In an earlier post I described how the press often stumbles into one of President Trump’s strategic traps. In this case, he is telling his rural voters that EVs “don’t work” without further clarification. They understand what he means. The New York Times does not. The Times reported that with respect to EVs, Trump has been “falsely warning the public that they ‘don’t work.’” Not exactly. The statement is true and false at the same time.
The purpose of this post is to take a deep dive into EVs from the rural perspective. Farmers in particular have a keen understanding of the limitations and costs of batteries. And rural voters have a good understanding of the various scenarios where an EV simply doesn’t work for the rural voter. For example someone who rents an apartment and never leaves her village, who parks outside and can’t install a home charger, and who lives 25 miles from the nearest fast charger. No one would suggest that she drive 50 miles round-trip to the nearest charger just to a charge her car that might only have 100 mile range. It is fair to say that an EV just “doesn’t work” for her.
The Backstory
One thing that rural voters (and farmers in particular) understand is battery life. Be sure you understand this as much as your rural voter does. For example, I have 4 gasoline and 3 electric chainsaws. I use them to cut down trees in the forest to turn into lumber. This is a forest my father and I hand planted in the 1960s. The electric chainsaws are superior in almost every respect. Except they are almost useless when cutting down large trees. Even the largest lithium battery lasts no more than 10 or 15 minutes of heavy use. If I inadvertently leave the battery in subzero temperatures overnight in the barn, the life of the fully charged battery is cut in half. And these batteries last no more than 8 to 10 years.
Batteries are a crucial component of our switch to electric vehicles and face exactly the same issues. When speaking to the rural voter, it pays to have a deep understanding of battery chemistry, how batteries can be abused, and how climate affects battery life. Which is why rural voters love and buy plug-in hybrids, but can’t image buying a 100% electric vehicle.
Understand this issue with the rural voter. Rural voters are much more sophisticated about this than the urban voter. This is an area where a politician with both urban and rural voters needs to understand both sides and carefully pivot depending on the audience. The following are important points to remember:
• Vehicle manufacturers and environmental lobbyists consistently state that the battery in an EV lasts the life of the vehicle. This is lying with the truth. Sure, if one drives the car 200,000 miles in 10 years in a moderate climate and never over charging or over depleting the battery, the life of the car and the life of the battery should be about the same. If one drives 200,000 miles in 5 years the battery would last longer than the life of the car. And if one drove 20,000 miles in 12 years the battery will fail far before the life of the car. All batteries, even if perfectly maintained, will fail somewhere between the 10 and 15 year mark (and if abused, somewhere after the 8 year mark). This is difficult to navigate for the politician because I also see many urban voters argue, when someone points out that many batteries will fail before the life of the vehicle, that that is a false narrative.
• A few EV batteries begin to fail at the 8 year mark – there are actual cases today and some have completely failed by the 9 year mark. I suspect those vehicles were over-charged and over-depleted. Which is why battery warranties are 8 years and not 15 years. Even at 8 years (the statutory minimum), the battery is generally considered within warranty if it still holds a 70% charge. Rural voters, and in particular farmers, are acutely aware of what shortens battery life. We go through a lot of batteries for equipment and understand that running down a battery drastically shortens the life of the battery, which gets worse the longer the battery sits discharged. So does charging a battery over 80% (which is why rental cars do not allow you to charge the car over 90%). So can fast charging and fast depleting a battery (for example jack rabbit acceleration and carrying or towing a heavy load). As does extreme cold. Be sure you understand this. Time will tell if any of these batteries exceed even the 12 year mark.
• My urban friends are focused on range and not battery longevity. It is the opposite for rural voters.
• There have been many tests that show an EV can keep the vehicle warm at 65° for a long time when the outside temperature is freezing or 32°. That really has little application to the farmer or contractor who works in extreme cold. I do not need to warm up at 32°. A battery is 20% less effective at 32°. But at 22° a battery is 40% less effective. So imagine how much is lost at 0° or minus 10°. Then add to that keeping the cabin heated to at 80° (which is what we actually do) to serve as a warm up hut. The battery won’t last very long, as our electric utility experienced, as described below.
• Rural voters are concerned about the replacement cost for a battery. My urban friends are not because they are more likely to buy new and replace the car well in advance of the 8 year mark. It is the used car buyer who will discover whether or not the battery in their used car was abused by the original owner.
Rural Talking Points
Be upfront and honest with your rural voter about electric vehicles. Because I have large solar arrays and windmills on my property, I often have friends asking me for my opinion on electric vehicles. My answer to my rural friends versus my urban friends is very different.
To my rural friends, I have a hard time seeing where a 100% electric vehicle could ever make sense. It just doesn’t work. We drive to a lot of places in the field where there simply is not a charging infrastructure. And we have issues with cold weather. And all of my rural friends by used vehicles. I would have a hard time recommending any rural neighbor buying a six-year-old electric vehicle when I know that that battery is about to fail.
On the other hand I think that a hybrid plug-in is an ideal vehicle for the rural neighbor. A plug-in hybrid solves all the negatives of the 100% electric vehicle. And I would buy one myself. I could charge it vehicle every day with my solar panels as my vehicles sit at the farm during the day. And I do know rural friends who are waiting for a viable hybrid pickup to come out.
To my urban friends the story is very different. All of them have multiple vehicles. And all of them buy new cars and sell them soon after the 4 year mark. They simply do not care about battery longevity. Instead, they will appreciate the enhanced performance that electric vehicles have. And I say so.
As a politician, if I were asked by a rural voter weather a 100% electric EV made sense, I would simply say that in my view a plug-in hybrid makes more sense at the present time. Most rural voters recognize that plug-in hybrids, which have both a gasoline engine and a small 50 or so mile battery pack, are a better answer, have a much larger environmental impact (because you can get more vehicles on the road with the same amount of battery minerals), and solve most of the problems with all-electric vehicles. I know 3 people who have plug in hybrids and they love them. They report that they drive 90% of the time on the battery. These vehicles are easily sold to the rural voter because it provides them with a dual-fuel vehicle that is more flexible than even a gasoline-only vehicle. It makes sense. And you don’t have to bring climate change into the discussion.
Understand the benefits of the plug-in hybrid
Many purist environmentalists loathe and dismiss plug-in hybrids. Some go so far to say plug-in hybrids provide no environmental benefit because they assume drivers won’t actually plug them in. If not, you end up with a gasoline car carrying around a heavy separate drive train for no reason. Some go so far as to state that plug-ins cause more harm than they solve.
Nonsense. Of course some people won’t plug them in. On the other hand you will be able to get 5 times as many cars on the road with the same amount of lithium and rare earth elements that we currently have available. The manufacturer essentially takes 1 large EV battery with a 300 mile range and cuts it into 5 or 6 smaller batteries. So even if 20% of drivers don’t plug them in you achieved getting 4 other vehicles on the road that are using electricity the majority of the time. And most of these vehicles don’t require a special expensive charger.
The benefits of plug-in hybrids are:
a. Instead of one battery in a vehicle that has a 300 mile range, that battery can be made into 5 or 6 batteries with a 50 mile range, meaning 5 vehicles can be produced with the same amount of battery materials. This alone will vastly increase the number of miles driven on battery power alone because 5 times as many vehicles can be built. And the handful of people I know who drive hybrids report using the battery 90% of the time.
b. Hybrids eliminate range anxiety. If the driver exceeds the 50 mile range, there is no issue – the car simply switches over to the gasoline engine.
c. These batteries are easier to standardize and are easier to be built into the vehicle so that replacement will require much less labor to replace than an all-electric vehicle, which requires a substantial amount of vehicle disassembly to replace.
d. The replacement cost of a 50 mile battery will be far more affordable than a large battery built as part of the structure of the vehicle. And consumers will be able to afford a low mileage vehicle that lives longer than the battery does.
e. The rural voter who rents most likely will have no access to a 240 volt charger. The nearest one to me is a 30 mile round trip. And some of these people never have reason to drive outside of their Township. This is a great example of how a fully electric EV “doesn’t work.”
f. The anxiety of not being able to find a working charger is eliminated. These cars can be charged anywhere, even using grandma’s outlet on her house. Worse case, you simply use the gasoline engine until you get home.
g. Plug-in hybrid vehicle batteries will not be abused to the same extent as 100% electric vehicles. When the battery hits 25% of charge, the gasoline motor will simply kick on. There is absolutely no reason to over-charge or over-deplete the battery in a plug-in hybrid. These batteries in actual use should have a much longer life.
h. When the battery does finally fail, the vehicle can still at least be driven to the dealer to have the battery replaced.
i. In a time of war or other supply chain disruption, these vehicles can still be driven even if replacement batteries are not available.
And the most important benefit:
j. On a farm, I can charge a hybrid with my solar array during the day with a 110 volt inverter. Not only is the electricity free to me, but I truly would have zero emissions. My solar array already produces more electricity than I can use during the summer. This would be a good use for that excess electricity (and my solar array is not connected to the grid). With a fully electric EV with a large battery, 120v charging would take too long especially if you don't know when you are going to need the truck next and there is no backup engine. So as a practical matter it would always be plugged into a 240v charger. With a 240 volt charger, I would have to use the grid, which means I would be burning coal or gas to charge the vehicle.
Conclusion
Don’t take the bait if this issue comes up. Be honest about it. A 100% electric EV may suit certain urban consumers. In rural America, it is almost a certainty that a plug-in hybrid will be the better solution in the near term. It is ok to say “Of course EVs don’t work in all situations – yet.” And erase the phrase “all electric fleet” from your vernacular. That language scares the rural Electoral College voter. Yet I suspect that an “all hybrid fleet” would pass muster. A hybrid is simply more resilient than either a gas or electric only vehicle.
If you want to read more, the following is terrific recent anecdote
A great illustration of this issue came up last week at game night. Our local utility is attempting to go as green as possible. As part of this initiative the utility replaced 15 gasoline pickups with 15 all-electric Ford Lightnings at the local dispatch shop where several neighbors work. This makes sense on paper as the electricity for these vehicles is essentially free and always available at an electric utility. The linemen who drive these trucks love them (and yes, they are all men in this particular shop) – they are fast, accelerate quickly and are a delight to drive. On the other hand, they immediately noticed that if they are towing equipment behind the truck with 4 guys in the cab, that the range was immediately cut in half or more. And they all anticipated that the true test would be in sub-zero temperatures, which is the busiest time for deployment as cold weather puts a lot of stress on transmission lines and it is when all 15 trucks would be deployed at once. Everyone joked that unless the batteries in these trucks had some new technology or were coated in fairy dust, they wouldn’t last through the day in sub-zero temperatures.
That is exactly what happened. As soon as the temperature dropped below 15 degrees, the batteries in these trucks lasted only until noon. Partially because everyone was keeping the cab heated to the normal 80 degrees so that they could periodically warm up and put their gloves on the dash to dry out and re-heat. The linemen then returned their electric truck at noon during lunch hour and simply checked out another truck if one was available. Charging was taking at least 4 hours because charging also slowed way down during the cold. They quickly ran out of trucks. Now you have a bunch of guys sitting around all afternoon with no vehicle to drive and with needed repairs that are not being addressed.
The utility quickly solved this problem by buying 15 additional Lightnings. Problem solved for the 2 months of the year where this is an issue. Each person now had two trucks to use during the day. This though created a second political issue: the expense and waste in doing this. The perception is that during the summer, 15 will sit around unused. And these vehicles were $75,000 each. So the utility spent $150,000 each to replace one gasoline vehicle.
The narrative now turned to our electricity rates – they are so high because of this kind of waste. The costs are simply passed on to the electric customer.
And a regular contractor could never do this. These trucks simply were not a great option for this situation. They “don’t work.” A plug-in hybrid truck would have been a much better solution. A plug-in hybrid could fast-charge over lunch. And you wouldn’t end up with 15 large lithium batteries sitting around for 10 months unused.
Is this narrative completely true? Perhaps not. I didn’t verify this with the utility – but I do see the trucks in their work yard and out in the field. Yet the narrative is consistent with this and makes sense. I suspect that it is at least directionally true. Be aware that voters in the field are experiencing these issues in real time. And when they hear Trump, his statements ring true.