Electric Vehicles

The WSJ recently ran a story recounting one woman’s journey across the country in an electric vehicle. It totally reinforced all the negative impressions I have of EVs.

For me, the biggest downside by far of electric vehicles is the recharging time. On a long road trip, you can fill up the gas tank in your car and be on your merry way in under 5 minutes. Under the absolute best circumstances, it will take over 30 minutes to fully recharge your EV. Under more typical conditions, a recharge can easily take 2 hours or more. That fact alone all but rules them out for everything except infrequent short trips about town. And the charging time for EVs isn’t likely to dramatically improve anytime soon.

Over four days, we spent $175 on charging. We estimated the equivalent cost for gas in a Kia Forte would have been $275, based on the AAA average national gas price for May 19. That $100 savings cost us many hours in waiting time.

– Rachel Wolfe, Wall Street Journal

And that $275 for gas is with the Biden spike in effect. Under normal circumstances, operating the gasoline car would have actually been cheaper. There is a reason “President” Pants Load and the Democrat operators pulling his strings are intentionally torpedoing the domestic oil industry. They know they have no chance in hell of forcing American’s into EVs while gasoline is still affordable. Forcing people into expensive and impractical cars is hard enough. Adding higher operating costs on top makes EVs an almost impossible sell.

In addition to the recharging time, there is also the cost difference. Electric vehicles typically cost $1000s more than their gas-powered counterparts (33% more on average), even with huge government subsidies. And because the vehicles cost more, they are also more expensive to insure. As mentioned above, the operating costs of EVs are actually higher than gas-powered vehicles when Democrats aren’t intentionally spiking oil prices. You might save a little on maintenance costs with an EV (no oil changes, for example), but the overall cost of ownership is definitely much much higher when the government doesn’t have their thumb on the scale.

To go along with their long charging times and high cost, most EVs also have a very limited range. For most, a full charge will only get you about 1/2 as far as a gasoline-powered car will go on a full tank of gas. Under ideal conditions. In very cold or hot conditions, the range of a battery-powered vehicle can drop by 40% or more. That is a little detail EV advocates don’t like to discuss much. Don’t plan on driving your EV very far in the winter if you live up North! And like all batteries, the amount of power EV batteries can store degrades slowly over time. The range of your EV after 80,000 miles won’t be the same as it was when new.

Then, there is the question of infrastructure. There are barely any EVs on the road right now, yet finding an available recharging station is already a royal pain in the ass. Think of how many gas pumps there are right now in America. Now imagine how many pumps we would need if it took 10 times longer to fill up a gas tank. Who thinks we are going to have 10x as many recharging stations as gas pumps any time soon? (I know 10x is probably an overestimate of the required number of charging stations because many people will recharge overnight at their home, but the point still stands. A truly massive amount of infrastructure would be required to recharge 10s of millions of EVs on a daily basis.)

But paying more and suffering through some inconveniences is worth it to save the planet, right? First of all, I think Climate Change is a bunch of bullshit. A scam. But like all really good scams, there is a kernel of truth to it. Humans have increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, no doubt. And all else being equal, global temperatures will be higher with more CO2 in the air. But the claim that the warming will be “catastrophic” demanding the world’s economies submit to a new international order is completely unsupported by the evidence and data. (Kind of strange how the “solution” to every “crisis” seems to align with the political goals of the globalist left, no?) If anything, moderately warmer temperatures might be good for the planet. And CO2 isn’t pollution. It is plant food, for Pete’s sake. You exhale CO2 with every breath you take. Even if you believe the climate alarmists’ claims, the electricity for your EV has to come from somewhere. If it comes from a windmill or a nuclear reactor, then fine, you haven’t emitted any CO2. If the electricity is coming from a natural gas-fired power plant (like most electricity in the US currently does), then the net CO2 emissions are about a wash. If the electricity comes from a coal-fired plant, then operating the EV actually results in more net CO2 emitted than a gasoline-powered vehicle.

And EVs require a massive amount of precious metals to produce. These raw materials are currently supplied by 3rd World countries via strip mining. The environmental damage being done is quite massive to get the materials needed to make the little batteries for cell phones and other consumer electronics. Imagine what will happen when we start producing 10s of millions of 1000-pound batteries for cars and light trucks. Saving the planet with EVs is like curing a headache by lopping the patient’s head off.

Politicians, especially Democrats, really want to push you into buying an electric vehicle despite these facts. They claim that EVs are the key to a Green and prosperous future, where humans will live in a sustainable harmony with nature. They want to be credited with saving the world while accruing more power for themselves. But do electric vehicles make sense in the here and now? Not by a long shot.