Six inane arguments about EVs and how to handle them at the dinner table

The holiday season is fast approaching, and with it, all manner of uncomfortable conversations with relatives who think they know a lot about a lot but are in fact just walking examples of Dunning-Kruger in action. Not going home is always an option—there’s no reason you should spend your free time with people you can’t stand, after all. But if you are headed home and are not looking forward to having to converse with your uncle or parent over heaped plates of turkey and potatoes, we put together some talking points to debunk their more nonsensical claims about electric vehicles.

Charging an EV takes too long

The No. 1 complaint from people with no experience with driving or living with an electric car, cited as a reason for why they will never get an EV, is that it takes too long to recharge them. On the one hand, this attitude is understandable. For more than a century, humans have become accustomed to vehicles that can be refueled in minutes, using very energy-dense liquids that can be pumped into a fuel tank at a rate of up to 10 gallons per minute.

By contrast, batteries are not at all fast to recharge, particularly if you plug into an AC charger. Even the fastest fast-charging EVs connected to a fast DC fast charger will still need between 18–20 minutes to go from 10 to 80 percent state of charge, and that, apparently, is more time than some curmudgeons are prepared to wait as they drive from coast to coast as fast as they possibly can.

The thing is, an EV is a paradigm shift compared to a gasoline-powered car. Yes, refueling for that gas car is quick, but it’s also inconvenient, particularly if you live somewhere where all the gas stations keep closing down.

Instead of weekly trips to the gas station—or perhaps more often in some cases—EV owners plug their cars in each night and wake up each morning with a full battery.