A guide to electric car misinformation (part 2)
Welcome back to HEATED—Emily here. Exciting news: Arielle and I are in Philadelphia this week for the annual Society of Environmental Journalists conference! Later in the week, I’ll be moderating a panel on climate disinformation; teaching a workshop on how to operate a climate newsletter; and speaking on the closing plenary panel about the future of environmental journalism. A guide to electric car misinformation (part 2)The truth is, when it comes to the environment, there really is no such thing as a “good” car.
This week, we’ll be going through some of the most prevalent myths and misleading claims that power-seekers and profit-seekers are spreading about EVs in general. Financially-motivated EV misinformation comes from both sides of the aisle (the lane?). Industries that see EVs as a threat exaggerate their harms in a bid to get you to hate EVs. And industries that profit from EVs greenwash their benefits in a bid to get you to love EVs. Most often, you can recognize EV misinformation by its attempts to promote black and white thinking. It’ll either be “Electric cars are bad and gas cars are good” or “Electric cars are good and gas cars are bad.” But the truth is, when it comes to the environment, there really is no such thing as a “good” car. The real question is: how bad are these cars in relation to one another? This is where most EV misinformation lies. Misleading: It’s more environmentally harmful to make an EV than a gas car.This statement, by itself, is technically true. ”To run, EVs require six times the mineral input, by weight, of conventional vehicles, excluding steel and aluminum,” the Washington Post reported in 2023. That’s because each EV has a 900-pound battery block containing roughly 353 pounds of crucial materials or metals including cobalt, nickel, lithium, manganese, aluminum and copper. Gas cars don’t have that, so it’s less emissions-intensive to create a gas car than an electric car. If you’re only buying a car to simply look at it and never drive it, then absolutely, it would be way more environmentally-friendly to buy a gas-powered car. But if you do, in fact, intend to actually drive the car you buy, then an EV is going to be the less environmentally harmful choice—even if coal is part of your local electricity mix. That’s not according to me, either. That’s according to a peer-reviewed study funded by the Ford Motor Company, a company that makes most of its profits from gas-powered vehicles. That study, conducted by the University of Michigan, found that EVs become less emissions-intensive than gas cars after “1.4 to 1.5 years for sedans, 1.6 to 1.9 years for S.U.V.s and about 1.6 years for pickup trucks, based on the average number of vehicle miles traveled in the United States.”
As time goes on, experts expect that it will take less and less driving time for EVs to become cleaner than gas cars. That’s not only because the electricity mix is expected to become cleaner; but also because the majority of battery materials used to make the cars are likely to be recycled. Of course, we all know how trustworthy corporations have been about recycling. But the point stands: anyone who says the creation of EVs makes them environmentally worse than gas-powered vehicles is either misinformed or trying to mislead you.
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