Electric vehicles have seen huge progress in the past few years.
Companies like Tesla, Nissan, and Chevy are working to create practical, long-range EVs for around $30,000, and we may soon see a rise in the number of electric cars on the road. Volkswagen is also allegedly working with the EPA to make up for cheating on emissions tests by ramping up EV production.
But it seems as the more common and capable EVs become, the more contentious and politicized their opponents get.
This is especially true because the rise of EVs might lead to a big oil surplus. Perhaps seeing this day coming, the Koch brothers — a fossil fuel-energy and financial powerhouse — are allegedly backing a campaign to attack government subsidies on electric cars, according to the Huffington Post.
So it stands to reason we'll soon hear a flurry of arguments against electric cars.
To address some of those eventual claims, we turn to Tim Urban, who put together an exhaustive post on electric cars, part of his three-post series about Elon Musk, at his blog Wait But Why.
In the post, Urban thoroughly breaks down humanity's relationship with energy. He discusses why many in the auto industry are reluctant to embrace electric vehicles (e.g. economics, comfort), and why the fossil fuel industry is dead-set against it (e.g. self preservation).
Toward the end, Urban also brings up a list of five damaging myths about electric cars — an important reality check as both political mud-slinging and overly bold entrepreneurial visions for the future can obscure the facts behind electric vehicles.
Here they are:
1. "EV battery disposal is hazardous"
Disposing lithium-ion batteries isn't exactly clean, but they're designated landfill-safe. What's more, Urban notes that many electric car batteries are made of recycled materials and can be used to store solar and wind energy.
Lithium-ion batteries are also full of valuable metals and other materials, so they have plenty of life after being in a car — even if broken down for scrap.
2. "Manufacturing a Tesla is much dirtier than manufacturing a Prius or many other gas cars."
Urban says this is an unfair comparison: an $80,000 Tesla Model S is a luxury car, and it isn't nearly the same as a $25,000 Prius. Even if it's true that making an EV causes more greenhouse emissions, it obscures the core issue: EVs can be charged with renewable energy sources that vastly make up for their any initial, high-carbon manufacturing footprint.
3. "EVs are a huge burden on the electric grid."
Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates that by 2040, 35% of new cars sold worldwide will be plug-in electric vehicles and use 1,900 terawatt-hours of power — about 10% of all global electricity produced last year. But a study done by Navigant Research found that we can add millions of electric cars to the current American grid without requiring any new power generation.
A lot of this has to do with peak usage in power grids. The biggest stress comes during summer afternoons, when air conditioning units are turned on around the country; the grid could easily handle EV charging, most of which occurs overnight (when power usage is down).
4. "The Tesla uses a lot of graphite in their battery, which contributes to China's pollution problem."
China is the largest source of the world's graphite, and parts of the country suffer from terrible pollution, so Urban says it's easy to make a connection between Tesla's graphite-containing batteries and pollution in China.
However, as he points out, the Tesla battery uses synthetic graphite that's produced mostly in Poland and Japan. That and Tesla uses an average of about 220 pounds in each Model S battery, which lasts for 10 years — that pales in comparison to the 9,700 to 13,500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions generated annually by one fossil fuel-powered US vehicle.
5. "The long tailpipe theory."
Urban says one common argument against EVs is that any environmental benefits from electric cars are offset by the non-renewable power they pull from the electric grid (for example, energy made by burning coal). While this tailpipe-versus-smokestack argument does hold some weight, it depends on where you're driving and charging.
A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research broke this down by county and noticed a few interesting things. First, gasoline-powered cars are much cleaner in rural areas, where their emissions don't affect the sparse population. Second, electric car environmental impact is much more regional, with the most damage occurring in the east. Out west, where electricity is generated with more renewable sources, power for electric cars causes much less damage.
What's more, electric cars are much more efficient than their gas equivalents. A typical car that gets 24 miles per gallon will use the equivalent of 16,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity annually when it drives the average of 12,000 miles a year. Compare that with the 3,869 kWh that an average battery electric car uses in the same 12,000-mile year, and 4,271 kWh for plug-in hybrids.
So while electric cars are still in their teething phase and by no means perfect, many of the myths holding the technology back are just plain wrong or oversimplify the issues.
You can read Urban's full post about electric vehicles, and Tesla's in particular, here.
