I’m writing this as a post, rather than as a very long comment on Marilyn Armstrong’s post from earlier today, “Electrifying Everything.” I encourage you to read Marilyn’s very well written post before reading this post. Go ahead. I’ll wait a few minutes for you to do that and return.
Ah, welcome back. Yes, as Marilyn said, EVs are not the answer, the panacea, that will save the planet from climate change. Yes, the cost of EVs needs to come down to where they are comparable to similarly equipped gas-powered cars. And that will happen sooner, rather than later. And yes, our government and the transportation industry need to address the dearth of fast charging stations outside of big cities (and even in big cities). Fast charging stations need to be as ubiquitous as are gas pumps today.
But, as an EV owner for almost three years now, I’d like to address two claims about EVs that I think are misleading. First is the claim that people don’t like the way electric cars are built.
I don’t understand how not liking the way they are built can be an issue. Most electric cars on the market (excluding Tesla) are built by Ford, GM, Chrysler, VW, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, Honda, BMW, Audi, etc. These are the same companies that build traditional gas-powered cars. So what’s behind people not liking how EVs are built when they are built by the same companies as traditional cars? There is ONE study (and the only such study I could find) from Consumer Reports that claims that the reliability of EVs is less than that of gas-powered vehicles. That same study said that the reliability of plug-in hybrids is even worse. But I’ve had my EV for almost three years and have had zero reliability issues.
Second, people are allegedly concerned about the “expensive maintenance issues that are part of the package.”
The truth is that EV maintenance costs are way lower than that of comparable gas-powered cars. EVs have fewer moving parts than gas cars. There are no oil changes, and regenerative braking reduces wear on traditional brakes. Again, I have paid zero dollars in maintenance costs for my EV since I drove it off the lot on August 12, 2022. Zero dollars!
So, yes, the EV alone is not going to end climate change. It’s not meant to be THE solution to climate change. But EVs emit zero pollutants into the atmosphere, and once the price of EVs come down and once charging stations are readily available nationwide, that zero emissions fact will have a positive affect on our climate.
We just need the fossil fuel industry and the GOP politicians to agree to support — rather than fight tooth and nail — the migration to EVs from gas guzzlers. If that could happen, we will go a long way toward cleaner air and maybe even be able to slow down the inevitable catastrophe that climate change will have.
As a nation, we should be encouraging people to buy electric vehicles when and where it makes sense. We need to stop giving people excuses for not considering driving an EV just because some consider EVs to not be the one solution that will halt climate change. How naive can you be?
Image credit: https://blog.evsolutions.com.
This, That, and the Other 
I have to agree that the technology has improved. The issue I have is charging a car. Living in rural Australia, the distances I can drive require charging station and I have to have the time for the charge as well. Into a servo, fill up, pay, drive off in less than 10 minutes usually.
Infrastructure for home charging is expensive.
Maybe a hybrid if I have to get rid of my ute
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You’re right that charging an EV should be as easy and convenient as pulling into a gas station and filling up a tank with gas. And as battery technologies improve and if the fossil fuel companies would permit fast charging stations to be co-located at gas stations along with fuel pumps, it might, someday, be easier for people to use EVs. But a lot has to change, including attitudes about EVs.
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When my younger son got his license two years back, he told us he is never going to learn to pump gas! He would be just buying an EV when he can. We are sending him to college so we still have not invested in it. I think the younger generation is not going to be attached to the gas guzzling vehicles. They will be buying Electric vehicles and I am pretty positive about it.
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The wave of the future?
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Expensive repairs because they can ONLY be done at a dealer and work done at a dealer costs much more than at a smaller shop and requires (at least around here) a long wait time. If you don’t have any repairs, you are lucky, but it doesn’t mean you won’t have repairs in the future. To be fair, dealers are doing their best to make small shops unable to do any work other than oil changes and tire rotation. We voted it down, but they keep making changes that make working on any car since around 2015 impossible.
What’s wrong with the design? Total dependence on batteries. I don’t know the current policy, but last I knew companies usually will insure batteries for no more than three years. Batteries are wildly expensive. Maybe you’ll get a car that never needs a serious repair, but the batteries will run out. My son works in a shop that fixes cars. Many people do need repairs and IF you do, they are very expensive. Much more expensive that they were for older cars. Maybe it depends on which car you buy. Maybe if you pay a lot more, you have fewer repairs? That might or might not be true.
Personally, I object to how we plunder third world nations to get the materials to make the batteries. They don’t have to worry about the damage they do over there. It’s not, after all, done here — so who cares, right?
My believe is that we should be putting much more money into public transportation. If you don’t live in a city, you probably have zero no public transportation. You have to own a car. How stupid is it that the train passes through this town, but doesn’t stop? What was the train station is now an insurance office. There WERE buses and trains in this town right through the 1960s. Now there is nothing.
There has got to be a way to convince people they don’t need to drive everywhere — IF there is public transportation. The power needed to move trains has got to be less than the power needed to run millions of cars.
I’m sure we’ll never get rid of private transportation — nor would I want that anyway. But, we can’t endlessly add to the number of cars on the road and in those giant heaps of rusting autobodies. We can’t endlessly expand and expect to save anything.
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When I bought my 1982 Saab Turbo 900 and took it to my local gas station for a minor service, he opened the hood, scratched his head and told me to take the car to a dealer because he had no idea how to work on a turbocharged car engine. Yes, the dealer was more expensive than the local guy, but within a few years, even local guys could work on turbocharged engines. Eventually, as demand requires it, the ability to work on electric cars will filter down to local guys.
You wrote, “What’s wrong with the design? Total dependence on batteries. I don’t know the current policy, but last I knew companies usually will insure batteries for no more than three years.” When I bought my 2022 Hyundai Kona EV in August of 2021, the overall car warranty was 3 years or 36,000 miles. But the battery warranty was 10 years from date of purchase, or to August 12, 2031. I’ll either be dead by then or I’ll be 85 and probably won’t be driving much, if at all, at that age. So I’m not personally worried about my EVs battery. But I’m sure that battery costs and technology by 2031 will be head and shoulders better than what they are today.
You talk about public transportation. When I lived in San Francisco, public transportation was great. Between city buses, trains, and the subway, I could get just about anywhere in the city by public transit. But now I live 34 miles east of San Francisco and public transport is non-existent. And the nearest BART (subway) station is 9 miles from my house. According to a recent comprehensive study, the average U.S. rail project costs about $170 million per mile of track. For context, highway construction costs per lane-mile are typically around $25 million. So perhaps instead of investing $1.7 billion to lay 10 miles of train tracks, we should invest that money in developing less expensive, longer-lasting, more efficient EV car batteries and in making fast-charging EV stations available all over the country, including small towns like where you live.
I’m not saying ignore public transportation. But the internal combustion engine is a big factor in contributing to climate change. If, as you rightly say, “we’ll never get rid of private transportation,” then let’s be smart about that fact and encourage people to migrate from gas-guzzlers to EVs. The more people demand EVs, the quicker the marketplace and the infrastructure will accommodate that demand. But retarding demand by whining about what EVs aren’t yet will only prolong the transition to zero-emission vehicles and to cleaner air.
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Except for one thing: You can lay all the road you want and I still won’t be able to get into town without someone driving me there. There comes a point for many of us when we just don’t feel safe driving. For me, that came after the first heart surgery. First it was the omg pain. After that, it was the poor attention span which is often a side effect of heart surgery. It takes years to get over it by which time, you are years older and sometimes, that’s just too much older.
Now, I probably could drive again, but I’m recently out of heart surgery and I don’t feel safe until I’m sure I’m healed.
The other thing is that roads, unless we build them as well as the Romans did, don’t last. It’s amazing how many Roman roads are still usable when the last repaving of the Mass Pike (2 years ago) has completely disintegrated.
Rails last a whole lot longer than roads. Besides, they don’t have to build just rail. Public transportation can be many things — ALL of them cheaper than automobiles, however they are powered. How about rails for distant travel but In towns, trolleys and electric mini buses. How about electric school buses?
How about we figure out how to build generators to charge all these electric thingies so we won’t undo all the good we’re doing by electrifying everything. We are going to be in deep doo-doo as the pressure on our grid gets ever deeper without upping the power availability.
America has no plan. I bet no one really has a functional plan. We lack the leaders we need and if we had them, we probably wouldn’t elect them anyway because Faux News won’t approve.
We don’t have a clue what we are going to do. I look at the weather, the heat, the tornadoes, the melting ice, the white sharks cruising along Cape Cod, the endless habitat destruction, not to mention the insanely high electric bills — WITHOUT an electric car.
Really — what’s next?
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I hear you, Marilyn. It’s a big problem that is just going to get worse because one party uniformly blocks progress and the other party is too busy quibbling between progressives and moderates to put up any kind of united front. We are doomed.
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I wish I didn’t agree, but sadly, I do.
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And thank you for the mention! It think many people believe that buying an electric car means they can relax. They’ve done their bit. If only that were true!
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It’s a part, but a very small part.
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I really wish all it would take is buying the right car. It would make everybody happy, especially the people who manufacture cars. Yes, they need to bring prices down, need to reduce the size of batteries (which I do expect to see since they are already half the size they were when originally introduced) — and make charging much faster so if you are on the move, you can recharge and move on without an overnight stay.
Regardless, the price is so far out of our range that I can’t even think about it AND my house wouldn’t be able to do it because it’s a 1973 house which pretty much says it all.
We need so many things to happen before anything is made right. I have a lot of trouble believing I will live to see any of it.
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I get it, Marilyn, and like you, I probably won’t be around when the transition from gas cars to EVs will be well underway. But for the sake of our children and grandchildren, I think I need to speak out and do everything I can to change minds and encourage people to jump on the EV bandwagon. I admit that EVs are not a panacea, but we’ve got to quit dumping on EVs just because they are not yet everything we ultimately want them to be.
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I want to see some semblance of a plan. Look at the killing heat in Mexico. The tornadoes. The melting ice. Endless habit destruction.
I really believe many people who buy electric cars — NOT everyone but many — feel just buying one is enough. They are still waiting for climate change to start. I’m waiting for the climate to start killing us in big enough groups that even Republicans notice.
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I bought an electric car but I know that in the scheme of things when it comes combating climate change, it barely registers. But if the U.S. (government and industry REALLY got behind electric cars and took steps to address the issues that you and I have been talking about over the past few days, the widespread adoption of zero-emission vehicles could potentially move the needle on combating climate change.
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Chinese folks don’t seem to have a problem switching to EVs and they are cheap and presumably reliable. The US tariffs placed on them is putting them out of reach of North Americans though.
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I think EVs are only part of the process, it also depends on how you generate the electricity that goes into it. But importantly, EV-owners have gotten themselves out of that emissions-generating loop.
Now to put pressure on the power companies.
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We also need to take the politics out of it. It’s not helpful when politicians spread fear and misinformation. “It will be the end of the Sunday drive.” “They will force you to get rid of your car.” “Only EV’s will be allowed on the road.” That kind of scare tactic just gets people’s backs up. The Murdoch media love to spread this stuff too.I think it will come by generational change.
By the way we have a electric car in our veteran car collection at the Wynyard Visitor Centre. I believe it was built in 1896.
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Yes, I’ve read about a few electric cars that were built around that time, but I guess they got pushed aside by the proponents of the internal combustion folks.
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Yes, they did.
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Interesting thoughts. What concerns me most about EVs is the battery issue. Manufacture and more so, what happens to them when they are used up.
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That is a big concern and hopefully, there are experts looking into that.
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Yeah, except for changing tires and the general service that all cars need, I’ve paid about the same as well for our older electric cars.
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Sadly, there is no such panacea. Electric cars, solar farms, reduction in fossil fuels generally …. This all helps to treat the symptoms, but only paints over the cause.
One side of politics urges consumer changes and compromise to massage the problem and the other side prefers to ignore the symptoms all together.
But neither side really wants the problem to go away, because the problem is global capitalism which dictates literally almost everything we think and do. We simply don’t remember life any other way.
Most of us acknowledge that we can survive fairly well without gas-guzzling automobiles, and we feel a bit sanctimonious about that. What we can’t accept is the possibility of no cars at all. Or buses or trains or aeroplanes or refrigerators or the Internet or air conditioning or television or high rise office buildings …. and so on.
Such a life is unthinkable. even though it was thought of as very normal not so long ago in human history.
The machine that is global capitalism feeds us, clothes us, entertains us, educates us, medicates us – keeps us in the manner to which we have become accustomed. Our job is simply to keep feeding the machine. As soon as we stop watching Oprah and professional wrestling, and stop buying exotic face creams and fluffy sex toys over the Internet, and stop ordering door to door deliveries of pre-prepared plastic packaged muck masquerading as food, all with a phone the size of a cigarette packet but with 10 times the computing power of Apollo 13, then the machine begins to shut down. The machine won’t like that, and nor will we.
So yeah, we should be buying electric cars, and good on you for doing so. But we might have to give up a whole lot more, one way or another. But more likely we will still be wanting to keep our cake whilst simultaneously eating it.
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I think you hit the nail on the head. But tell me, what are these fluffy sex toys of which you speak?
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Bam!
You said a lot more than I was going to.
My scope was going to be that just getting the EVs into swing, if that’s our goal, is a trudge of possibly hopeless inconvenience because everything is about capitalism. We’ve been fooled into thinking capitalism is just working for a living, while the actual capitalists (the ones who get it) figure out how to make everything into robbing us faster that the world can implode, until it does… and they die happy (or, matters not, unhappy) in their piles of gold, maybe imagining Mars.
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Correction: I meant “faster than the world
can …” (while “that” doesn’t hurt them).
https://www.space.com/star-wars-tv-shows-ranked-worst-to-best
I’m pretty sure Ahsoka is the series to which I’d like to refer people (and pretty sure the first picture at this link is from it). It ends the way I expect.
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I think we all need to accept some responsibility. The introduction of electric cars and such is not about changing things, it’s about desperately trying to keep things as they are. We live very good lives. We are mostly healthy and happily long living, with plentiful food, power and comfort – to an extent unimaginable for our forebears.
We like things, for the most part, just how they are. We are terrified by a future that doesn’t resemble the present. So we make a few concessions and take pride in our sacrifices – but really we are not willing to give up anything.
We will continue to search for ‘alternative sources of power’ but we will never consider surrendering power altogether. Our insatiable appetite for power, on several levels, will always be the path to our demise.
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Yes, we basically like our lives the way they are and don’t want to sacrifice much for the greater good. But we need leaders who will push for changes in the infrastructure to achieve greater efficiencies and not those who resist it in order to preserve the status quo.
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If it were only as easy a buying an EV and the world would be safe from global warming. The issue I have is that growing up during the energy crisis we were bombarded with turn off the lights, sent the thermostat down and save electricity… how will we suddenly have enough electricity to also power cars without running on empty?
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If the goal is to get people to transition from gas cars to electric, then the government and industry need to work together to find innovated ways to make it happen.
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The issue is “the government” IS the industries, or corporations more like it, unless we stop falling for electing corporatists.
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In the end, the real bottom line issue is greed. And I don’t see that disappearing — ever.
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