Are gas prices too high for you? Just get an electric vehicle!

June 14, 2022

As the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded gas crosses the $5.00 mark, drivers across the country are finding it more and more difficult to keep gas in their cars. Those with diesel vehicles are in even worse shape.

In somewhat of a “let them eat cake” moment, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said recently that people struggling with rising gas prices should just get an electric car. 

Forget buying gas, the price of which has more than doubled in the past year or so. You can just stick your nose in the air as you drive by the gas stations in your new EV.

However, as with every idea, there is a reality that accompanies it, and reality is most often more difficult. 

For example, Kelley Blue Book tells us the average price of an EV was $56,437 in November 2021, and the average price jumped 6.2 percent from the same month a year earlier. The average price of a new compact car, however, was $25,240, less than half the price of an EV.

For an inside look at actually owning and traveling in an EV, we have stories from two people, Wall Street Journal reporter Rachel Wolfe, who described a trip from New Orleans to Chicago, and Emily Dreibelbis, a graduate student at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, who took a road trip from Princeton, New Jersey, to Arlington, Virginia and back.

Wolfe said at the beginning that she “thought it would be fun,” and plotted “a meticulous route” using an app that showed public chargers along the 2,000-mile round-trip route she selected.

Most of the chargers on her route, it turned out, were only Level 2. Those take eight hours for a full charge. Fast chargers give an 80 percent charge in about a half-hour, she noted. “Longer than stopping for gas — but good for a bite or bathroom break,” she reported.

 “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,” she wrote.

She also noted that the Kia EV6 she drove had lower range than advertised, that the charging stations had slower speeds than advertised, that many charging stations had problematic cords, and that lots of the country had almost no fast-charging stations at all.

For the entire trip, Wolfe wrote, she spent 16 hours sleeping during the trip and 18 hours waiting to charge the vehicle, spread over 14 charges.

Dreibelbis, an avowed EV supporter, made a trip from Princeton, New Jersey, to Arlington, Virginia, and back. Traveling in her parents’ 2019 Chevrolet Volt, she experienced problems along the way, too.

During her 200-mile adventure, she experienced broken and slow vehicle charging stations, and also found not nearly enough of them. In Maryland, she found three chargers that didn’t work, and one that had an out-of-order sign on it that did work.

Of those that worked, the Level 3 “fast” charger takes about an hour for a charge that gives only 100 miles of range. Other chargers were slower. A Level 1 charger for home use can take up to 10 hours, and a Level 2 charger, like many found in public parking lots, may take up to four hours.

Dreibelbis Googled locations in Arlington and found one site was not accessible, as it was in a private complex, and the next one cost an $11 entry fee just to get to it. She wrote, “Frustrated, I surrendered the money. They only had Level Two chargers, so it took two and a half hours of reading a book in the cold until the car had enough power.”

In the manic drive to do away with fossil fuels, by 2030 the U.S. hopes for 50 percent of new cars sales to be EVs. Last year, EVs were only 4.5 percent of new car sales. 

To meet this goal, things will have to improve quickly. Charging times are long, and charging stations are far too few to service the number of EVs that is desired. Traveling long distances will take hours longer, given the charging times, and the potential waiting in line behind one, two or perhaps three  vehicles to get to the charger. And the price of EVs is often double that of conventionally fueled vehicles.

And then there is the reality of where the electricity comes from to recharge EVs: Much of it comes from fossil fuels: coal and natural gas. So, while driving an EV produces less pollution, generating the electricity to charge them will be producing lots more of it. And the more EVs there are, the more pollution will be required to keep them charged.

Further, the critical elements for EV batteries are being purchased largely from China.

When the time is right for EVs, we will transition naturally to them. That time is not yet, nor anytime soon. The biggest problem with the goals of the left is that they never want to wait until the time is right, but instead cause problems by rushing the issue.

Renewable energy to replace fossil fuels? Will that be much better?

We have been told for years about the damage to the environment of burning fossil fuels, and the marvelous benefits of renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Steps have been taken and more are being put forth to reduce the amount of CO2 we produce, on concerns of “climate change.” America, incidentally, has led most, if not all, of the world in reducing CO2 in recent years.

And, regardless of whether humankind is really harming the environment to a serious level, we can agree that wind and solar energy are far less polluting when they are in use than machines that burn oil, gasoline, diesel fuel and natural gas.

But when you look at what happens in the process of turning these sources into useful products, and what happens to them after their useful life is over, a very different story emerges.

The details of these processes and products were explained in a Prager University video featuring Mark Mills, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who discussed the environmental costs of using these energy sources.

First, windmills and solar panels, and the batteries to store the electricity they produce, are made from non-recyclable materials, Mills said. And after some 20 years since the wind and solar energy technologies were born, and after billions of dollars of subsidies, those two sources provide less than three percent of the nation’s power. 

Mills explained that the maximum rate that wind can be turned into electrons is about 60 percent, and the maximum for sunlight is about 33 percent. As of now, we can convert 45 percent of blowing wind and 26 percent of shining sun. Technology is now able to get a little more than half the possible electrons from the wind and the sun. That will likely increase as technology advances.

Since the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine all the time, excess electricity must be stored in batteries. Mills put that into perspective: The world’s largest battery plant, created by Tesla in Nevada for its electric vehicles, would need 500 years to make enough of the batteries it makes today to store enough electricity for just one day of current U.S. demand.

Of course, more battery plants will gradually be built, and perhaps the capacity and efficiency of batteries will also increase. But this presents a tremendous challenge if the U.S. is to end using fossil fuels, as we are told we must, in favor of renewables.

The processes to enable wind and solar energy to produce electricity, he said, are quite expensive, in environmental terms.

One electric car battery weighs half a ton. But to acquire the materials to produce it, 250 tons of earth from somewhere must be mined and processed.

One 75 mega-watt wind farm powers 75,000 homes, and requires 30,000 tons of iron ore, 50,000 tons of concrete, and 900 tons of non-recyclable plastic. And a 75 mega-watt solar farm requires 150 percent more materials — concrete, steel and glass — than a wind farm.

The rare earth and other metals needed — lithium, cobalt, copper, iridium and dysprosium — will require a massive increase in mining activity: from 200 to 2,000 percent of the mining now occurring.  Rare earth materials are mostly not available in the U.S., but must be acquired from other countries Some of them, like China, are hostile to us. In 2019, China was responsible for 80 percent of rare-earth materials.

And, the equipment and processes used in acquiring and refining the materials, and constructing and installing the windmills, solar panels and batteries are powered by fossil fuels.

After about 20 years of production, these windmills and solar panels will have exhausted themselves, leaving millions of tons of non-recyclable waste behind that must be put somewhere.

Mills also said that the plastic waste from these sources will total more than twice the amount of all existing plastic waste.

Using the sun and the wind to our benefit makes perfect sense. The more seasoned readers may remember fondly your grandmother or mother hanging freshly washed clothes on the line in the back yard to dry in the sun and breeze. And then electric dryers came along.

The idea that transitioning from burning fossil fuels to wind and solar energy to produce electricity will be cleaner is false. We will trade polluting the air for producing tons of solid waste.

Too much of anything can be harmful: too much vitamin C, too much water, too much sun, too much oxygen, and too much CO2. But the environmental cost to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar power might be as expensive, or more expensive, than the cost of burning fossil fuels, in terms of the waste that is produced.

Geologist and earth scientist Professor Ian Plimer, who is called a “climate change denier” by some, said our “climate is cyclical,” and that Earth is heading to an ice age.

“We are getting towards the end of the warm period, the peak of the warmth was about 5,000 years ago and we are heading for the next inevitable ice age,” he told Sky News.

If so, someday we may want and need more CO2, not less.