The environment is important to me. Clean energy is important to me. Electric vehicles? I’m not convinced. The United States can benefit greatly from renewable energy, but electric cars are not The Way. We in the US would like for manufacturing to return to our shores. Politicians believe that manufacturing means making the things that China is already making, like electric vehicles and batteries. It is my humble opinion that while green energy is of vital importance to the future of the US, I just don’t think that we can beat China at something that they have already gotten a head start on. How big of a head start? The US has roughly 239 gigawatts of solar capacity. China has added more solar capacity in 2024 that the US has to date. China didn’t accomplish this feat purely by being awesome. They did it by doing all the usual stuff that China does.
A lot of my ham radio gear comes from China. If you want cheap electronics, there is really only one supplier. I am a big fan of Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries. They are weigh less, hold more energy, and live longer than lead acid batteries. They are also availabe almost exclusively from China. The same is true of solar panels. When you are shooting at a moving target, you don’t aim for where the target is, you aim for where the target will be. Instead of aiming at solar panels and EVs, I would like for the US to aim for what comes after that.
Electric vehicles in their current form are not suited for a place like North America. North America is huge. The United States takes forever to drive across. 20 years ago I drove from Seattle to Cincinnat in 3 days. If I had to stop every 400 miles to spend almost an hour recharging, that trip would have taken weeks. EVs are great for short frequent trips, like commuting or running errands. If you never left the metro area of the city where you live, an EV will save you a fortune. You can tell that the math checks out because Amazon is phasing in electric delivery vehicles. With an EV you would need to rent a gasoline car for a Great American Roadtrip. Towing capacity is another concern with EVs. Electric pickups and SUV’s lose a lot of range when towing. If you want to haul a camper or a flat bed trailer, or a mobile comms center, an EV isn’t going to measure up.
Charging an EV anywhere but at your home is expensive and time consuming. Fully charging an EV at a Level 3 charger takes close to an hour, and you only save 15-20% compared to gasoline. Charging at home will cost you less than half as much as the L3. If you are charging your car from the electrical grid you are likely to be burning coal or natural gas, which are still fossil fuels. If you live in the south-western US, you can use solar to charge your EV, which is where the EV really shines as a green alternative. Producing electricity in the southwest, and storing it in some medium (batteries, hydrogen, etc.) for delivery to the northeast would create good jobs.
Producing power for the electrical grid probably uses more fossil fuels than transportation. That is the place for green energy investment. Houses and buildings probably use less fossil fuel than transportation, but in a building it doesn’t matter how heavy the batteries are, and it’s fine if it takes 12 hours to charge them. Retro-fitting homes and commercial buildings for local solar production and heating/cooling efficiency makes more sense to me. Even if the electrical grid stayed on coal and gas, off-grid residential electricity production could vastly reduce America’s reliance on it.
In terms of greenhouse gas production, I imagine transportation is the top producer, with passenger cars being the worst. Again, the solution in my opinion is not to replace gasoline passenger cars with electrics, but to just get more cars off the road. Public transportation, walkable/bikeable cities, and remote work will probably do more to reduce car emissions than EVs will. Public transportation is another place where it doesn’t matter how big the batteries are, or how long it takes to charge them.
A major consumer of petroleum and producer of greenhouse gasses is agriculture. Between the giant machines for planting, harvesting, and irrigation, the pesticides and fertilizers, and all the transportation and refrigeration, I think there is room for sustainability improvements that will offset more than EV’s. Especially if We, The People, de-industrialize agriculture and take on more localized and regenerative food growing techniques.
My final issue with EVs is that they are still made of plastic, rubber, and glass, all materials that are either made from oil, or require super high temperatures to manufacture. Where does that energy come from? Where do those materials go when the car gets totaled in an accident? Even if you replaced 50% of the cars on the road with EVs, there is still the problem of what to do with the obsolete cars. I think that part of the sustainability practice for the future should include recovery of materials from the end of the product’s life. Speaking of waste materials, the damage to produce the current population of vehicles has already been done. Why not build an industry around keeping these cars on the road for more than 100,000 miles? The 2025 Jeep Cherokee doesn’t look like you can take it off road, so keeping older vehicles with better capabilities will become more and more important in the coming years.
In conclusion, I believe that green energy and green manufacturing are key elements for addressing climate change, but I don’t think that Electric Vehicles are the answer. I know that cars are a major part of the American spirit, and I think that they still should be. But I also think that serious de-carbonization should look past the EV and at the systemic issues of American industry.