Electric vehicles and what they mean to me as at July 28th, 2021

So here are the mental notes I've made over the past couple of years on this electric vehicle experiment:

1. You have to drive an EV around 30,000km before you break even on the carbon emissions required to build the battery over and above the emissions required to build the common components between gas and EV. That is, when you drive an EV off the lot you have to drive 30,000km before the lower carbon emissions of driving on a battery have offset the emissions required to make the battery. After 30K, you pull ahead.

2. With the exception of Tesla, fast chargers are on multiple networks, in odd locations, and there is no reliable source of charger availability. You can find charger locations easily enough and it contains availability data, but the data on whether or not they are working or occupied is not reliable.

3. EVs are more expensive up-front but their maintenance and operating costs are much lower.

4. EVs are heavier than their gas equivalents due to the battery, and as a result they contribute more to wear and tear on roads (which is primarily driven by weight-per-axle). Presumably they will also turn out to be more fatal in collisions. Example: the forthcoming F-150 Lightning truck is 1800lbs heavier than the gas version.

5. Fast chargers may only work at half-speed if someone is charging in the bay next to you.

6. Unlike gas vehicles, you get less mileage on the highway than in the city. The range drops fast if you drive the car fast, and you can't take advantage of regenerative braking if you aren't braking. If you're one of those people that drives 130km/h on the highway, you are going to get less range - maybe significantly less - than going at 100.

7. This isn't fully clear yet because the market hasn't been fleshed out with larger vehicles, but with chargers having a fixed supply rate, I imagine that larger, heavier vehicles like crossovers, trucks, and SUVs with less-aerodynamic postures are going to take longer to charge to achieve the same range as a smaller car.

And this leads me to these conclusions:

1. My personal focus is on driving as little as possible and using transit where I can. Driving less in any car is better than driving more in an EV. As an infrequent driver, the carbon emission reductions are not going to be significant for me.

2. EVs are better for the environment in some cases, but not good for the environment. Mining battery metals is not a clean process, all things considered, but the impact will be more on things that you never notice, like polluting someone else's local environment, employing someone else's child labour, dragging a deep ocean floor you never see, or depleting someone else's groundwater than about carbon emissions. We seem to be on track to prioritize carbon emissions over all else.

3. There is no such thing as a car that is "good for the environment". All cars are made from mined metals, coated with toxic paint, have plastic interiors, and ride on rubber tires. All cars require roads that are usually made from asphalt or concrete.

And I'm reminded that one of the arguments for diesel cars was that they had fewer carbon dioxide emissions than gasoline cars, at the expense of emitting more pollutants that had a more direct, localized effect on the people that lived around them.