bolted together to make one big battery now you can buy separate modules right but let's say you want to get a new one to keep the range up check everything out it's going to cost you between 18 and 20 grand to do it on this BMW if you want to use new parts yeah I'm not making that up of course that's more than a car's worth now it's a 9-year-old BMW right and then I know people are going to say but Scotty you can get remanufactured batteries la la la wow if you have any idea what a remanufactured battery is on one of these here's what it is they take the battery out and then you can use a device if you're lucky enough to find a good mechanic there aren't that many that know how to use this stuff but if you do you use this machine they can test every cell in the battery then you can replace the bad cells or in this case you can replace the bad module and then you say that's a remanufactured battery but let's say that electric car is 10 years old that means all the old parts of the battery are still 10 years old maybe they change 1/4 of it how long do you think that's going to last it's going to break down too right certainly isn't going to last 10 years that the original one lasted and of course if you're a real cheap skate you can get a used one I looked online you could get used batteries for this BMW between 25 and 5500 bucks right but that's used total pot luck you got no idea how long that thing's going to last right if you're a Riverboat Gambler and you're thinking about buying a used electric vehicle you got to watch the rest of this you have to pay a guy like me to turn on his fancy machine maxius Ultra with the EV package added onto it for electric vehicles all electric cars are pretty complicated you think oh there a batter in the motor all kinds of computer controller inverters you need an honest opinion let's say you buy buy this thing and then you find out 6 months later you need a battery that's going to cost you 1920 Grand you're going to wish you didn't buy the stupid thing so you got to check it out like this luckily for us here the BMWs at least still have an OBD P it just plugs in like a regular car there it's plugged in so we can do diagnostics of this car but realize this most Teslas they do not have an OBD Port they can't plug a regular OBD thing in it you need adapters all kinds of stuff kind of shows that old El on a scumbag he doesn't want people getting the information to fix the cars outside of his own range of dealerships so they can rip you off when they fix the cars at least this has a regular OBD port for diagnosis the correct information it's a BMW I3 2015 this is the base model the cheaper one it was still 40 something Grand new but the fancier ones have what are called range extenders so there's a BMW 2cylinder motorcycle engine in a trunk and like a 2 gallon gas tank so when you run out of electricity that motor turn turns on runs a generator and you still have full power you can probably go another 90 or 100 miles I'm checking this thing out for somebody wants to buy a use electric car now we're going to do all the scanning here engine digital motor electronic has a bunch of codes and they're the worst things on earth they're intermittent codes if there's one thing that's worse than finding an intermittent problem in any car it's finding an intermittent problem in the electronics of a car if somebody was going to buy this car and I got these codes power management 12vt battery not being charged intermittently I would tell them under no circumstances buy this car walk look for something else rats not of electronic problems that are intermittent now but hey it's going to be 10 years old at the end of the year you want to troubleshoot this now with this hotel I can troubleshoot it Parts on these things are a fortune you saw what the batteries cost well everything else cost a fortune too there's more codes body control body domain controller automatic air circulation control sensor invalid and then it is AC charging or DC charging communication fault with the charging cable and that's a permanent code the headlight unit has problems internal control fault of the main door reduction in brightness cuz it's getting too hot integrated Automatic Heating an AC shot off Val of heat pump so the hvx system heating ventilation and air conditioning systems acting up now the parts for the air conditioning systems are expensive for example let's say you got to replace the compressor on this thing not having a motor to run the air conditioning compressor compressor with the fan belt it's a completely electronic high voltage air conditioning compressor and it cost $2,183 course it could be worse this could be a Tesla goty on the road just had his tusla compressor replaced cuz it broke and it was out of warranty and it cost them 3,800 bucks to replace the AC compressor and get the system working again now they don't make this anymore but the last year they sold in 2022 some of them had almost twice the range because they put a battery that was twice the size this is a rather small battery and of course like I said if you really were going to buy one of these you'd have to buy the fancy one not this cheap base model but the one that has a range extender with a gasoline motor in the back that runs a generator so then you'll never be stranded well let's say you're seriously considering buying an electric car well you're going to have to really install at least one of these level two Chargers in your house because as you're going to see this BMW comes with a charger but this is a level one and when you open the charger up here plug this baby in guess what you know this car has a tiny battery has a range now about 70 M or so this charger plugged into your 110 volts going to take 10 hours to charge it up and of course if you have a battery that's twice the size as the later ones you're bumping that up to 20 hours to charge up so you need a level two charger this is an autel that I got it was like 450 bucks but realize I was lucky here cuz I bought this house from a guy who had an electric car so he already paid to have the 220 volt receptacle that it plugs into installed on the house it cost them almost three grand Grand to get that done because got to be done right and there's the wire and it goes up then it goes here in a garage then it goes into the cellar down we go we'll turn this light on and there's my studio check it out getting ready for a lot of car talk there's the background and we'll go back we're still going under the house and we'll turn that light on we're now in the cell with a washing machine is running and this is where the main power of the house comes the poles behind there and here's the main fuse box now of course all this depends on where your power comes in the house mine actually comes on the back side so if it was on the front side it' be no big deal to run a charger but the charger has to go off your main circuit your main power coming in this is on the back of the house I'm not going to run one on the outside and park my car in my beautiful grass so if I had to pay for the installation they'd have to tear the walls apart so all the electricity was done when they were ripping the house apart anyways if I would pay somebody today run it I guarantee it'd be a lot more than three grand cuz they'd have to tear it all apart this was done while the house was torn apart so so I think no big deal hey this nice autel charger 455 bucks not a bad deal right but find out where your power supply is and how far out you have to move it and what you have to tear apart in the house to make it work and you'll probably find out it's going to cost you thousands and thousands of dollars now I for one would not charge an electric car battery inside the garage what if if it's starting on fire burn my house down right that's the main reason the guy put the plug on the outside so he can just put the car here if something happens at least the house isn't going to burn down well hopefully it won't but of course realize another thing about electric cars and electric batteries you get a Tesla battery okay it is five times the size of this one takes five times as long to charge it up if you plugged it in with one of those 110 volt it would take days to charge it up fully and even with a level two it could easily take 8 n hours to fully charge a Model S when you're using the 220 volts so just like the saying the bigger they are the harder they fall well the bigger the car batteries are the more they weigh and the longer it takes to charge them up so now you know a little bit more about electric cars and the electric batteries that power them personally I feel they don't have the technology outright yet who knows maybe they'll make solid state batteries one day there's still the problem of infrastructure where's the electricity coming from where are they going to generate it and then how are they going to transfer it here our electrical grid system is in disarray in this country our lines couldn't take all that power to Bow the Transformers on my suggestion to people who really want to try an electric vehicle lease it I may have got to Denver airart right he was a businessman he was renting a Tesla I said well what you rent it for he says well I got one at home what'd you pay for it gu says I didn't I'm leasing it he says I'm not going to buy this new technology who knows if for leaving work I don't want to fix it I'm just Le leasing the thing so if you really got to get an electric vehicle hey why not lease one you will have to put a level two charger see what an electrician is going to charge the put one in your house you'll have to do that but leas it don't buy it the way they stand today not a viable thing to buy an electric car economically you're going to lose your shirt so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that Bell aah\n"