Electric Cars vs. Gas Cars: Is the Conventional Wisdom Wrong?

in transportation •  last year 

Electric vehicle batteries require a multitude of resources to be manufactured. In the case of cobalt, the World Economic Forum has called out the extraction conditions in Congo, where 20 percent of the world's cobalt comes from. Miners as young as seven years are suffering from chronic lung disease from exposure to cobalt dust.

Source: Electric Cars vs. Gas Cars: Is the Conventional Wisdom Wrong? - Foundation for Economic Education

I have little doubt that electric cars will replace fossil fueled cars eventually. However, I think trying to artificially force that change before the technology is ready can cause more problems than it solves. This article goes over a few of those.

For me personally, there are a few big problems. The first is cost. Because of my tax situation, the incentives don't help me but I can't afford the cost of an electric car, even if it means my maintenance and fuel costs will be lower down the road, which is debatable. Have you seen how much Tesla repairs cost? Of course, there's the warranty you can purchase but last I checked it cost nearly half as much as a new inexpensive fossil fuel car. I'm sure that over time prices will come down but it's going to take a while.

The second problem for me is size. I have a big family so I need an SUV or minivan style vehicle. The electric vehicles that come closest to meeting that need have little to no storage space and are very expensive.

Finally, while an electric car would be ideal for around town driving, taking long trips is still quite inconvenient. While I'm not taking long trips on a daily basis, I do take them occasionally. And when I do take long trips they tend to be very long...like Florida to Canada long. I suppose I could rent but that gets expensive too. Currently, our family has two vehicles. A large SUV (newish) and a small car that was purchased new a little over a year ago. I considered an electric vehicle at the time of purchase but I couldn't find any that were reasonably close to the cost of the gas powered car I ended up with. More than a year later, I don't have any regrets yet.

Electric cars have a number of challenges to overcome in the long run. The environmental impact of mining the necessary metals for the batteries like cobalt, lithium and graphite combined with the relative scarcity of some of them are big problems to solve.

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