Do electric cars catch fire more than petrol cars?
No. This is the most stubborn myth and the data flatly disagrees with it.
Petrol and diesel cars are roughly 20 times more likely to catch fire than EVs. Analysis cited by the Energy Saving Trust (2025) puts the chance of an EV catching fire at around 0.0012%, against roughly 1% for a petrol or diesel car.
UK fire service figures back this up. In London in 2023 there were 493 petrol car fires and 138 diesel car fires, compared with just 7 battery electric car fires (London Fire Brigade data, reported 2024). Across England in 2022 to 2023, of more than 19,000 vehicle fires, only 239 (0.24%) involved EVs.
The honest caveat: when an EV battery does ignite, it can be harder for firefighters to put out and can reoccur, which is why you hear about them. Rare event, loud headline. That is the real picture.
Do EVs lose all their range in winter?
No, but they do lose some, and this myth has a grain of truth.
Real-world UK testing shows a typical winter range loss of 15% to 25% in normal cold, stretching to 30% or more in a hard freeze with heavy heater use (WhatCar? winter testing 2024 to 2025; Recurrent winter studies 2025). Most of the loss is cabin heating, not the battery dying.
Two things soften it a lot: a heat pump (now standard on most new EVs) cuts winter consumption by around 10% to 15%, and preconditioning the car while it is still plugged in means you warm the cabin off the mains, not the battery.
In plain terms: a 250-mile EV might give you 190 to 210 miles on a cold January day. Annoying on a long motorway trip, irrelevant for the school run.
Are EVs actually worse for the environment?
No. Building an EV does create more emissions up front, mostly from the battery, but the car pays that back quickly and then keeps winning.
The ICCT 2025 lifecycle study found a battery electric car in Europe offsets its higher production emissions after roughly 17,000 km (about 10,500 miles), which is one to two years of normal driving. Over its full life, a typical EV produces around 73% lower greenhouse gas emissions than an equivalent petrol car (ICCT, July 2025).
Battery mining is a genuine concern worth taking seriously, and the industry is still improving on it. But over the whole life of the car, including manufacturing, the lifecycle numbers are not close. The EV wins comfortably.
Do EV batteries wear out and need replacing every few years?
No. This is one of the biggest gaps between fear and reality.
Geotab analysed more than 22,700 real-world EVs across 21 makes in its 2025 study and found average battery degradation of just 2.3% per year. On that trend the average battery still holds about 81.6% of its original capacity after eight years, and close to 75% after a dozen years.
Charging habits matter: cars that rarely use DC rapid chargers degraded at about 1.5% a year, while heavy rapid-charger users were nearer 2.5% to 3% (Geotab, 2025). On top of that, nearly every UK EV carries an 8-year / 100,000-mile battery warranty guaranteeing at least 70% capacity.
A full battery replacement on a modern EV is rare and usually a warranty job, not a bill you plan for.
Are EVs more expensive to run, insure and repair?
It is a mixed picture, and worth being honest about. To run: much cheaper. To insure: often a bit more. To repair after a crash: sometimes more.
Running cost: charging at home on an off-peak EV tariff (around 7p to 12p per kWh on the likes of Octopus Intelligent Go) works out at roughly 2p to 4p per mile. Petrol at 2026 pump prices is closer to 16p to 20p per mile (CostPerMile / PetrolPrices, 2026). For 8,000 miles a year that is a saving of roughly £1,000 to £1,600.
Insurance: EVs have run around 30% to 40% dearer to insure than petrol equivalents, though that gap has narrowed toward 10% to 15% in 2026 as insurers get better claims data (industry comparison data, 2026). Repair costs after an accident run about 25% higher and take around 14% longer, mainly because of battery-pack caution and a shortage of qualified technicians.
Servicing is the bright spot: no oil, filters, spark plugs or cambelt means routine servicing is typically 15% to 30% cheaper than petrol.
Can the grid cope if everyone switches to electric?
Yes. National Grid has said that if the entire country switched to EVs overnight, total electricity demand would rise by only about 10%.
That is the headline that surprises people: UK peak demand has actually fallen from a record 62GW in 2002 to around 44GW in 2023, thanks to efficient appliances and solar. Even fully electric, the country would still draw less power than it did in 2002.
The real challenge is timing, not total capacity. The worry is everyone plugging in at 6pm to 8pm. That is why all new home chargers must be smart by law, nudging charging to cheap overnight hours, and why vehicle-to-grid trials let EVs feed power back at peak.
Are EVs slow, useless for towing and no good for long trips?
No on speed, with caveats on towing and long trips.
EVs deliver instant torque, so even modest models out-accelerate similar petrol cars from a standstill. Performance is not the problem.
Towing is the fair caveat: many EVs are rated to tow (some up to 2,500kg+ like the BMW iX or Kia EV9), but towing a caravan can cut range by 30% to 50%, so you plan charging stops more carefully. Long trips are very doable: most modern EVs rapid-charge from 10% to 80% in around 20 to 40 minutes, which lines up neatly with a coffee and comfort break on a motorway run.
Is there nowhere to charge?
Not any more. The UK passed 121,000 public charging points by the end of May 2026, across nearly 47,000 locations, and the network grew by tens of thousands of devices in the past year (Zapmap, 2026).
Ultra-rapid chargers (150kW+) are the fastest-growing type, up around 40% year on year. Apps like Zapmap show live availability so you can see a free charger before you set off.
The honest gap is home charging for the third of UK households without a driveway. That is improving with on-street and workplace charging plus a grant of up to £500 toward a charger for flats and rented homes (GOV.UK / OZEV, from April 2026), but it is still the area where EV life is least frictionless today.