There’s a lot of misinformation online about electric cars.
The oil industry — this is existential for them. They have infinity dollars to run the most mind altering PR campaign the world has ever seen. Next to maybe Putin, nobody has the kind of resources, and the motivation, and the ability, to distort the narrative.
They don’t have to convince you to totally reject this new, (better) technology. They just have to muddy the waters enough. Delay the transition.
And honestly, mission accomplished. The amount of complete nonsense I see about electric cars online is stunning. Every imaginable objection, from easily disproved to semi-plausible (tire dust 🙄), has been trotted out a million times. And all the time I see people engaging in it who really should know better.
And I get it: change is hard. Can you believe how much people complain about paper straws? JFC. Who uses straws anyway? (Disclaimer: people with disabilities not included, I know, I know.)
Here’s the thing: electric cars are objectively better than gas ones. They run more smoothly, accelerate faster. You don’t have to gas them up with some weird dead dinosaur juice that if you still a single drop on you, you have to throw out your clothes pretty much. The technology has advanced past that.
Here’s the other thing about electric cars. They aren’t any more expensive than NEW internal combustion engine cars anymore. Thanks to generous tax breaks, they’re about the same as any other new car. (Another qualification: New cars are of all types are EXPENSIVE af rn but that’s another discussion.)
If you are on the market for a new car right now, it really should be a no brainer. Buy an electric one. (If you don’t need a car because you live in San Francisco: Gold star. This suggestion isn’t for you.) You don’t need a million miles of range. You might have to plan a little more thoroughly when you take a road trip. It’s not that big of a deal.
That car — whether it’s electric or internal combustion — is still going to be on the road 11 years from now (unless it gets totaled). And even then, even after it’s run into the ground in the United States, it’s going to end up, maybe, in some developing country having a second life.
Now, 11 years, is past our deadline to meet climate goals and ward off disaster. Our window to address climate change is closing.
I love transit and walking and biking. It should go without saying. And I agree that this needs to be part of the solution. I don’t even own my own car (though my husband owns one that I have access to a lot of the time).
Here’s the thing though that should be obvious to anyone who isn’t too online in a weird rabbit hole: The United States is not in a position to pivot away from car-based mobility in the next 8 or 9 years.
Millions and million and millions of Americans — the vast majority — live in places where, without access to a car — they would be up shit’s creek. They couldn’t get to work. They couldn’t function.
That is not their fault. We haven’t done a good job of providing connected communities with strong infrastructure to facilitate good walkability and transit access. We spent all that time and money instead building enormous free parking lots.
Obviously, that was a big mistake. And me and many others have been hard at work trying to shift things a little bit more into a more reasonable balance.
That being said, those efforts have only taken us so far. Transit ridership is down almost 30 percent just over the last few years. New York City — our most walkable and transit accessible city by far — has struggled for almost a decade to implement something as common sense as congestion pricing.
We are still in the early stages of this effort. We are not nine years away from defeating car culture in the U.S. Compassion requires us to acknowledge this.
Those of us that live in the United States, we’re not going to suffer the worst effects of climate change. It’s people in the Middle East and in Africa and in India and in the Pacific Islands who are going to pay the highest price for our (practical, necessary) trips to Walmart in Ford F250s and 4Runners.
Some of these places, certain parts, are on their way to becoming uninhabitable. Millions of climate refugees, that is what is at stake right now. It is critical that we reduce our emissions immediately. And electric cars — along with cleaning the grid — are one of our only hopes in the short, near term.
The good news is, the table is set for this transition. The American auto companies have made the investments. The federal government has stepped up with the tax subsidies. Now the public needs to do its part.
Electric cars aren’t going to eliminate all pollution. But guess what? That’s not a reasonable goal anyway. We’re in damage control right now. We’re not holding out for theoretical perfect solutions that can’t be implemented in the real world.
Nobody is going to march into suburban Florida in the next few years and tell people they can’t drive cars. We live in a Democracy. Put that (eco-fashy) fantasy aside and be real.
Many of our major cities are making investments in transit (Los Angeles, Seattle for eg). And they’re building infill housing as well. So there are opportunities to reduce driving, especially in major cities and a few walkable inner-ring suburban type areas. And there are reasons to pursue that outside of climate. Health reasons. Community reasons. We’ve covered all this.
But that’s not going to help someone living in Cobb County, Georgia all that much. These are real people who vote and have needs and they can’t be pretended away. One million people live in Cobb County, many of them middle and lower-middle income, and they are dependent on cars for almost every trip.
But they can buy an EV right now and put a solar array on the roof and run it emissions free. That has got to be part of any reasonable solution. We don’t have any time to waste.