First off, let me say that I don't care what other people drive as long as they're happy with their choice. Mandates not only suck, but they're counter-productive as well. So politically, we're on the same page.
Next, let's address some urban myths going around about EVs. If I drive from Camas to Lagrande in January, I imagine I'll make one stop to charge, maybe more if my bladder can't handle the drive. I'll have the heat on toasty and enjoy the drive. Summer time I'd need to charge for 17 minutes in Boardman--which is shorter than I'll need to stretch my legs and grab a drink or lunch. In January I'll probably need to charge for 25 minutes, just about what I'll need anyway for me. With an EV, you plug in and walk away, your phone lets you know when you're done. In the three years I've been driving an EV I've spent a grand total of less than an hour waiting on the car--and I've waisted zero time filling up around town. My car is always "full" before I leave home. When I go fishing in Garibaldi, I don't charge on the road at all. Plenty of juice to get over the coast range there and back with plenty to spare when I get home.
Early Teslas did have an issue with battery life--which were almost all replaced under warranty. I'm active on the Tesla forums, and hearing about a failed battery not covered under warranty is exceedingly rare. I'm sure it happens, anything can fail. But in general you can expect to get about 500,000 miles out of your battery pack. If I were to get REALLY unlucky and have to fork out $10K for a pack after 150,000 miles, the cost would would still save me about $15K over having had to buy gas instead of electricity. (Assumptions: gas car =26 mpg @ $5 gallon, My EV about 4.2 miles/kwh @ 0.08/kwh. That's $28K for gas and $3K for electricity.) And that's only if I get unlucky. We're not even counting all of the money I'll save on oil changes, brake jobs and coolant changes. Plus, the beauty of minimal switches is that fewer hard to obtain switches to replace as the car ages. (If you've ever restored cars--I have--you know that switches fail and become very difficult or impossible to find.) Now we have to count in all of the major mechanical failures that ICE cars become prone to at 150K miles. No transmission to fail with a Tesla, and the motors are likely to run forever. No, by far a good EV is the cheapest car you can buy long term. If you want to see just how well a Tesla EV is built, I'd recommend watching Sandy Munro's teardown videos of the Tesla Model Y. He's one of the most renowned experts on cars and auto manufacturing, and companies like GM, Ford, Honda, Toyota, Porsche, Mercedes, etc pay many tens of thousands of dollars for his reports. 200,000 miles without major expense? I'm thinking more like 500,000 with my car. There's a LOT fewer expensive parts on an EV than on an ICE car.
As far as the instrument panel, there's not a lot you need to see with an EV compared to ICE. Just the speedometer compared to speed, tach, oil, and coolant temp with a gas car. My eyes can quickly flick to the speedo on my center panel just as fast as if it were centered. I taught instrument cross checks as an instructor pilot in the USAF as well as over 30 years flying commercially--including captaining international widebody passenger flights around the world. So I pretty much know what I'm talking about when it comes to instrumentation.
As far as the rare minerals used in production, yep, just like a lot of what we use in life. Tesla is working on sourcing a lot of that right here, and I'm not about to go back to living in a cave. If you really want to talk about that part of it, our use of oil is propping up the world wide price--and everyone knows terrorism is mostly paid for by petro-dollars. Not to mention Russia's war time fun. I'm not saying don't burn gas, hell I do. I still have a '92 Blazer to get out in the woods and to tow my gas powered boat around. I'm just saying it's more than a little silly to complain about lithium and etc mining while burning gasoline.
Drive whatever you want or need. An EV is perfect for me because it will outlast every ICE car I've ever owned, is fun as hell to drive, and is by far my cheapest option long term. Even if I have to buy a new battery pack--unlikely--that's still a lot cheaper than buying a new car at 150K.
That right there!
