Is now really the right time to buy an electric vehicle?

November 15, 2022

One of the things the green movement strongly encourages is moving away from gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles and replacing them with electric vehicles (EVs). Since EVs don’t burn gasoline or diesel fuel, they do not emit CO2 into the air, and this is one of the major advantages of EVs. There are also other positive things about EVs.

Some of those advantages, according to drivingelectric.com, are that they are simpler and more reliable. They are quiet and relaxing, but can also be fast and exciting. And since they have smaller engines and their very large batteries can be laid out underneath the vehicle, they have more luggage space and more legroom for passengers.

But there are other factors to the story.

Libertarian author, commentator, and consumer journalist John Stossel wrote an article published by the Daily Signal earlier this month addressing electric vehicles, explaining ways in which EVs are not the wonders their proponents would like for us to believe.

There is a rush to impose EVs on the public. For example, some states have banned gas-powered cars altogether. “California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order banning them by 2035,” Stossel wrote. “Oregon, Massachusetts, and New York copied California. Washington state’s politicians said they’d make it happen even faster, by 2030,” just several years from now.

Stossel quotes physicist Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute, who said, “Electric cars are amazing. But they won’t change the future in any significant way (as far as) oil use or carbon dioxide emissions.”

Stossel wrote: “Inconvenient fact 1: Selling more electric cars won’t reduce oil use very much. ‘The world has 15, 18 million electric vehicles now,’ says Mills. ‘If we [somehow] get to 500 million, that would reduce world oil consumption by about 10%. That’s not nothing, but it doesn’t end the use of oil.’

“Inconvenient fact 2: Although driving an electric car puts little additional carbon into the air, producing the electricity to charge its battery adds plenty. Most of America’s electricity is produced by burning natural gas and coal. Just 12% comes from wind or solar power.” “You have to mine, somewhere on Earth, 500,000 pounds of minerals and rock to make one battery,” Mills said.

“If you’re worried about carbon dioxide,” says Mills, “the electric vehicle has emitted 10 to 20 tons of carbon dioxide (from the mining, manufacturing, and shipping) before it even gets to your driveway.”

“Volkswagen published an honest study [in which they] point out that the first 60,000 miles or so you’re driving an electric vehicle, that electric vehicle will have emitted more carbon dioxide than if you just drove a conventional vehicle,” Mills added. You would have to drive an electric car “100,000 miles” to reduce emissions by just “20 or 30%, which is not nothing, but it’s not zero.”

Stossel then adds: “If you live in New Zealand, where there’s lots of hydro and geothermal power, electric cars pollute less. But in America, your ‘zero-emission vehicle’ adds lots of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere.”

There is also the possibility of batteries catching fire. Breitbart reported that “In July, a battery fire caused an electric bus to burst into flames in Hamden, Connecticut. Luckily, no one died in the inferno, although two transit workers and two firefighters were hospitalized as a result of the blaze, and a federal investigation was triggered.”

EVs will work pretty well close to home. They can be recharged overnight in your garage. But when you take a 200 mile or longer trip, finding a convenient charging station when you need one, and charging your EV may take a few hours. This depends upon the vehicle’s battery, the charging rate of the charger, and perhaps how long you must wait in line to access a charger.

“The average price for a brand new EV is about $55,000,” according to the National Motorists Association. “That’s considerably higher than the average four-door sedan, which runs about $35,000, according to Kelly Blue Book. Tax credits and gas savings can save you money, however, it’s going to take a few years to make up a potential $20,000 difference.”

“Totaling all factors [purchase price, maintenance and fuel costs] total costs over the average use of the vehicles are $71,770 for EV’s and $58,664 for gasoline powered cars.”

And then there’s the cost of replacing the battery, which lasts from 8 to 15 years. Consumer Affairs “reached out to five mechanics and technicians from different parts of the U.S. to see how much an EV battery replacement costs for different vehicles, and the average results ranged from $4,489 all the way to a staggering $17,658.”

So, the picture of electric vehicles to help save our environment from CO2 is a fuzzy one. And when costs and other factors are figured in, an EV is not yet a viable choice for millions of vehicle owners, especially those living in California, Oregon, Massachusetts, New York, and Washington.

As technology evolves, how we produce electricity, the capacity of our electric grid, and the prices involved will improve. But that is years in the future. We have to stop pushing new ideas so hard, and wait until they are ready for large scale use.

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.