Electric vehicles (also known as EVs) were advertised as a quick and easy way to exchange fossil fuels for renewable energy. However, EVs have recently been a disappointment. 

EVs aren’t a new thing. The first battery-powered vehicle was created in 1832 by a Scottish inventor named Robert Anderson, who created the Electric Carriage.

One of the most well-known and annoying auto manufacturers, Tesla. Tesla started out promising with their early cars such as the Tesla Roadster which had an undoubtedly beautiful design. The 2008 Tesla Roadster was immediately iconic, venturing out into space when Tesla CEO Elon Musk launched one into space via a SpaceX rocket. 

While the roadster was certainly an impressive milestone in Electric cars, The true success for Tesla would be determined by their first entry into the sedan market with the nearly-affordable Model S. The Model S’ original years of production were uneventful and unimpressive as the Model S had poor build quality; There were numerous panel gaps all over the Ambitus sedan. However, as the production of the Model S went on Tesla was able to fix most panel gaps.

Then there’s the batteries, EV batteries aren’t very repairable as they aren’t very mechanical, this means more times than not when a battery breaks, it’s dead. This also means that in the event your Tesla battery gives up the ghost, you could be paying upwards of $28,000 or more.

But Tesla’s first real and widely successful car was the Tesla Model X, Tesla’s first Electric SUV. It was incredibly successful and promising, making YouTube micro-celebrities like David Dobrick and Jake Paul spend thousands of dollars on their Model Xs.

Tesla went on to produce the Model 3 and the Model Y which look very similar. These two entry-level models were also quite popular but not as popular as the Model X which had a worldwide sensation on release.

But now we have the penultimate Tesla, the Tesla Semi truck. Which was announced with great fanfare but has since been mostly forgotten. Nothing really remarkable has happened with the Semi truck and it lays currently as an excuse for one man to start his own electric semi truck company, he has a YouTube channel called Edison Motors and his company started when Tesla didn’t deliver his Semi truck which he had ordered years before he started making his own semi-trucks. His semi trucks are refurbished and resto-modded vintage semi-trucks and he has gained quite an impressive fanbase.

But one Tesla everybody has heard about is the supposedly bulletproof Tesla Cybertruck. This big geometric vomit-inducing mousetrap was introduced to a disappointing yet Tesla sensational beginning when the bulletproof window shattered when a steel ball was thrown at it. This problem was later confirmed by Tesla as an accident created when they tested the door panel before the glass which resulted in the door panel cracking the bottom of the glass window.

The Cybertruck was then put onto a waitlist where thousands applied to owning one when announced in 2019, with hopes that Cybertrucks would be delivered by 2021, however, that was extended to 2023 meaning Cybertruck buyers had to wait five years to get their trucks.

And once the Cybertruck was on the road many Cybertruck owners started reporting problems. Like how the design of the retractable cover over the truck bed is easily breakable and will get stuck in the down position meaning that the rear window and the center rearview mirror were rendered useless, making the geometrical truck more dangerous to drive.

Another interesting fact about the Cybertruck is its body design, the truck’s body is made from stainless steel which was advertised as something innovative even though stainless steel bodies were introduced by the DeLorean DMC12 in the 1980s. The truck is also built like a tank, literally, a Tesla Cybertruck forum post by user Known-Background shows the result of what happened to a Cybertruck after it had hit a deer going 50 mph. There was only a small dent on the front and no damage anywhere else.

So many new cars self-destruct when in a crash for one major reason, the vehicle is supposed to take the impact of the crash otherwise the occupants will, this reduces the injuries of drivers and passengers. This is why cars have crumple zones. In the photo of the Forum post, the Cybertruck only has a slight body dent in the front meaning that if it had crashed into anything stronger than the deer, the driver would take the brunt of the impact.

Another very evident and unfortunate issue with the Cybertruck is the engineering behind the steering. The front axles are connected to the steering wheel by a single wire that uses feedback of the steering wheel to turn the front wheels of the car. A video of an ambitious Cybertruck owner who modified their truck with off-road equipment demonstrates the problem when the wire snaps, the right wheel gets stuck in the left turning position as the left wheel turns to the right turning position. This major issue was discovered by a YouTuber called Supercar Ron after an off-roading session.

This problem could easily be blamed on the modifications made by the owner, however many truck owners like to add some off-road modifications to their trucks this trend has caused many truck manufacturers to make trucks with that in mind. This does raise the question of if Tesla made their truck with their customer’s personal modifications in mind.

The Cybertruck also has a questionable design with the frunk. The frunk is able to shut on its own, This is nifty sure, but it’s also dangerous. Youtuber Jeremy Judkins discovered how dangerous this is when he tested the feature, the first time it senses something, it opens to let the mistake be corrected, however the second time it senses something the frunk will attempt to close with more pressure which can and did injure somebody. Jeremy’s test powered through a series of vegetables, all of which the Cybertruck cut through, he finally decided to use his finger for the test which ended up being injured.

Jeremy Judkins also discovered many minor errors with the Cybertruck that I’ll list here. The charger gets stuck and the manual release is in the rear fender, Jeremy ends up breaking the trim of the truck trying to get to the manual release. The Cybertruck also has a manual release in the bed of the truck for if you get shut in it with the cover down, however, it’s very difficult to find and needlessly complicated.

But it’s not just the Cybertruck either, the Rivian truck has a fairly short bed and doesn’t have any extra options for bed size meaning that it isn’t an ideal vehicle for people who have to tow large loads or haul long and heavy items like wood or metal.

The forgotten Fisker Ocean which stunned many EV enthusiasts with its inbuilt solar panels in the roof had also been the last thing Fiskr tried before the company went bankrupt, the second Fisker car to fail after the Fisker Karma, a two-door hybrid sports car that was plagued with problems and caused its production to halt after just one year.

No matter the company making the EV it always seems to have some issues with their EVs, several have low range, poor build quality, or the several problems plaguing the Cybertruck.  We were promised a better and more affordable way of saving the environment and reducing our carbon footprint, but most EVs are more expensive than combustion-powered cars, and many are even less reliable than an average gas-powered car like the Toyota Camry. 

Although, in the interest of fairness, I’ll give credit where it’s due. There are some very successful and reliable EVs. For example the Nissan Leaf; a frog-looking endeavor into the electric world made by Nissan to create a cheap and easy way for the public to get their hands on an EV (This is a link to the all-new Nissan Leaf coming next year). Then there’s Rimac, famous for giving the metaphorical keys to their rare electric supercar to ex-Top Gear presenter and now Grand Tour presenter Richard Hammond who crashed the car during a time trial on a Swiss hillside road, Rimac now has a hypercar, which has over 2,100 horsepower which can hit 0-60 in just over one second, this inane beast is the Nevera R (Here is a link to the insanity). Now personally in my totally unbiased opinion, I believe that these are brilliant cars and are definitely worth a shot.

While Tesla is the most annoying car brand, they have had several successes in their various endeavors. For example, while their cars did have problems, there is no denying that most cars they’ve created before the Cybertruck aren’t actually bad cars and are reportedly very fun to drive, they’re just expensive in nearly every manner of the word.

But this doesn’t change the fact that the EV has been a problematic answer to our ever-growing fossil fuel issues and is not what we were promised.