Everyone knows that electric vehicles are supposed to be better for the planet than gas cars. That’s the driving reason behind a global effort to transition toward batteries.
But what about the harms caused by mining for battery minerals? And coal-fired power plants for the electricity to charge the cars? And battery waste? Is it really true that EVs are better?
The answer is yes. But Americans are growing less convinced.
The net benefits of EVs have been frequently fact-checked, including by NPR. "No technology is perfect, but the electric vehicles are going to offer a significant benefit as compared to the internal combustion engine vehicles," Jessika Trancik, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told NPR this spring.
It’s important to ask these questions about EVs’ hidden costs, Trancik says. But they have been answered “exhaustively” — her word — and a widerange of organizations have confirmed that EVs still beat gas.
The irony being that I actually face my challenges and you see insurmountable obstacles where there are none in defense of the worst aspects of the industry. But at least you are making your position much more evident, you just want to discourage EVs as a niche product that only works in urban environments that doesn’t work in rural or when the temperatures drop below freezing, and seem to be quite hostile to premises that could easily change and disprove that notion. Why, ego or something else, I wonder.
Don’t worry, my idea clearly isn’t meant for people like you, so don’t worry your pretty little head off.
The irony being that there are obvious challenges to EV becoming mainstream for the average person, and you choose to say there are no challenges. You are willingly ignorant to them.
You are the one discarding solutions to challenges, I’m just saying those challenges are not insurmountable obstacles. Reading is hard.