Why I’m Not Sold on the Electric Vehicle Craze (Yet)
And why you shouldn’t be either.
Winter Weather
Many of you have experienced what we in the north know as winter. A mix of freezing rain, ice, snow, wind, and frigid cold at seemingly random times through the season. This often causes power outages and road closures — two of the most obvious blocks to sensibly operating an electric vehicle. If the power is out, your fuel source is out. If the roads are iced and snowed over, most EVs do not have the ground clearance, drivetrain, or off-roading capabilities required to get around in heavy snow. It’s not impossible to have a very off-road-capable EV (like the Rivian R1S shown below), but as of writing this, they are not widely available.
Another issue that plagues anything with a battery is the cold. Low temperatures cause the chemicals in the batteries to react slower resulting in lower efficiency and therefore a shorter range in EVs. In addition to the cold effecting the battery, it also effects the occupants. To heat the cabin, the only source for heat is running electricity through heating coils and blowing the heat into the cabin. Electric vehicles do not have the advantage of the traditional heat engine in providing exhaust heat to the cabin for comfort.
Energy
A big advantage of electric vehicles is the availability and cost of their consumable resource — electricity. But there’s more here to consider than just saying electricity is cheaper and cleaner, because that’s not the whole story. Although a good thunderstorm may disagree, electricity is not generated out of thin air. More often than not, our electricity comes from a few major sources. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration in February of last year, the majority of generated electricity in the US comes from burning fossil fuels.
This means that having an electric car is only offloading the energy production to a natural gas or coal plant and centralizing the effects. There are benefits to centralization — like better efficiency and optimization, more control, and lower distribution costs. The disbenefits are present also — like less market competition for energy, more institutional or government control/regulation, and often more distributed public cost. To me, centralization of power doesn’t sound like something I would support. Decentralization is what usually leads to greater security.
The other concern people tend to overlook is energy density. Currently, the battery cell 2170 found in a Tesla Model 3 have an energy density of 246 Wh/kg (source) or 0.8856 MJ/kg. Compared to diesel fuel, which has an energy density of 45.6 MJ/kg (source), the battery cells just can’t yet compete. Even when the average diesel engine runs at 30% efficiency, that still equates to 13.68 MJ/kg or more than 10x that of the Tesla batteries.
Waste & Emissions
One of the main environmental benefits of driving an electric car that it has “zero emissions” or it releases no exhaust gases into the atmosphere. The internal combustion counterparts release carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and other harmful gases into the atmosphere. One thing many of us are unsure of though, is the other type of waste. What happens to an EV after it dies? More specifically the battery. Where does it go and how is it processed? According to an article from Popular Mechanics, “The automobile is the most recycled consumer product in the world.” The vehicle gets shredded, and the pieces sorted and reused. Can we assume the same for these EVs and their batteries?
Overall, the electric vehicle is not a bad idea in any sense. Electricity has the potential of being 100% renewable whereas fossil fuels are a finite, non-renewable resource. The truth is that the infrastructure to support electric vehicles on a large scale for long term is not yet there and the benefits of owning a vehicle that runs on fossil fuels still seem to outweigh those of the EV in most scenarios (especially off grid). I do believe that renewable energy with nuclear support/backup is the future of energy and EVs have the potential to solve all the problems they face in the future.
