An aerial view of the Consumer Reports test track in Connecticut.
Consumer Reports
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Consumer Reports
An aerial view of the Consumer Reports test track in Connecticut.
Consumer Reports
Along a painstakingly maintained stretch of asphalt road in rural Connecticut, Ryan Pzolkowski parked his Rivian electric pickup truck at the start of a long, straight drive. After a while, he slammed him to the ground.
The truck jumped forward, the engine was almost silent, and the tires screeched very loudly. Pszczolkowski looked in the rearview mirror.
“If you look in the mirror, you can actually see the rubber on the track,” he said. “Just taking off like that, rubbing it in. It’s incredible.”
Pszczolkowski is the tire guy at Consumer Reports, a nonprofit that has been evaluating new cars since 1936. He believes a lot About rubber. Recently, he’s had to think a little more about electric cars, like Rivian.
Everyone at Consumer Reports has. The world is trying to transition away from fossil fuels to combat climate change. And as the auto industry shifts toward battery-powered vehicles — with more than 70 new electric vehicles launching in the next two years — product testers are having to shift gears, too.
At the Consumer Reports Auto Test Facility — a former race track that has been heavily modified to add turns and new equipment — employees can test acceleration, braking and handling away from public streets. On the lap, Pszczolkowski points out that the Rivian’s large, heavy battery on the bottom gives it better cornering control, but all that weight takes its toll on the car’s tires.
Consumer Reports purchases dozens of cars a year (undercover, to avoid special treatment) before testing them on the track and public roads. As the nonprofit adds more and more electric vehicles, it has had to update some of its testing and evaluations.
How is EV testing different?
“We were testing electric vehicles in a very similar way to regular cars, which is good,” says Alex Knezek, director of automotive testing and insights. “But in the end, we left a lot of things on the table.” “There are a lot of unique aspects of electric vehicles that by doing this, we weren’t necessarily capturing.”
The electric vehicle is being charged outside of Consumer Reports’ automotive testing facility. The organization has begun adding EV-specific tests to its evaluations.
Camila Domonowski/NPR
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Camila Domonowski/NPR
The electric vehicle is being charged outside of Consumer Reports’ automotive testing facility. The organization has begun adding EV-specific tests to its evaluations.
Camila Domonowski/NPR
So Consumer Reports is now evaluating things like how easy it is to plug and unplug a car, how well the in-car app directs you to the charger — and of course, how long the vehicle can actually drive on a single charge.
For this rating, Knezek explains, a tester takes the car on the highway, sets the cruise control to 70 mph and then… takes off. For hours.
“We drive that car from full to empty,” he says. “I mean, pulling the car back to the track Empty“.
In those tests, some cars exceeded their EPA rated range. Others failed.
Cataloging car owners’ problems with electric vehicles
In addition to testing vehicles, Consumer Reports also surveys its subscribers about their experiences owning vehicles, and the number of problems they have encountered. These surveys indicate that today’s electric cars have 79% more problems than gas-powered cars, says Jake Fisher, who runs Consumer Reports’ auto testing program.
Problems vary. For established automakers like General Motors, that tends to be the case electrical Things – motors, batteries, or software to control them. Which makes sense, Fisher says: Imagine if the auto industry had been making electric cars for a century and then suddenly decided to start making gas-powered cars.
“I will guarantee you it will be full of problems because all this technology is new,” he says.
Meanwhile, newer automakers, like Rivian and Lucid, have been going electric since day one. But it struggles with the basic issues of the auto industry: Do the door handles work properly, and do the seals really close?
Fisher describes these problems as growing pains. He points to Tesla, which had the same kind of problems in its first few years of mass production — but has improved dramatically.
“It will get resolved,” Fisher says.
In fact, in the long term, electric vehicles are expected to be more reliable than conventional vehicles, because they have fewer moving parts. He sees a lot to like in electric vehicles on the market today — even apart from the fact that their lower emissions make them an essential part of the fight against climate change.
“They’re incredibly fast. They’re incredibly quiet. They’re effortless in terms of the way they drive,” he says.
Outside where we spoke, cones marked a stretch of parking lot where Consumer Reports was installing more electric vehicle chargers. They already had plugs for more than a dozen cars, but they were all full, and the organization had more electric vehicles on the way next year.
It’s a reminder that while cars may take it easy, it takes a lot of effort — from new chargers to new tests — to keep up with the auto industry’s dramatic shift toward electric vehicles.