Late last year my husband and I bought a new battery electric car. Our beautiful Tesla Model Y, sporting the stunning midnight-cherry-red color only available in Europe, is one of 45,818 sold in Germany that year. Designed in California, manufactured in Grünheide, Germany, the best car (in my opinion) that one could buy in 2023. In fact a lot of people must have thought the same. The Tesla Model Y ended up being the one car – regardless of engine type – that was sold the most worldwide in 2023. 1,211,601 units of it, to be precise.

Friends, neighbors, colleagues, everybody asked: how do you like it? At first I was so excited about telling everybody what an awesome car that is. I even went to great lengths to debunk all the myths around EVs. I got frustrated when I realized,  that nobody wanted to hear my answers. People just wanted their prejudice confirmed. If you are one of the smart lucky ones who already own an electric car, preferably a Tesla, you’ve probably heard all the reasons, why EV isn’t a good choice.

One of our neighbors doesn’t want an electric vehicle, because his gasoline guzzling Audi can drive 300 km/h, and our Tesla only does 230 km/h max. I wonder where in Germany he finds a stretch of road that supports those 300 km/h.

Many people say they can go 1,000 km without refueling, while our extended range Tesla only gives us 450 km, on a full charge. I wonder why anybody would want to drive 1,000 km without having a break. Even 450 km is too long for me. I need a break every two hours or so, just to go to the bathroom and stretch my legs.

Somebody said he can refuel his car in 5 minutes, while our Tesla takes about half an hour at the super-charger to go from 30% to 90% charge. I highly doubt the statement – 5 minutes? Really? Even if the nearest pump is free, you’d have to open the tank, insert the nozzle, stand there and wait for your 40 l to run through, walk inside to pay (no pay-at-the-pump in Germany) and hope there’s no line at the register. Charging stops with the Tesla are way more relaxed. You plug in, and then walk around, go to the bathroom, get a coffee-to-go, do some stretches. Your app tells you when the charging is done.

Driving in winter supposedly poses a totally different set of challenges with an electric car. The battery will lose capacity, your range will be cut in half, your door handles will freeze shut so you can’t get in or out. You won’t be able to run the heat, because that drains the battery even faster. I see.

I just remember last winter, when we had that long cold spell and two feet of snow, we turned our climate control in the car on about 20 minutes before we wanted to leave the house. Tesla was fully defrosted by the time we left – while the neighbors where still scratching ice off of their windshield, the engine running to warm it up (which is illegal in Germany).

Summer, by the way, is the same problem, sort of. You can’t run the AC in your car because it drains the battery too. We found out, stuck in stopped traffic on our way back from Italy for two hours, 32°C outside, music and air running inside, that our Tesla loses 2% of its charge per hour of sitting there. I really hope for you, that you don’t run out of gas, or overheat your engine, enduring that with a fossil fuel vehicle.

The list goes on: batteries don’t last very long, a new battery costs as much as the whole car, electric vehicles are expensive to do maintenance on, brakes in electric cars are a constant source of trouble, you can’t sell your used EV because nobody wants to buy it, electric cars are way too expensive…..

By now I realized, though, that I don’t want you – the 97.1% of car owners in Germany – to suddenly switch over to a full electric car. You would ruin the experience for the 2.9% of EV owners in Germany. Those 2,581 Tesla super-chargers in Germany would not be enough to support a much bigger fleet. I wouldn’t find free parking downtown easily, if more people were driving electric. The two charging stations at my favorite grocery store, where I can charge my car for free while I do my weekly shopping, wouldn’t be available all the time.

So, from now on, if somebody asks: “how do you like your electric car?” I’ll say: “oh, it’s OK. But I wouldn’t recommend you get one.”