Why should we own electric vehicles?

We shouldn’t. Ideally, we should walk everywhere, scavenging for naturally growing vegetable food to nourish ourselves. This is ultimately the way to minimize our impact on the planet and the rest of life on it.

But let’s face it, such an extreme measure is not compatible with modern society. Some of us may be able to get by with bicycles (although even those have an environmental impact), or use public transportation which helps minimize our impact on the environment as well as easing traffic congestion.

But for many people, it’s expected that we own a personal vehicle of some sort to get us and our goods around.

So the question is: if we do truly need a personal vehicle to move us around, is there a particular type of vehicle that is “better” to own? And “better” is a subjective quantity that is going to be different for everyone. However, if we adopt the opinion that one characteristic of “better” is that our choice of vehicle benefits (or rather minimizes harm to) the environment and society as a whole, then I would make the argument that an electric vehicle is “better” than an internal combustion vehicle.

Hopefully the reasons should be obvious:

1. They are far more efficient at converting energy into motion on a “well to wheels” basis.
2. They are potentially sustainable (when renewable energy is used to charge them), rather than using up a finite resource, particularly one that has significant geopolitical and socioeconomic impacts.
3. They have zero emissions at the tailpipe (because there is no tailpipe!), and when charged with renewables, have zero emissions overall.
4. They minimize (or eliminate when charged with renewables) greenhouse gas emissions (which contribute to climate change) and PM pollution such as you see in major urban areas in the form of smog (and is responsible for decreased life expectancy in polluted areas).

There are many other reasons as well, such as superior driving experience, reduced noise, lower total cost of ownership, ability to conveniently charge at home, but those are more in the way of personal preference rather than strong reasons we should be driving EVs.

Now I know there are those who think that manufacturing batteries is somehow extremely harmful to the environment (and at the same time ignore the fact that gasoline and diesel are continually extracted from the ground, refined using very energy intensive processes, and then simply burned, only to start the process over again). What you need to keep in mind is the fact that other than the battery, an electric drivetrain is extremely simple and has very few parts, unlike an internal combustion engine that has thousands of parts, and has its own significant environmental impact when building (and disposing of) the vehicle.

Still, building a battery is in fact an energy intensive process. However, unlike refining gas and diesel, the power can be in the form of electricity, and thus be sourced from renewables, minimizing their environmental impact, potentially down to almost zero (yes, raw materials do need to be sourced, but unlike oil which is becoming more difficult and more dangerous to extract, lithium and most other components of lithium-ion batteries is relatively plentiful and easily extracted, and at the end of the battery’s life, completely recyclable).

In fact, when the battery is manufactured assuming the US electric grid mix, it pays back its CO2 embodiment in about 6–18 months, depending on the size of the battery. And at the Tesla Gigafactory, which aims to use renewables to become carbon neutral, the payback time will be reduced to zero.