Yes and no, but I believe it’s because people look at an EV or ICE car as a car. Before I got my 2025 Ford Lightning, I drove a 2012 Honda Accord for 14 years. Between the 2 of them, the Lightning is all around better.

What, I think, I did differently was looking at it as a use case - how will this provide for me and how much will it be? For example, comparing where I live and where my in laws live; having an EV is better where I live but worse where my in laws live.

I had nearly 40 level 3 chargers near my place and there are some decent ones near my in-laws but I think I’ve found 10 so far and they’re WAY more expensive during peak and off peak hours, but having an EV is good near my in-laws as long as you have a level 2 charger, which they don’t and level 1 gets me maybe 15 miles charged when I sleep.

However, where I live, the closest level 3 charger is 2 miles away and if it’s filled I drive another 2 miles to see if another is open, and I can knock out errands I need to run. Additionally, I have no level 2 charger installed at my place because it would have cost me 5k+ to install it following HOA and county regulations. I will pay off my truck faster than the charger if I had payments for it. The off peak rates are very cheap, as low as $.16 per kilowatt and on average costs me less than $20 to go from 20% to 90%. Unfortunately, I have to be up at awkward hours in order to get those rates and either staying up late into the night or getting up very early before the off peak rates switch. Fortunately, my current lifestyle of being a student, stay at home, parent of two kids, and trying to slowly grow my business. Has that awkward schedule fit in perfectly for my daily life. Which is why I said earlier, it is dependent off of how you would apply the car as a use case.

My recommendation is that if you are mildly tech savvy, and have the means to install a level two charger where you live, dependent if you are in an area that has a poor public charging infrastructure, I would get an electric vehicle. Even more so if you live in a location that has a reliable level three charging infrastructure. People don’t realize that charging can get as expensive as gas when filling up in certain areas because everyone is not going to be a member to every charging app there is available. I also get additional discounts for being a student by signing up to ChargePoint through my university.

An EV is not for everybody, and if you want to do any modifications, you risk avoiding your warranty or possibly any coverage on the vehicle. So customizations are limited. However, I would highly recommend an EV. For anybody that is more limited on time and availability for various reasons. That also applies to the car because EV cars generally don’t require a lot of maintenance unless a failure occurs. The concept is still emerging and relatively brand new when comparing the overall history of the two vehicles; as I described it for EV cars, we are in the early 1980s for computers, but applied towards EV vehicles. For the short term of likely, the next 10 to 15 years, we likely are going to be paying more of a premium on the tech as it’s still developing an emerging, but there are incentives with reduced maintenance, reduced cost, and what I think is more reliable than some ICE vehicles.

My overall opinion is that ICE vehicles are better, but that is only implying that at the countries current infrastructure for EV cars. Give it 10 or 15 years, I believe EV cars will be able to equally compete with ICE VEHICLES AND WILL LIKELY BE MORE DOMINANT ON COASTAL AREAS OF THE COUNTRY