I'm copying this partially from an earlier post that went off at a tangent, because I do believe that it's important.
There is a lot of misinformation, disinformation, and just plain lazy information out there regarding electric vehicles (EVs). There are an awful lot of people who just want to see EVs fail (all over again) for various reasons, and they are doing their best to diss and miss them wherever possible. Most of it, though, is spurious, and it behooves us to rectify the misinformation wherever possible.
So, here are just a few of the spurious claims being levelled against zero-emission vehicles, with links to some "alternative facts", or to some of my previous posts that consider the issues in more detail:
- EVs do not have enough range, and you will be constantly suffering from range anxiety. In fact. EV range is not an issue these days, and it is improving all the time.
- EVs are expensive and you will never recoup the upfront costs through cheaper fuel. Nope. By some calculations, they will start to save you money after just a couple of years, and prices will continue to fall as demand increases.
- There aren't enough charging stations, and those that do exist are unreliable. There is an element of truth to this one, but, while reliability is still a problem with public charging ports, the number of charging stations is increasing rapidly, and anyway most EV owners do most of their charging (80%) at home.
- EVs are dangerous and they can burst into flames. Actually, they don't spontaneously burst into flames with great regularity (much less frequently than gas cars, in fact).
- Electric vehicles are a bigger environmental threat than ICE cars because of the raw material mining required. No, EVs are not actually an environmental disaster covered up by the radical eco-warrior caste. This is further confirmed by a FactCheck.org report, quoting US Department of Energy data. And anyway, the scale of lithium mining (both now and even in some potential future EV utopia) is tiny compared to other metal mining.
- There is no plan for the disposal of EV batteries and they will be a significant environmental hazard (on a par with nuclear waste, if you believe some people). In fact, dead EV batteries are unlikely to be a major problem, and lithium-ion batteries are at least 90% recyclable (this according to JD Power).
- EV batteries don't last very long, and you can expect to replace to them after a few years. Er, no, it turns out that only 1.5% of EV batteries have been replaced, and the vast majority outlive the car itself.
- All this electricification will "break the grid", won't it? No, it won't. People have been looking into this for years, and many solutions have presented themselves. Besides, what's the alternative?
- And, finally, EVs are not able to cope with cold weather (a favourite trope just recently). Yes, EV range goes down in cold weather, no surprise there, but so does the range of regular gas vehicles and they may fail even more than EVs, according to Norwegian data, and a new generation of batteries is expected to reduce the problem still further.
And finally finally, no-one has ever said that electric vehicles are going to single-handedly save the world, but they are a not insignificant part of the solution to climate change, and to pretend otherwise is tilting at windmills (so to speak).
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