EVs are cleaner than gas cars, but a growing share of Americans don't believe it
EVs are cleaner than gas cars, but a growing share of Americans don't believe it
Electric vehicles are caught up in the culture wars. Data from Ipsos shows the percentage of Americans who believe EVs are better for the environment than gas cars has dropped 5 points since 2022.
Everyone knows that electric vehicles are supposed to be better for the planet than gas cars. That's the driving reason behind a global effort to transition toward batteries.
But what about the harms caused by mining for battery minerals? And coal-fired power plants for the electricity to charge the cars? And battery waste? Is it really true that EVs are better?
The answer is yes. But Americans are growing less convinced.
The net benefits of EVs have been frequently fact-checked, including by NPR. "No technology is perfect, but the electric vehicles are going to offer a significant benefit as compared to the internal combustion engine vehicles," Jessika Trancik, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told NPR this spring.
It's important to ask these questions about EVs' hidden costs, Trancik says. But they have been answered "exhaustively" --- her word --- and a widerange of organizations have confirmed that EVs still beat gas.
We're going to run the country into the ground because we have such a large group of people being totally fine with (or even encouraging) their lack of education and the ability to reason properly. They're just proud to be "against" something together, they don't even care what it is they're against.
There are already EV battery recycling plants springing up now that there are enough used EVs to warrant them, there wasn't much point building them when there weren't any battery packs to process.
The renewable energy switch is already happening, because even without subsidies they're still cheaper.
But no... gotta get out there and roll coal.
North American auto has lost its mind and handed over any chance at being top-tier in the future. Seems game over to me. Canada is joining in on the 100% tariff game and I'm furious that my government will, this late in the game, try and protect an industry that gambled with the oil and gas industry and lost (not to mention their compete fall into profiteering in five to six digit major life purchases) by passing costs of avoiding Elon and subpar selection onto consumers.
I hope the industry wakes up and goes hard for competitiveness in EVs and stops waiting for elections to decide if climate change is real or if the economy will be affected by their decisions. To stop waiting for elections to decide if people want EVs. To allow manufacturing to flourish regardless of who's fighting for the rights to our money while we briefly have it.
And to your point yeah - just like Asimov said:
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
I live in Virginia and the other day I saw a Tesla with a custom license plate for friends of coal. like I don't even...
Wasn't that what Desantis did, put a coal sticker on his Tesla? Then had dealerships write up a bill to restrict people from purchasing vehicles directly from manufactures without going through a dealership, keeping the costs higher for the people. The bill had an exemption for certain vehicles... Like the Tesla he bought.
This is the bottom line. We all know who these morons are and they’re never going to care what actual repercussions are for their actions. They think it is funny to “own the libs” no matter what the issue may be. If a left-leaning person advocates for one thing, their automatic reaction is to oppose it without question.
It’s truly scary to look around (especially in red states) and to know a good percentage of those around you are that dumb.
I don't consider myself intelligent. One of the scariest moments of my adult life was realizing I'm above average intelligence, maybe by a decent margin.
They have guns too.
The end of life battery recycling has been the #1 thing I've been looking at. Glad to see they aren't going to landfill.
Battery upcycling is also becoming a thing. If an old battery is not fit for a car anymore it can still be useful in other contexts; like you could convert it into a battery for home or grid storage with minimal processing.
edit: rephrased to remove double negative
I'm curious to know what you've learned. Would you care to share?
If you've been looking at it, then perhaps you've seen this:
EV Batteries Can Outlast A Vehicle’s Lifetime With Minimal Degradation, Study Finds https://insideevs.com/news/733987/ev-batteries-outlast-vehicle-degradation-study/
"“Batteries in the latest EV models will comfortably outlast the usable life of the vehicle and will likely not need to be replaced.” That’s what David Savage, Vice President for the UK and Ireland at Geotab said in the company’s latest study that looked at how EV batteries degrade over time."
But if not, the article, and research it's based on is worth a gander. EVs require a whole lot less maintenance, too, as it turns.
Public transportation is even better yet
For inner city folk yes.
can you really blame us?
let me run through the last 8 years of American history with four words, "we were lied to". doesn't matter from whom, doesn't matter what. we're constantly being lied to. truth is, it's been true for longer than 8 years, but the last 8 have been especially transparent.
we're learning that the upper echelon only trusts the American public to do three things; consume, produce, and die. if you can't even do that for them, you're removed as an undesirable.
so yeah, trust in the system is broken. it's going to take at least a generation or two just to repair it ** if they work on it**.
I can't fault anyone who's untrusting of a system that continuously covers lie after lie with more lies.
8 Years?
How long did fossil fuel companies know about climate change?
How long did the fuel industry know about the effects of leaded petrol?
How long did cigarette companies know about links to cancer?
How long did pharma companies know about opioid addiction risk?
How long did social networking companies know about psychological manipulation?
How long did the sugar lobby know about their links to diabetes and obesity?
How long did the manufacturing companies know about PFAS and microplastics?I would say you have always been lied to.
Your forgot that plastic manufacturing knew it wasn't recycled or recyclable.
I can't fault anyone who's untrusting of a system that continuously covers lie after lie with more lies
I can and will. Learn some basic critical thinking skills and apply them. Throwing your hands up and ranting about how "the system is broken" is mopey teenager shit.
Things are far more complicated than your whiny rant. They world is shades of gray rather than the simplistic "bad guy in black / good guy in white" situation that you characterize it as.
Lololol, what a fucking worthless right wing rant
lulz jokes on you.
Fuck Trump, fuck republicans.
The only valid criticisms of EV's are:
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They're harder to extinguish than a gas car if they end up catching on fire.
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They don't really solve any of the major issues with car based infrastructure.
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Tesla is a shit show because of that damn muskrat which pushes a lot of people away from EV's in general.
They are heavier and accelerate faster than an equivalent ICE vehicle on the same frame, and so result in more pedestrian fatalities.
They are heavier and accelerate faster than an equivalent ICE vehicle on the same frame, and so result in more pedestrian fatalities.
They’re harder to extinguish than a gas car if they end up catching on fire.
Yeah that is gonna be a bigger problem than most people imagined.
To be fair, no consumer vehicles have 900 kWh batteries haha.
My firefighter neighbour told me that the procedure now is just to let them burn, like they do with gasoline fires. They make sure it doesn't spread, but they won't try to extinguish it because it'd take 10-12 hours and thousands of gallons. By just letting it burn they're done in an hour with a few hundred gallons.
They don't steal a lot of data too? Or this privacy nightmare affected gas car too?
It's an issue in newer cars in general.
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An even larger portion of America can't afford them, so it doesn't even matter.
Thank you. I can't even afford a base model Corolla and used cars prices are through the roof. I might have to buy a paraglider or something.
Check out auctions, feds and locals are always dumping cars. They can be a decent bit cheaper than dealerships with better maintenance and lower prices, talking SUV with sub 20,000 miles on it for $2,000 cheap.
Over the longterm, and they also require a lot less maintenance because they don't have to deal with mini-explosions from combustion generating excess heat and stress. The problem is in the battery, and the industry hasn't even scratched the surface for solutions.
I see trucks carrying butane tanks all the time, where are the trucks carrying EV battery replacements? There aren't because the industry wants to charge extra for fixed installation ones depending on capacity and charging capacity and there is absolutely no profit incentive that offsets other losses to standardize battery systems in a way they can be easily extensible or replaceable.
I see trucks carrying butane tanks all the time
That's not the equivalent to battery replacements but to the power grid, which of course is yet another win for EV (since clearly distributing the energy source for vehicles over the power grid is safer and more environmentally friendly than needing huge trucks to carry it).
(I'd say battery replacements are closest to motor replacements in gas cars in terms of costs and effort. What about the environmental impact? -> That's why it's so costly. To mitigate environmental impact.)
Battery replacements really are not difficult, I'd seriously recommend not imagining obstacles where there are not.
Without special installations, charging takes several hours instead of a quicker battery swap (which you could take with you as extra weight). DC chargers cannot even be installed at how home due to their requirement. Swappable batteries are possible and would make EV cars adaptable to new and different battery technology, they are just not designed that way.
Some, like the XBus, talked about allowing it, and it is perfectly possible, it just isn't going to come out of traditional car manufacturers who had to be dragged to develop anything EV or manufacturers like Tesla who want to make range a subscription feature. Let's not even go into EV range extension trailer systems, which would be as effortless as swapping trailers.
Where are the trucks carrying the replacement petrol tanks for ICE cars?
You can get them at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=gas+tank
You aren't making a point if you are trying to equate the distribution network for gas, which is so ubiquitous that there is no need for the sort of trucks that distribute butane tanks to EV batteries, which require specialized facilities for fast charging, which also deteriorates batteries faster, or otherwise take half a day of charging. EV battery swapping bans already exist for things like scooter rentals.
There are already standarized sizes, voltages, and ports using in autocaravans which could be connected in series ideally through BMS to provide the voltages EV cars would need and would even be simpler through already prepped trailer systems. Four 96V batteries (can go up to six) in series connected safely through Andersen connectors would be enough for a basic EV car, that's less than 30kg LiFePO4 each, making it swappable on the spot, less dangerous than lithium, and open to a large market of providers.
Put them in a sealed room with a gas engine running and you'll see how fast they realize that they're cleaner
Isn't the whole point that the gas engine equivalent is just in somebody else's room though?
In any case, I'll take whatever partial climate wins we can get.
Solar, wind, and nuclear energy: are we a joke to you?
Even if we assume all the electricity is coming from carbon sources (there's no need for any of it to be carbon sources) it's still more efficient because power plants are way better at turning that chemical energy into electricity. Even with the losses in the lines, charging, and in your motors, electric cars are still significantly more efficient on a mile per kg CO2 basis than gas cars. Throw some solar panels on your roof and they become essentially carbonless.
Genuine question - are EVs better for the environment if the main source of electricity of my country is coal based? Most of the coal plants are pretty old too…
Yes, whether your electric plant is coal, natural gas, or honestly even if it was diesel. Larger engines are more efficient than smaller ones. It's been a long time since I broke down the math over 10 years so my information is probably wildly out of date but even 10 years ago when you broke down the math charging an EV from a fossil fuel plant of any kind was still ultimately more efficient than a gas car in the long term.
Couple that with the ability of many EV now to also act as a battery for your house and that just goes wildly into the EVs favor if you utilize that for peak demand offset. Which many people could do easily even if it meant not having their battery fully charged in the morning when they go to leave for work because let's face it very few people drive more than 60 miles full round trip in a day so even with their battery at say half they would have more than enough for their whole day plus extra.
The "break even" point is still somewhere around 150k miles for big batteries (above 75 kWh). And while there are many EVs that have 200k on their first battery, that isn't necessarily the status quo for most of them. A simple lump of Aluminum or Cast Iron takes a lot less energy to make and can even be produced completely renewable If you factor in synthetic fuels, things look even more grey - especially with algae, there can be huge benefits growing algae in sea water (see the Arctic Algal Boom and the connected pytho plankton growth). BEVs are not "THE" answer, they are one answer to specific questions.
Not only that, the issus (environmental, child labour, etc) with rare earth elements are still not solved and the environmental damages through lithium mining are not something to just sweep under the rug.
Yes. That's the entire point here. The answer is yes.
EVs have a lot of advantages over ICEs. It's good that things are evolving finally to make EVs more than a niche. It however doesn't remove the problem that they are still a car with all of those negatives, even if they pollute much less. In some ways providing an individual solution could harm efforts to reduce the number of cars on the road. It's not a final solution, only a step to fix a few of the most obvious problems while retaining others.
Most US metro areas are just too spread out for mass transit to be a worthwhile solution for most people. The only solution to significantly reducing cars in the US is telecommuting; unfortunately businesses generally don't like it, so we need to find a way for this to be encouraged by the government with subsidies or something.
Because the conservative machine, despite the love of Elon's right-wing antics, never stop talking about how bad EVs are. Funny, the only time they act like they care about the environment is when they talk about how bad the EV batteries are to manufacture. While they roll coal and drive gas-guzzling mall cruiser bro-dozers all over the place.
Give him a few years into a potential Trump victory, and he will make Tesla to manufacture petrol cars.
Its about 40% more power efficient per mile but theres a couple of other trade-offs, still better yeah.
Not surprising. There has been a pretty successful campaign by the right to paint EVs as worse for the environment because we get our electricity from coal (we barely get anything from coal) and mining; more expensive to fuel up (using the highest priced fast charging vs lowest price of gas); and worse from a humanitarian perspective (cobalt mining).
Things to refute this: EVs, even with coal power as their energy source, emit less CO2 over the lifespan of the vehicle compared with gas vehicles. Mining sucks and is indeed environmentally damaging but oil is also fucking terrible. The benefit of EVs is that the vast majority of a battery can be recycled whereas oil is single use. So to meet a consistent demand, we do have to ramp up mining but once the demands is met, mining can be scaled back dramatically.
For fuel costs, it's easy to do the basic math but many don't. I've seen people complain that their electricity bill will just skyrocket. When I suggested my parents get a battery powered riding mower, my mom thought they would be more expensive and that the electricity bill would be just as much as the gas bill. The price of the mower is the same and the electricity cost was about 1/15th of what has is and you don't have to be riding around in gas fumes.
As for the humanitarian angle, the right obviously does not really give a shit. You could easily point out the atrocities that oil companies have done over the years. You could also point out that cobalt is being phased out. We could also do the mining here instead of having our done abroad. And there is the previous point that most of this just had to be done once then mining can be scaled back.
Cleaner than gas cars =/= Clean.
This is the lowest possible bar to pass. The point isn't that EVs are worse than gas. The point is that both are terrible for people, health, safety, climate, transit, sustainability, equity, freedom, etc.
Wut. Cars have legitimate uses.
EVs dont only not pollute wherever they drive, but overall are probably around 70% efficient if including the power generation, while gas is 40% or less.
The others, I think you are projecting US problems to the whole self-owned transportation sector.
Because we Americans are easily swayed by propaganda, unfortunately.
zombie engineer voice "traiiiiiins"
A venn diagram of Trumpers and people who believe gas cars are cleaner is a circle
IMO, I still think there's not enough infrastructure to support charging EVs. Don't get me wrong I've seen some. Just... Not a lot. Until charging is as prevalent as gas its just not worth it. Or if you have a house I guess.
In some areas I hear it's good. But in my area there's only 1 set of charging stations at a Wawa that I know of. And that Wawa is an hour drive away. Plus I'm at a rental complex that mows the lawns regularly and having a cable run from my house to the car is not allowed.
My current gas operated vehicle has about 160000 miles on it. I'm hopeful that my vehicle will last a long time. And then when my vehicle dies, I'll look at the infrastructure again and see if it's beneficial for me to switch to an EV. I'm going to continue to wait until it's beneficial for me to buy a new car.
We'll see how it goes.
Well, gas stations don't really want electric because it would cut into their main source of revenue so I think I may have spotted the bottleneck.
The only way charging stations will become prevalent is if municipalities start setting them up. Either that or grocery stores. Though Answers with Joe made an interesting case for Buccees adopting charging stations as a method of generating revenue through increased tourism at their locations.
Gas stations actually make almost all of their money on things other than gas that people buy while they are at the gas station. It's true that people wouldn't come to existing gas stations nearly as much if they weren't buying gas but they could make as much or more from users charging.
The real problem from their perspective is how infrequently users may need such especially if they charge at home and the cost of charging infra which is always in addition to gas not instead of
I was always under the impression that the source of the electricity to charge electric vehicles matters greatly. Some areas use coal burning to generate power while others use hydroelectric.
Definitely better to charge an EV with clean energy. But it's probably better to charge an EV with dirty electricity than it is to keep using a combustion vehicle.
IIRC a gas vehicle is something like 20% thermally efficient, whereas a coal/oil power plant can be up to 60%. So even if my EV is charging off oil or coal, I'm getting 3x the energy per unit of emissions compared to a gas vehicle (though who knows how that translates to miles of range).
It does matter in terms of how much less polluting it would be. Even in case of coal plant bonansa it reaches a point where it becomes less poluting than gasoline car . Alghtough much slower. Its also not realy important since renewables became so cheap that there is practicly no country that dosent have a fairly significant renewable share ( and by that i mean > 10 % ).
https://www.iso-ne.com/ Looking at my own region of New England, renewables are only at about 8% right now. And that includes burning wood, refuse, and landfill gas as renewable sources.
While true, it's way better better for a power source to be inefficient than all consumers using inefficient/dirty appliances.
Once the aging coal plant is decommissioned in favor of a new nuclear reactor in a state like Wyoming, anyone using stuff like electric water heaters, heatpumps or electric bikes/buses/cars/scooters is instantly using 100% renewable power.
Even in screwed up states like Texas, there is so much load on the grid (and the fact they cannot buy power from other states) means that cheap solar panels, battery storage and wind are way faster to put up than expensive methane/natural gas generators.
I don’t consider nuclear as renewable, but they do reduce CO2 production.
If you got the most ridiculous EV (the Hummer) and drove it primarily in West Virginia (86% coal generated electricity), it would have worse lifetime CO2 emissions than an ICE.
Literally any other combination, and it's better.
And it would still be worlds better than the worst ICE cars, it would only be worse than average.
Not the case, they still get 100mpge + so they're always better
I've been wondering... Those batteries are really heavy and I've already had to explain to multiple customers that their ~1000kg heavier and ~100kw stronger engine (to get similar acceleration in a comparable model to the gas vehicle) is going to eat up tires twice as fast. If you were burning through a set of tires a year you better budget for two sets and the extra time to come in and have them changed every 6 months. And all those extra tires have to come from something. And shipped from somewhere. And then the roads need repaving more often because of both the extra weight and higher power output. 1000's of km of road that will have repaving works going on twice as often. On top of reduced traffic throughput while roadworks are ongoing, is any of that taken into account when comparing environmental impact? How will the increase in airborne particles and toxic runoff from the roads affect the environment?
The vehicles weight a little more, but the move to solid state batteries will decrease weight by 30-50%. So that issue is already being addressed. Batteries will get better as we start to use them as competitive markets drive fixing such. We aren't improving gas powered vehicles much anymore, they still kill people with their exhaust daily. Anyone going against the movement is for killing people and the environment. Dead stop.
"they still kill people with their exhaust daily"
Exactly my point. The pollution from road and tires kills more people than exhausts on a modern vehicle. And now that we are moving to heavier vehicles that need to compensate with higher power we will have even more pollution and carcinogens killing us. I'm a car mechanic and take the bus+subway to work but on the rare occasion I bring my car to get some work done I get lectured by customers, about how I should buy an ev for 5x the cost of my current car while they trot around in their 4 ton beasts every day. I've used my current set of tires for 6 years. Many of my EV customers need new tires every 6-12 months. People need to change their habits before buying en EV unless all they want to do is virtue signal.
People can be against EVs and still be for the environment. EVs still need massive amounts of parking and lanes, our zoning laws often mean we keep destroying natural land to pave these spaces. The EV will also prolong the suburban experiment which is massively worse for the environment compared to desner housing options. Some people view EVs as delaying some of the more pressing issuses related to tranportation and city development in our urban areas.
Personally I think EVs are better than ICE but i dont think just swapping them out is doing enough for the environment or to reduce our overall energy demands.
Propaganda works.
There should be penalties for spreading such lies.
Hybrids actually have the best longevity and repair scores, however.
The longevity of the vehicle actually does count towards its ecological impact, because if you have to replace it sooner, you're creating a bigger ecological impact of creating a short-term use device before more energy has to be used to recycle parts of it.
So, at the moment hybrids win that battle. I think its simply because hybrids have been around longer, not because they're special. Give it about 10-15 more years and I think you'll see a flip to EVs taking over that spot from hybrids.
EDIT: Also, the bad build quality of Teslas and the early adopters of EVs mostly being Tesla owners also means that the sample of hybrids having better longevity and repair scores is impacted by Tesla specifically being so bad. If you cut out Teslas from the equation, I bet EVs and hybrids would probably have similar longevity and repair scores.
I'd like to see a source that says hybrids, with two separate engines plus the mechanical linkages between them plus the transmission, have better repair scores than a pure EV with no transmission, no mechanical engine, and a simpler drivetrain.
Anecdotal, but my parents bought a first-gen Prius way back in 2000 and it had zero mechanical issues until my niece rear-ended someone in 2012. Since it was so old it was totaled, but the battery pack was still very healthy.
I'm skeptical that hybrids with ICEs and transmissions at their heart really do have more longevity than BEVs and electric motors. ICE and especially hybrids are inherently more complex than BEVs, and have many more moving mechanical parts to wear out over time. So while BEVs may technically be "harder to repair", there's actually much less to repair in the first place. not to mention less maintenance like dozens of oil changes over the life of the car.
Where did you get that info about the hybrid longevity, an episode of Comedy Bang Bang? Could it be due to hybrids not running the gas engines full-time (less wear hours of usage per mile) ?
The only hybrid I've driven tends to run the engine more as a power generator than to drive the wheels, and often uses no gas engine. I could see how the engine would be less worn from that kind of usage vs driving the wheels all the time.
I heard about this, although the positive news is it's mostly people who weren't in the market for an EV to begin with so it doesn't really impact EV sales or anything. Still hate to see disinformation win, though.
I'm a bit sad to hear Congress is more or less outlawing Chinese cars here, though. Affordable EVs are far and few between and it really feels like the national security rational they're giving thinly hides the real reason of preventing competition for US car makers, as if they even planned on making a decent EV.
Yeah, Congress blocking affordable Chinese EVs completely betrays their messaging about EVs. It is clear they don't care about the planet, EVs are just another opportunity to transfer public funds to the donor class (billionaires)
I believe it, but I don't give a shit. I buy a car/truck because of how capable it is, and how easy repairs are to do myself, not because of how many smug Californian's circlejerk over it.
Hell yeah brother! Witness me.
Having just pulled repaired and put an engine back in one of my cars. No ICE cars are much harder to repair. Range will probably be an issue for a while. What I'm really excited for is hybrid light duty vehicles like a 1 ton hybrid would be great.