30 MAY / JUNE 2022 popularmechanics.co.zaCOLUMN
/ BY ALEXANDER GEORGE, EDITOR, US EDITION /PHOT
OGRAPHY:^ FORD^ (
MACH- E)
,^ VO
LK
SWAGEN(ID.^4 ),
CAKE(K
AL
K&)Who should
buy an
electric car?
T
HEY’RE ROLLS-ROYCE QUIET. SOME ARE
Lamborghini fast. No oil changes. No exhaust
smell to remind you that parts of Miami will be
underwater in 30 years. But after testing
a bunch of new electric vehicles (EVs) for Pop
Mech’s Auto Awards last year, I understand
why, for the past few years in the US, the
number of Ford F-Series pickup customers alone is greater
than the number of all new electric-car customers
combined: EVs are still a hassle.
Specifically, driving them far is a hassle. Through no
fault of the manufacturer, even a $105 150 Porsche Taycan
4S’s technical excellence becomes irrelevant when you’re
nervous about finding power to run it. Three days of
testing a Taycan required five apps’ worth of down-
loading, password creation, and email confirmation. And
of the public chargers those apps allowed me to pay to
use, one was so slow (0.3 km per minute) it served only
as a bridge to a faster station (3 km per minute), which
was located next to a truck-stop garbage pile, where I sat
for an hour. EVs still require planning and patience.
This is where Tesla maintains a big advantage. Its
Superchargers are reliably fast (usually 50 kW or better),
are abundant in the US, and bill you automatically. But the
reality is, even the most practical EVs still only make sense
for a really specific customer: someone who has at least
$40 000 to spend on a car and owns a garage with a 240 V
charger to use between predictable daily commutes.
Hopefully, by the time I achieve those requirements,
public chargers will have also become faster and more
plentiful. Because with pretty much every EV we tested
recently, the actual driving part is an absolute joy.
If that sounds compelling, here are three EVs we drove
in the last year or so that justified the inconveniences.FORD
MACH-E 4
The extended-
battery AWD version
can go 435 km and
do 0 to 100 km/h in
under 5 seconds.
Plus, there’s plenty
of headroom in the
rear, and the plastic
‘frunk’ has a drain,
so you can use
it as a cooler.- Louis Mazzante
VOLKSWAGEN
ID.4
An in-betweener
EV: the benefits of
electric without
overwhelmingly
fancy tech. But
the dash can be
confusing and a
pain to operate
while driving.- Will Egensteiner
CAKE KALK&
80 km of range,
80 km/h top speed.
E-bicycles are
(much) cheaper, but
don’t have this build
quality, stability,
and torque.- Alexander George