OPINION: My 'fun car' will never be an EV

Because you know what? For the life of me, I can’t ever see myself ditching petrol for electric when it comes to my fun car; the car that is my hobby; the car I have to be driven for the joy of driving. Of course that'll inspire a scoff from the moustache-twirling futurists and the Teslarati. But there is something missing with EVs that makes them hard to connect with. 

There’s a distance, an inanimate appliance-like state to all of them. Lacking as they do the sounds, the smells and the vibrations of a petrol-engined car, it’s almost like a language barrier. These are what give a car life, character and soul. These are what speak to us and what forms the basis of the bonds we have with our cars, to the point that we count them among our friends rather than our possessions.

Because when I hit the start button in my car, the sound of those eight pots filling with immolating gases is like a pat on the back from an old friend, telling me that it’s going to be alright. It's time for a drive, it's time for a road trip, it's the signal to my brain that for the next few minutes, hours, days or weeks, all my boring 'life' problems can take the bench.

And no, it has almost nothing to do with how fast or accelerative a car is. It’s how it goes about its business, how it involves you and all these ways a soulful petrol-engined car communicates with you, that will be so hard to let go of for so many. And I refuse to do so.

An EV could be the ultimate daily for me. For mostly local or city driving, they’re incredibly useful and enjoyable and present many advantages for the consumer and the environment at the point of use over their internal combustion counterparts. They’re more relaxing, less tiring, more spacious inside usually, than their combustion-powered equivalents and have far fewer moving parts and service items, meaning that if you take care of the battery, maintenance costs less even in the medium term.

Conversely, I know all of the reasons why many EVs suck. I know they’re not the environmental silver bullet they’re being sold as. I know they’re expensive. I know they’re heavy. I know range, infrastructure and charging speeds are all worries for many. But none of these are reasons why I could never have one as my only car.

I’d love nothing more than to have a new Renault 5 on my driveway… but an EV could never be my only car. An EV could never be that symphonic, effervescent, expressive escape for me. Not yet, at least.

In short, even though I love the idea of EVs in certain use cases, as a dyed-in-the-wool petrolhead, I just couldn’t bring myself to swap sound for silence when it comes to the hobby of driving, rather than the chore of driving. Am I a paraffin-huffing old curmudgeon? Probably. But I am what I am, as so many are and nothing’s come along with a hope of changing that yet.