Inaccurate Article from The Sun Newspaper (Who Would Have Guessed)?

[Jonno21]

Article by:

"Shanine Bruder is an SEO Journalist and Live Blog Reporter at The Sun, covering a range of topics from News to Showbiz. She specialises in UK News. Shanine joined the SEO desk in 2022, after earning a Journalism and Media degree from Bangor University and a Journalism Masters degree from Leeds Trinity University."

I contend that the degree she "earned" is worthless as no proper research was carried out. (Which for The Sun must be a quality to be employed as a "journalist") Read it and weep:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/motors/20274631/fined-electric-car-runs-out-of-charge/

1. The number of electric charging points is wrong, "15,500 locations"

https://www.zap-map.com/october-35000-charging-points/#more-163730

More relevant to report number of points rather than locations or did she mean locations to mean points?

2. "Stopping in the road". Well, you could in theory be fined if your fossil car ran out of fuel by Shanine's logic

3.
Can you jumpstart an electric car?

The answer is yes - it is possible to jumpstart an electric car.

And jumpstarting an electric vehicle is no different to that of a traditional vehicle.
However, there are a few important things to keep in mind before you do so.
You cannot jumpstart an electric vehicle using another EV.
You also are restricted from using a traditional car engine to jumpstart an EV.
To jumpstart an electric car, you must use a traditional diesel or petrol car, or a battery starter, along with the correct jump leads.

Just be sure to consult your car’s manual to find where your batteries are located.

The manual will also provide you with a guide on how to attach the jump leads."

Where do I start?

EV's can't be jump started, but some cars will let you plug in to another car to charge the low battery. You can't physically jump start an EV from a fossil car. She makes it sound as though it's a legislative requirement.

Here's the killer, which I've highlighted in bold. Yes, let's connect 12v jumpleads to a high voltage EV battery.

What a load of drivel.

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[CHrisw4266]

What a surprise a right wing Tory rag, trashing EV cars. Wonder how much the oil companies lean on these awful gutter press red tops.
Also no one who works for the Sun can ever call them selves a journalist

 

[Jonno21]

What a surprise a right wing Tory rag, trashing EV cars. Wonder how much the oil companies lean on these awful gutter press red tops.
Also no one who works for the Sun can ever call them selves a journalist

Yes, no matter what your politics the article is inaccurate. As a disclaimer and to preserve what integrity I've got left for seeing this article I did not actively seek out this story, it popped up on my phone.

 

[Mach-Lee]

To be fair, neither the article nor you is making it clear which battery would be jump started, LV or HV? You can jump start the 12V battery in an EV from a ICE vehicle, but you can’t jump start the HV battery obviously. The Mach-E owner’s manual discusses the steps for a 12V jump start.

 

[MellowJohnny]

Also no mention of this service, which was the first I’d ever seen:

RAC EV Boost

No need for a tow! Saw it used in one of the Carwow range test videos - they ran a bunch of cars completely to zero, and one needed a roadside recharge.

I have to think this will catch on in the rest of the world…

 

[Motomax]

To be fair, neither the article nor you is making it clear which battery would be jump started, LV or HV? You can jump start the 12V battery in an EV from a ICE vehicle, but you can’t jump start the HV battery obviously. The Mach-E owner’s manual discusses the steps for a 12V jump start.

Since the article is more or less comparing it to a gas car I would have to assume they mean the LV battery (jump starting a gas car doesn’t give you more gas). Although I don’t understand the “restricted from using traditional car engines” line followed by you must use a traditional petrol engine - isn’t that the same thing? Must be a UK thing…

I don’t see anything super wrong with the article aside from just playing on peoples range fears for click baiting. Yes you can get a ticket for blocking traffic in any vehicle (At least in the US). I think charge point location vs # of charge points is pretty irrelevant. The real number to look at would be distance between charge points.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

The Sun is still in business? That “paper” was banned from my grandparents house in England. I never bothered even glancing at it on my business trips to the U.K.

 

[Jonno21]

To be fair, neither the article nor you is making it clear which battery would be jump started, LV or HV? You can jump start the 12V battery in an EV from a ICE vehicle, but you can’t jump start the HV battery obviously. The Mach-E owner’s manual discusses the steps for a 12V jump start.

The premise of the article is that you've run out of electricity and drained the battery which has got to be the HV battery, therefore you can't start the car by jump starting as there's no energy in the HV battery to start with. Of course this would be the same in an ICE car if you ran out of fuel as there's no point in jump starting it as the tank is empty. If the "journalist" hasn't made it clear than they don't deserve to be called one. I don't think they could make the distinction between the HV and LV battery anyway as they probably think the car runs on the 12v battery.

As a US resident you haven't had the "privilege" of reading articles in the UK Sun newspaper. The journalist caters for the readership...

 

[Jonno21]

The Sun is still in business? That “paper” was banned from my grandparents house in England. I never bothered even glancing at it on my business trips to the U.K.

Yes it's even worse with the online version. I've tried to stop the push notifications to my phone, usually from Upday (comes with a Samsung phone) but can't filter out the trash. There are some occasionally interesting electric car stories though so I haven't deleted the app. Some of my friends still mourn the loss of Page 3... I just have to have a strong BS filter when I meet with them.

 

[Vulnox]

Yeah I notice this kind of broken logic in a lot of EV arguments. There aren't as many lines of division in EVs as with ICE vehicles, so things tend to get lumped together. With an ICE vehicle you have so many points of failure, radiator, engine, transmission, clutches, differentials, etc. On an EV you have some of those items or equivalent ideas, like the battery/motor cooling. But overall things are far simpler at a high level.

So when someone thinks of electricity, they don't differentiate 12v from HVB because they can only look at it at a high level, which the article author seems to be doing.

You can jump the 12v battery as was noted. You can even do the equivalent of siphoning "fuel" from one vehicle to another if the donor vehicle has a system for doing so! My F-150 has 7.2kW ProPower, so I could give our MME some "fuel" even easier than I could give another ICE F-150 fuel because of the anti siphoning tech in modern vehicles. A Lightning could give our MME "fuel" in the same way. Far safer than you could siphon fuel from ICE vehicles too.

If you do a fair Pro/Cons list for ICE vs EV, about the only thing legitimately left on the Pro ICE column is speed of refueling and range when towing. But they really don't want to talk about that.

 

[Jonno21]

Yeah I notice this kind of broken logic in a lot of EV arguments. There aren't as many lines of division in EVs as with ICE vehicles, so things tend to get lumped together. With an ICE vehicle you have so many points of failure, radiator, engine, transmission, clutches, differentials, etc. On an EV you have some of those items or equivalent ideas, like the battery/motor cooling. But overall things are far simpler at a high level.

So when someone thinks of electricity, they don't differentiate 12v from HVB because they can only look at it at a high level, which the article author seems to be doing.

You can jump the 12v battery as was noted. You can even do the equivalent of siphoning "fuel" from one vehicle to another if the donor vehicle has a system for doing so! My F-150 has 7.2kW ProPower, so I could give our MME some "fuel" even easier than I could give another ICE F-150 fuel because of the anti siphoning tech in modern vehicles. A Lightning could give our MME "fuel" in the same way. Far safer than you could siphon fuel from ICE vehicles too.

If you do a fair Pro/Cons list for ICE vs EV, about the only thing legitimately left on the Pro ICE column is speed of refueling and range when towing. But they really don't want to talk about that.

Yes it's the quality of journalism (or lack of in this case). It's obvious that little research was carried out and was written to fill some space. Some news articles can be informative and balanced pointing out the pros and cons of EVs and ICE vehicles. This particular UK newspaper isn't noted for balance or quality but sensationalism and tittle tattle and gossip.

 

[Djmc321]

I don’t see anything super wrong with the article aside from just playing on peoples range fears for click baiting.

I mean their title is (tellingly, but also depressingly) "SEO Journalist", from that perspective they've done a great job. Especially as this thread alone will drive more SEO traction to that page.

 

[mkhuffman]

I fully agree that the quality of the article and the journalist's work is low. I would advise the article's author to learn to do fundamental research, which will be filled with natural and convincing facts. Every author should feel responsible for what he presents to readers. If he lacks the appropriate skills, he can turn to specialists to teach him how to write correctly. I did this when I needed to prepare math assignments. I realized I could not do it and turned to this for help. I deprived myself of doing something wrong. There are now a wealth of resources to improve the skills of every journalist. If I wanted a quality result, I decided to do my math homework this way. I'm sure anyone can do the same.

And yet most journalists don't.

 

[macchiaz-o]

I fully agree that the quality of the article and the journalist's work is low. I would advise the article's author to learn to do fundamental research, which will be filled with natural and convincing facts. Every author should feel responsible for what he presents to readers. If he lacks the appropriate skills, he can turn to specialists to teach him how to write correctly. I did this when I needed to prepare math assignments. I realized I could not do it and turned to this for help. I deprived myself of doing something wrong. There are now a wealth of resources to improve the skills of every journalist. If I wanted a quality result, I decided to do my math homework this way. I'm sure anyone can do the same.

Thank you, SpamGPT.

 

[kevgallacher]

The last part of the article says

“EV experts all agree that the vehicle needs to have at least 50% battery before a driver considers parking the vehicle.”

I have never heard this why do you need 50% to park. That doesn’t seem very practical at all. It’s not like the car loses much energy while parked.

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