Shawn O'Hara: Welcome, everyone. My guest today is Dean Bennett. Dean runs Compu-Tek Computer Services, an IT solutions provider here in Victoria. He studied at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and is a certified electronics engineering technologist. He's also a car enthusiast and has rebuilt three car engines and done a full classic car restoration.

This is his second time on the podcast. What brings him back is that he's an avid researcher on EVs, which are electric vehicles. They are controversial, and they're regulated. Welcome, Dean.

Dean Bennett: Welcome. Hi, Shawn. Thanks for the invite.

Shawn O'Hara: What's got you interested in EVs? What's your experience?

Dean Bennett: I've always kind of been interested in electric vehicles. Even when I was a kid, I built a go-kart that was actually an electric go-kart. It was a starter motor and a battery. It went pretty fast. I went to a science fair, I think it was about grade seven, and I saw a fellow who had a Mini.

He was actually making it a hybrid. He had a snowmobile engine and an aircraft starter, and he was getting... he said he got 60 miles per gallon out of this car. So I was always fascinated with them ever since.

Shawn O'Hara: That's neat. I always think of go-karts as these little wooden things, but...

Dean Bennett: Yep, it was wooden, yes.

Shawn O'Hara: Okay. So why would somebody want to buy an EV?

Dean Bennett: EVs are low maintenance. You don't have to take it to the garage every six months for an oil change. A lot of fluid changes are a lot less frequent than a regular standard car. Basically the dealerships, they rely on maintenance to make most of their money. About 50% of their income after they sell a car comes from maintenance and parts on it.

There's thousands of moving parts in a gas engine, transmission, all those, which can fail at a potential point. Usually it's designed to fail after warranty now. But they do make good money out of it, so they really don't want you to buy one. And when they first came out with the Leaf, it was a unique concept car, but, as far as I was concerned, it was ugly. They made this thing not very attractive, so people who really wanted an EV would go and buy them. But they weren't that appealing. They worked well, they weren't a great range, but for a city car, they were a very good concept at the beginning.

And there's still lots of them driving around these days, but they only typically get about 100 kilometers range. But with EV maintenance, you take it in every two years to get your brakes flushed, transmission case about every 60,000K, battery coolant about every five years, which is like a car coolant.

Other than that, there's very little that has to be done with them. And they actually save wear and tear on brakes. With the regen braking, some will get like 100,000 kilometers from brakes, where a standard car will get 40,000. And then there's the fuel saving costs. They've rated them up to the equivalent of 130 miles per gallon, which is about two liters per 100K, versus gasoline.

So there is a lot lower cost to it. So there's definitely some advantages there. Plus, they're nice to drive. They're very smooth, great acceleration, because all the torque's on the low end. A gasoline engine has to have a transmission, so it changes the torque from the higher RPM to the lower RPM.

To do that with an electric engine's ideal. It actually has torque on the low end and less on the high end, so it's perfect. It doesn't need a transmission. And hybrid's not a new concept. Trains have been like this for years, since the '60s. They've had trains where it's a diesel generator engine and then it's electric motors on the wheels.

So they eliminate the transmission, they eliminated a lot of moving parts and maintenance, and it made them a lot more efficient.

Shawn O'Hara: So with an electric train...

Dean Bennett: So mostly any diesel trains you see today are diesel electric. They don't drive directly from the engine to the wheels.

Shawn O'Hara: That's neat. What about hybrids? They would have a transmission, wouldn't they?

Dean Bennett: Yes, they do. There are sort of two types of hybrids out there. There's the ones that integrate the car engine to the drivetrain, so they have a special transmission that links the electric motor and the engine together. The Ford Escape was one of the first ones that did that. They use what's called an Atkinson cycle engine, which is very efficient to do this.

So the engine can drive directly to the wheels, so can the electric motor. So usually the electric motor in that case isn't too powerful, it's only meant for mostly lower speeds. And the other type is where it's actually like the battery electric. The Chevy Volt that came out was like that.

So basically it was strictly a generator, no transmission, and the motor drove the wheels in the back electrically. It was about 200 horsepower on that one. But hybrids, the thing about them is that they're great for city mileage. They're not so great on the highway. They actually get slightly less miles per gallon because they only have about 50 kilometers range on the battery.

So once you start driving the highway, your pack's at 50K, now you're pulling the weight of an electric motor and a battery pack around, so that's a lot of extra weight, and it reduces the range on the highway. It's not too much, but it is a little bit. Where they really save the gas is the city.

So they actually have better mileage in the city than they do on the highway. So they're really great for taxi drivers and couriers who do a lot of city kilometer driving. But for the average user who doesn't, you've still got a vehicle that you have to do all the same internal combustion engine maintenance of oil changes, et cetera.

Still the same wear and tear, possible breakdown of parts. And most people, they actually don't plug them in, to save some further costs, most people don't bother doing that because it's only like 50K range you get on the charge. As soon as you start up the car, it's going to recharge the battery itself.

So they're okay, but they're kind of a little bit obsolete in some ways. Ford, they actually stopped making them, because when they came out with the direct injection engines, they were so efficient, they were getting close to the hybrid range, and they saw no point in selling hybrids. Now they're selling them again because people want them, and because they do want to have a plug-in which can do a short range.

Because the previous hybrids for the Escape were not plug-in types, so basically you're relying on that gas engine to charge them. But now some people do want them because they're going to take a little trip to the store, they can save a little bit of fuel. But like I said, they add more cost, and unless you're driving a lot of city kilometers, you're not going to save that much money with them, or fuel economy really.

Shawn O'Hara: Did you say they're the best of both worlds, or the worst of both worlds?

Dean Bennett: I would say it depends on the usage. If you're a taxi driver, it's probably the best, or a courier. But if you're just a standard driver, you're saving a little bit on the environment, because you're reducing your emissions definitely in the city, so you're helping there.

But there's also a trade-off to mine lithium ion batteries. They're not very environmentally done. Most of the lithium comes from China, about 90% of it. So there is kind of a trade-off with that. There's a fellow who did a TED Talk, and he said you'd have to drive an EV about 400,000K in order to compensate for all the environmental damage of the mining and stuff that goes on for the batteries.

But it does reduce carbon emissions a lot, definitely. So a hybrid does have its purpose. If you're somebody who runs around the city all the time, then there's definitely some advantages to it.

Shawn O'Hara: 400,000K would be longer than the battery would last.

Dean Bennett: Most likely, yeah.

Shawn O'Hara: It's not really a catch-up. That's interesting.

Dean Bennett: Yeah.

Shawn O'Hara: What kind of EV would you recommend?

Dean Bennett: Well, one of the things to look at is that an EV is still a car. The purpose is to get you from point A to point B. So important things to look at, like you would for any vehicle, is safety. You can check IIHS, the International Institute of Highway Insurance, and look at their ratings for safety.

The other thing is warranty, what kind of coverage there is on the car. By standard, pretty much every EV has an eight-year warranty on the battery. It's covered. Look at replacement cost, because if something goes wrong, let's say the battery goes and it's not covered by warranty because it's a bit older, or insurance, you do want to make sure it's not going to be too high of a cost.

There's been issues with Hyundai and Kia, where they're actually charging $50,000 for the battery, which is more than the cost of the car, and there have been a couple of instances in Canada where the warranty was denied, one because of damage, the car was almost just past warranty. Hyundai did some compensation, but not the full cost.

Tesla's a little bit better with their battery costs. BMW, the older i3s were a modular system, so you only replaced one out of eight batteries, so basically it cost you like $3,000 for a module rather than spending over 20,000, 20 to 30,000, for your entire pack. The one critical thing I always say to look at is what type of cooling is on the battery.

Is it passive or liquid? If it's liquid, the battery's going to last a long time. It can tolerate fast charging. If it's passive, it can't. They did a test many years ago with the Leafs in Texas, which is a very hot state, and they found that after three years they lost something like 23% charge on the cars, but with fast charging, it was 26%, so it's only 3% more.

However, the 23% was very high because they're running in such a hot climate. If they were running here in Canada, they wouldn't lose as much charge. When you get a battery that's liquid-cooled, you could go 200,000K and lose maybe 5 or 10% on the charge, so it really extends the life. The other thing too is the liquid-cooled batteries, they can use a heat pump and exchange that heat from the battery to heat the interior of the car so it runs more efficiently.

Tesla just started doing this in 2024 with their cars. Previously, they were not. The BMW i3 had a heat exchanger in it from the very beginning in 2013. So there's also more to look into with these things. You're not buying a cellphone for the tech here. You're buying a vehicle to get from A to B and have something that's safe to drive on the road.

Shawn O'Hara: Are there different regulations or compliance obligations with EVs? From what I understand, there are restrictions on having damaged EVs on BC Ferries, which we have a lot of in this part of the world.

Dean Bennett: Yeah, so BC Ferries does not allow a damaged EV, especially if there's any damage to the undercarriage or the battery pack, to be towed across on a ferry. So that would make it very difficult if you had an EV here in Victoria that could only be serviced in Vancouver and was in an accident. It does raise a few questions, but I have never been on a BC ferry and seen a car attached to a tow truck myself.

So hopefully you've got an EV that can be serviced locally here. And on that hand, Tesla is very limited. There's only one shop allowed to service EVs in Victoria, and last time I talked to them, there was a three-month wait list just to get an estimate, because they're the only ones that could buy parts from Tesla.

So if you were in an accident, yes, it could be a long time to get it serviced here. But there is a Tesla store here, so they can ship parts directly to the island and supply them to that particular manufacturer. Now, that was about six months ago, so maybe they've expanded it since then, but it was very limited at that time.

Shawn O'Hara: Wonder what people on the Gulf Islands do. So for any of our listeners who aren't in this area, we have the Gulf Islands, which are a bunch of small islands that people live on, and they could easily use electric cars because they've got such a small island to drive around.

Dean Bennett: Yeah, oh yeah, definitely, it's an advantage there. I'm not sure what the BC ferry restrictions would be for like an open-deck ferry, because it's a lot different. If there's a fire on an open-deck ferry, it's a lot easier to contain than one of the bigger ferries where it's enclosed, which could be a real big problem.

So I don't know if they have different rules on that. But again, it's really talking about an EV that's been severely damaged, the battery pack's damaged, that's where they could run into a problem. Like I said, I've never, ever seen a tow truck and a car on a ferry before.

Shawn O'Hara: Yeah, I can't recall.

Dean Bennett: No, yeah.

Shawn O'Hara: What about the cost of ownership? EVs tend to cost more than regular gas-powered cars, don't they?

Dean Bennett: Yes, they do. So it's one of the reasons I don't have one myself, because of the cost, and I'd need one that's like a larger SUV for what I do for work. But in retrospect, you can get... the Chevy Bolt was selling quite well. My brother actually picked one up.

It was like a year old, and it was only $30,000. I think it had 13,000K, so it was a 2024 model he picked up in '25. So that was actually a fairly reasonable cost for the size of the car. They got a 500-kilometer range on them. So compared to some other gas vehicles, it actually wasn't that bad.

And there are incentives. I was just looking up the Chevy Equinox, and they're quoting $56,000 on that car for the all-wheel drive. But then after their rebates and stuff applied, it was just over 40,000. So if you do have the cash to buy one, it is a nice option. You're paying a little bit more than a gasoline car for the same features, obviously.

But the manufacturers want to make up for the fact that they're not going to make money off the parts and service. There's actually a dealer down in Halifax that sells only EVs, a mechanic comes in once a week, because there's really not much for him to do. If you're only going to bring your car in once every two years to have the brakes done, and even replacing the brakes, they last twice as long as a gas car.

So with that lower maintenance, you are going to save money with the EV definitely. But if you're driving, let's say I only drive about 6,000K a year, well, it's going to take a long time to pay back that savings cost of getting the EV. But if you're driving a lot of kilometers, then that cost comes pretty quickly, especially with the gasoline prices today. It can make a pretty good difference.

Shawn O'Hara: One really has to look at one's lifestyle and decide, is it pay a lot upfront and have the savings down the road, or, I guess, installments, or even leasing.

Dean Bennett: Yes. Yeah, a lot of the actual leases that came into Victoria were leased ones from California. They were leasing them down there. Once they're off lease, they bought them, brought them back to sell them in Victoria. So it is an option. I think, if I ever did get one, with the eight-year battery warranty, I would probably tend to sell it before the warranty goes off the battery.

But honestly, there are very few battery failures I've ever heard of in an EV. Especially the liquid-cooled ones, they're usually not an issue.

Shawn O'Hara: So considering the distance, I've heard that Victoria, where we live, has one of the highest, I guess, per capita or the most number of electric vehicles, because most people don't drive, what, less than 20 kilometers a day? So it's a lot. So how much of a lifestyle change is it, having an EV?

Dean Bennett: You have to think ahead about your plans. You can't just go to a gas station and fill up in 10, 15 minutes and you're good for another 600, 700 kilometers. So you have to plan ahead. Let's say you charge your car at home overnight if you have a home charger, or you go shopping, you plug your car in while you're shopping for a couple hours to get it charged up.

Typically, like an EV, the i3, my partner Ann has an i3, so I know it quite well, and it's got 140K range in the summer, about 90K in the winter with the cold. It takes about three hours to fully charge the car if it's down to less than 20K. So if you go shopping a couple of hours, you can charge it back up again.

If you've got a high range EV, like a 500-kilometer range EV, it's going to take a home charger, level two, seven, eight hours to charge that full 500K back into the car again. So you do have to do things differently, but now you're not going to a gas station anymore, so you're avoiding that part.

So it's just an adjustment in lifestyle. You just really have to plan ahead. If you're doing a long trip, you may have to charge again, you want to look to see if there's a charger along the way or a fast charger. Manning Park, they've actually installed, I think it's like 20 fast chargers on the route through there, so people can stop halfway through and fast charge the car and then continue on.

So you just pull off the Coquihalla, plug it into a fast charger, and you're topped up and ready to keep carrying on.

Shawn O'Hara: How long does a fast charge take?

Dean Bennett: Generally about 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes at most. So not very long. Basically, if you're stopping for a little snack or bathroom break, it's enough time.

Shawn O'Hara: That would be worth it, then, to plan out the lunch on the long trip.

Dean Bennett: Yeah, yeah. It gives you usually about an 80% charge on most vehicles. The fast chargers are pretty powerful. They basically have about the output of, I'd say, the average of five homes using electricity at once, is what one charger will put out to charge your car, so it's a lot of capacity.

Shawn O'Hara: Have fights ever broken out over chargers that you know of, or people taking too long to recharge?

Dean Bennett: No, I've never heard of that in Canada. A lot of stations, even like the Tesla stations I see in the US, are huge. There are a lot of chargers down there, so I've never seen that. But here we are very limited in chargers. There's not that many, going to uptown, I've gone up there where all the chargers are full.

The West Shore is really lacking in EV charging. If you're north of the highway, Millstream area, there's only one charger, at the municipal hall, which is quite a ways out. But none of the shopping centers there, there's no public EV chargers anywhere in that area. Goldstream Avenue has one charger there, and the West Shore Mall has a few chargers, but they're really lacking the charge facilities in that area.

Shawn O'Hara: That municipal hall is Highlands. That's way out of the area, where most of the commerce is.

Dean Bennett: It is, yes.

The only reason I know about it, I have a friend who's got a Leaf, and we went for a hike, so she dropped her car off and I gave her a ride to the hiking point, Jocelyn Hill, and she left her car there while we went for the hike. But there's no other chargers in that area.

Shawn O'Hara: What would you suggest somebody look at when they're considering purchasing an EV?

Dean Bennett: Look at the safety issues, look at the serviceability of the car. You're buying a car for transportation and safety, so look at those features also. The ones that Consumer Reports rates highly, a couple of top ones are the BMWs, the i4, i5s. There's an X3 EV coming out this year.

Audi makes a pretty good one, they had the e-tron out for a long time. The Ford Mach-E's been fairly well rated, just not as high range, but they are improving. The Equinox now has a 500-kilometer range, so it's doing much better. So there's just a few of them. The ones I'm not so keen on recommending are Teslas.

I know people love them. It's basically like driving a cell phone on wheels. But my personal thing is the Ys and the Model 3s have a screen in the center, so you're kind of detracting your eyes off the road in order to check your speed or other things too. They even put the blind spot mirrors on a center screen.

So if you're going to change lanes, you've got to look at the center screen, then look at your mirror, look at the center screen again. So to me, that's just not a safety thing. I have a heads-up display in my car, which allows me to not take my eyes off the road at all. It shows me speed, directions of my navigation, everything on that heads-up display.

And I just love it. The other thing with the Tesla is they do not have radar for the collision avoidance, only cameras. So if you're in heavy rain or fog, you could wind up, it just won't work properly because it's blurring the vision of the cameras, where radar would see through it.

There's a fellow who actually did a video, he's got 143 million views, but it's a Wile E. Coyote, the cartoon, where he actually paints a wall, just like the coyote or Roadrunner does, to make it look like part of the highway out of styrofoam, and the Tesla drives right through it because it just thinks it's part of the road.

Where the other vehicles would pick it up by radar because it's a solid object, and it would stop. And then servicing for Tesla here too is not great, for if you do have an accident. So I'm not so keen on that myself. They do great support for software updates, which is nice.

But for those reasons, I would never buy one. The other ones I'd probably avoid are the Hyundai and Kia, just because the cost of the battery. If you did get in an accident, there's a couple here who accidentally went into a ditch. They damaged the battery, and initially ICBC was not going to pay them to cover that battery, and that was, like I said, the car cost them forty-five thousand and they wanted fifty thousand dollars to replace that battery.

So it put them in a real sticky situation. Nissan Leaf, even the new ones, they're still passive-cooled batteries, so that's one too. The Hyundai and Kia are also passive-cooled batteries and not liquid-cooled. But Nissan made the Ariya, which they discontinued for some reason, but that one actually has a liquid-cooled battery, and it's a very nice vehicle.

So that's one very nice car to have. Look at the range. I personally would only get an EV that's about a 500K range, because wintertime it's going to go down to about 350, and I want to go skiing. I don't want to have to stop and charge on the way up. But there are a lot of brands coming out there.

Shawn, just wanted to mention about buying a new or used EV. EVs in BC are PST exempt, so that saves you seven percent right off the top. A lot of used EVs are sold privately because there is no GST or PST attached to them. Dealers will still charge the five percent GST, plus documentation fees, which are a hundred percent profit.

Some good deals on small used EVs are the Chevy Bolt, which has good visibility, a two hundred horsepower motor, and a four hundred and twenty kilometer range. The BMW i3, twenty sixteen and up, with the nineteen-inch wheels, because there's no all-seasons available for the twenty-inch wheels. It has a hundred and thirty-five kilometer range, up to three hundred and eighty-five with a REX, on the twenty nineteen and up models.

The REX is basically a gas generator. They have a carbon fiber body, so they're very light. They also have some extra features like auto braking and adaptive cruise control as options, and LED headlights, so they're a very updated vehicle. For lower cost EVs, the Nissan Leaf, twenty twelve to twenty seventeen, should be a very good value.

You can typically find them for sometimes around ten thousand or less, and you can expect a hundred kilometer range. As they are passive-cooled batteries, they do deteriorate quite quickly and only get about seventy K range in the wintertime. So look out for these good deals, it can save you a lot of money in gas if you're driving around town quite frequently.

The Chinese EVs are coming over, I don't know much about them. I haven't seen any safety ratings. So until they actually get here and get tested, it's unknown at the moment. I know there's been some quality issues with them, but until people actually start using them, we really won't know much about those ones either.

There's going to be forty-nine thousand EVs allowed to be sold in Canada for the Chinese ones, so hopefully that'll bring the price down a bit, because they're going to sell them competitively. The auto industry is saying, well, the EV market's like 10% of our car sales, so we don't want to sell them too cheap, because we don't want to detract from our main bread and butter, which is the gas vehicles, which they make the most money off of, out of the maintenance and parts.

Shawn O'Hara: You see a lot of people buying the Chinese ones?

Dean Bennett: Well, they're not for sale yet in Canada.

Shawn O'Hara: No, but once they are, how will the uptake be?

Dean Bennett: I think the cost price is going to start around 30,000. The Chevy Bolt is coming out, it's probably going to be the high 30s, maybe 40,000 range, so they will be cheaper, so people will be attracted to those. And they do have some very sophisticated technology, which is going to attract people to them also.

So people may like that type of thing, and want to purchase them. So I think it will change the market here a bit. It's going to put more pressure on the car companies to start lowering prices. Honestly, EVs are much simpler. You've got a battery, a controller, a motor, very few moving parts compared to a gas car.

So yep, but once you sell them, that's it. There's very little the manufacturer's involved with afterwards.

Shawn O'Hara: And if the pricing is artificially high on, let's call them, the domestic EVs, then that would have to change, or they'll have to really promote that they're made in North America and not made in China.

Dean Bennett: Yeah, definitely do that. The rebate incentives, I mean, the US has discontinued them, but hopefully that will change down the road and come back again. But even with those incentives, this is a little bit on the side, but BC Hydro is offering the rebate on the chargers to install in your home, and it's $300.

But then you can buy a charger out of the US for way less than the cost savings, bring it up here, have it installed. So in some ways, having the rebate inflates the prices, because they're like, 'Oh, we know people are going to get a $5,000 rebate on this car,' so they're going to keep their prices a bit high.

And then you get the rebate off, so you're kind of paying almost the same in the end. So rebates, they are an incentive, but then it allows the manufacturers to kind of inflate prices at the same time. So I wouldn't be discouraged about rebates so much. And when you're purchasing an EV here in BC, apparently the dealers were saying that it was very hard to get the government rebate and the BC rebate at the same time, and there were only 1,000 rebates handed out in BC at that time.

So after they ran out, that was it.

Shawn O'Hara: There's quite a different mix of technologies. Is this sort of a sorting-through stage? Are we in the stage where they'll figure out what works better, and many will be similar?

Dean Bennett: Yeah, lithium ion is the main one. Lithium polymer is the other main one right now, so both using lithium. They're looking at sodium ion for batteries, there are manufacturers claiming they've actually made one that's viable. I know iron phosphate, Tesla's moving over to iron phosphate batteries, so they're not quite as... the biggest thing is density versus energy. You want to be able to get as many kilowatts as you can per kilogram of weight. Lithium ion, lithium polymer are the highest in that efficiency range. So there is going to be some shifting. Toyota's been playing with solid state batteries, which is going to have less effect from temperature for reduction in range.

So there's going to be changes, and that's why they're kind of like a cellphone almost, they get outdated. It's going to affect pricing. But we are seeing a lot higher range batteries now. I know with the BMW ones over the last 10 years, basically the range from the same type of battery formula, they've doubled the range on those batteries.

So they went from like a 140K range battery in the i3 in 2016 to, by the time 2021 came around, a 280 kilometer range on that same weight and size battery pack. So things have improved enough. But if you're buying one and you've got enough range to do what you want to do around town and travel, then it's probably going to be pretty good.

And, like I said, if they are liquid-cooled batteries, they're going to last a long time. You're going to get 200,000K out of them without too much worry.

Shawn O'Hara: You said earlier that driving a Tesla is like driving a cell phone.

Dean Bennett: Yeah.

Shawn O'Hara: What do you mean by that? Or a smartphone?

Dean Bennett: Well, they do have a lot of information on that center console. I've heard people saying that they looked at it and it was just too much, it was confusing to them. We're used to the basic dash, right? So there's a lot of information there. But it's like your cellphone screen's mounted in the center of your dash, like you're navigating your car, and there's no information in front of the driver at all.

So you're always having to look to that center console in those ones. If you want to get a Model S, they're over $100,000. They're actually discontinuing the Model S and the Model X, because now they're competing with other companies like Polestar, which is by Volvo, for the higher-end vehicles, which are much nicer appointed and fitted with nicer features.

So they're actually kind of discontinuing those two models because they're just overpriced for what you're getting. But the Ys and 3s, like I said, you've just got this one single cellphone screen in the middle, and you're having to look at it for everything. So if I bought a Tesla, I would buy an independent GPS heads-up display and stick it in front of me, just so I don't have to take my eyes off the road to watch my speed at least.

Shawn O'Hara: Oh, even speed. Okay.

Dean Bennett: Yeah. Yeah, they're kind of like a Yaris. Basically you have this one center dash with a speed indicator and the entire screen, and then you've got nothing in front of you.

Shawn O'Hara: What do you think is the future of EVs?

Dean Bennett: Future of EVs? Definitely they're going to get a lot more predominant. With climate change, it's something we really need to look at, because, reducing the environment, there are higher end polluters around than EVs, than vehicles right now, but it is a high consumption.

Our dependency on oil is so great that it affects everything. It affects food prices, because they have to truck those food prices in. It affects the price of other goods, because they're all being trucked in now. But we are starting to see some ones, like I saw a delivery van, I think it was a big Purolator van.

The thing was huge, it was probably at least a five-ton truck, that was an EV. They're getting semi trucks that are EVs, so it could be less dependent on the fuel to do those deliveries. But we're just too oil-dependent, and it affects the economy. So I see shifting away from that is going to help us a bit, but it's going to take a long time, because we need the infrastructure to charge these cars.

We need the facilities to repair them. If you get a Ford or GM car, you're probably going to take it to any Ford or GM dealer to get it fixed. If you get a Tesla, you're limited to what they have for service. Same with some of the other brands out there, like Rivian.

I don't know of a Rivian dealer even on Vancouver Island. They are a nice vehicle, but I don't know of anybody, any service centers on Vancouver Island for Rivian. So they have to get the infrastructure behind there. And the gas cars now, they all have that infrastructure, so the servicing is easy.

Yes, they do break down a lot more often. There's been so many issues with gas engines. Even Toyota and Honda have had their issues with gas engines that have had failure points. So there's going to be a lot more infrastructure that has to come into play here, in order to get EVs to be just that much more viable to drive across on the road.

And the efficiency, the more efficient these batteries get, if you reduce the weight, it can make a lot better efficiency of the battery, because if you can reduce the weight of the vehicle. For instance, the Ford Lightning is a 7,000 pound vehicle, where a standard truck is about 5,000, 5,500.

The Tesla is 7,000. The Tesla trucks are actually banned in England and parts of Europe. In England, it's because of the weight mostly. The rest of Europe is because the angles at the front of the car are so sharp that if you hit somebody, it can do a lot of damage to pedestrians, so they don't allow them because of that.

And in Ontario, one fellow was complaining that in the wintertime, the headlights are recessed slightly in from the bumper, and they'd fill up with snow instantly. He said every 30 minutes he had to pull over and clean off his headlights to keep driving. So they were not really designed for this type of climate here.

Shawn O'Hara: They were designed in California, where they don't have much snow.

Dean Bennett: Yes.

Yeah, that's right. So you have to look at a lot of those things. So it just, Cybertruck is very new, it's new technology, it's like the first shot at doing something kind of crazy like that, but it's having its flaws also at the same time. So there's kind of an evolution that we're going through right now, but EVs have been out since about, well, 2012.

The Prius has been around a lot longer than that, as a hybrid. So the technology's been here for quite a while to smooth things out. Nissan's been one of the longest players in EVs, with their Leaf coming out back in 2012.

Shawn O'Hara: Any other tech you see, like hydrogen, that could replace it, aside from the infrastructure issue?

Dean Bennett: They did make some hydrogen cars, and the problem is trying to fill one up, trying to find a station to fill up that hydrogen. And it was very dangerous because it's so cold, it would freeze your hand off if you touched it. I've seen the fill stations, there's a lot of precautionary processes in getting one filled up. They basically just discontinued them because there's just very little infrastructure.

And actually creating hydrogen is not very efficient. It takes about twice as much energy to convert water into hydrogen, or other fuels into hydrogen, than it is to actually pull gasoline or oil out of the ground. So it's a very clean product, you can get great range from it, but then you're carrying around a tank of hydrogen in a car, which can be very explosive.

If you remember the Hindenburg, that was hydrogen, not helium. And the infrastructure's just not there. You're still doing the same thing as you were with gas cars, you have to have distribution facilities, storage facilities, you have to have a gas station storing this energy. Where electricity, you're not storing anything, you're just taking it right from the source, putting it through some lines straight to the endpoint where you're charging.

So it's a reduced infrastructure in that way.

Shawn O'Hara: We have an issue where whatever we drive is going to burn or explode in a collision. It needs infrastructure, and it all has some degree of environmental impact, whether that's using energy to convert hydrogen, digging lithium and other minerals out of the ground, or burning fossil fuels and pumping that up.

Dean Bennett: Yes, definitely. And at least in BC we have hydroelectric, which is a lot lower impact environmentally. We're not using coal or something else, so we do have that advantage here.

Shawn O'Hara: Although we do build them out of concrete, which is a huge releaser of greenhouse gases.

Dean Bennett: Yes, but they last 50 years plus, a very long time. Look at the Hoover Dam, it was built back in, what was it, 1920-something. It was pretty old, and it's still standing.

The future is EVs, it's just going to take a while to get here. But if you want to drive something sustainable, less environmental impact, if you drive a lot of kilometers here, I'd say if you're driving like 20,000 kilometers here, it's probably not a bad investment to look into that, getting an EV for sure.

Shawn O'Hara: Where can people find out more?

Dean Bennett: One of the websites I like to check out is called Inside EVs, and it's I-N-S-I-D-E-E-V-S dot com. That one has a lot of information about EVs and their technology. The other one, for safety, is check the International Institute of Highway Safety, it's IIHS.org. They do more testing than the government does.

So they do, for instance, a front moderate overlap test, because typically you do not hit each other head-on in an accident, it's kind of the corner of each car, so they do that testing. They do rollover tests, a lot of other ones. So check out the safety of those ones. And then also check out the manufacturers, to see what the battery warranty is and what the coverage is.

Also your insurance, if you're getting insurance, are they going to cover the EV battery if, let's say, you go into a ditch, because that battery's along the entire bottom of the car. So if it does get bottomed out or hit something, is it going to be covered by your insurance? Because that is the most expensive part of an EV, the battery.

Shawn O'Hara: All right, and we will include that in the show notes.

Dean Bennett: Sounds good.

Shawn O'Hara: All right. My guest today has been a car enthusiast and certified electronics engineering technologist, Dean Bennett. And for your IT business, how can people get a hold of you?

Dean Bennett: They can check out my website, which is compu-tek.ca. It's spelled C-O-M-P-U, and then dash T-E-K dot ca. They can contact me from there. I actually have some tips on office setup. I focus mostly on business clients, but they can look there for some extra tips and some examples of work that we've done.

Been in this business for over 30 years, so I've got a lot of experience and a lot of happy clients.

Shawn O'Hara: Great. And if somebody's looking at a vehicle fleet, even going to an EV vehicle fleet, they could bring you in for their IT and to consult on their fleet purchase.

Dean Bennett: I could help them somewhat with that, in doing the research part. It's a big purchase, so you want to make sure you're making the right decision and getting the right information too. Don't be wowed by the bells and whistles on these things. They have a lot of them. Like I said, you've got to think that this is a car, from A to B, safety, drivability, those are important factors.

Shawn O'Hara: Great. Thank you so much for being here today, Dean.

Dean Bennett: Oh, you're welcome, Shawn.

Shawn O'Hara: And that's a wrap.

Show Notes

Compu-Tek Computer Services

InsideEVs.com - EV news and technology

IIHS.org - Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, vehicle safety ratings