But they’re a whole lot better for the planet than gas cars. And cars won’t go away till we make alternatives. Which we should do as quickly as possible, but will still take a while.
It’s not good enough. Cars are a bigger problem than their immediately obvious issues like pollution.
??? I hugely disagree that cars are a bigger problem than green house gas pollution. I can live in an unwalkable city. I probably can’t live on a +4°C earth.
Designing a city to be hostile to cars takes more vehicles off the road than trying to push people into electrics. Less cars (of any type) in the city means less health hazards means billions saved means billions to use on climate change research. Please don’t forget that tires are the major polluting factor right now, not exhaust gasses. I strongly believe this is more effective than trying to slowly push people into electrics which will still pollute the air with microplastics and make a ton of noise when they race through the city. Lithium is also not particularly clean to mine, so I’d prefer it was used to make batteries for bikes and other similarly sized vehicles. The world does not have the mining and processing capacity to support converting everyone to an electric car.
… so long as you’re not leasing them, the lifetime energy cost is night and day.
The current rhetoric against EVs is reminiscent of the rhetoric against nuclear power. Yes, it’s not great. Yes, it’s not renewable. However, it gives us more time to more deeply address these issues. The successful anti-nuclear Green Peace campaigns against nuclear have done immeasurable damage to the environment in the long-term (I’m now convinced they were a big oil sock puppet all along). The same could be said for the anti-EV crowd, but the “EVs are sexy” campaign seems to be gaining more traction this time round.
Make no mistake though, the “EVs are just as bad” is a myth perpetuated by big oil.
If you can do a bike, then please do a bike (or a scooter, or one of the many options). If you can’t, then an EV is a good choice. If you can’t afford an EV. But never, ever, lease.
You’re still lugging around 1500 to 2000 kg of steel, glass & plastic to move around little more than your butt. You can do something more efficient than that, assuming the infrastructure is rigged up to handle it.
