There’s a gas station a few minutes from my house. When I drive by it these days, I have to hold back a small chuckle. I haven’t stopped there in more than a year. Driving past it feels like cheating.
Fuel for my car is available at my home, at an equivalent price of about a dollar a gallon. My car is always fueled up and ready to go, and I never have to get grumpy at the person who came home on empty and left it that way. I spend much less time charging than I ever used to spend at gas stations.
What about road trips? It does take a few extra minutes on a road trip stop — but only a few. By the time we need to charge, we’ve already been driving for hours, and the stop is not much longer than it takes to go to the bathroom and buy snacks.
Electric vehicles are faster, cleaner, more convenient, cheaper to fuel, and need less maintenance than gasoline cars. They’re just better cars. The only thing that isn’t currently better is the availability of charging stations, and that is coming. Most cars including mine will gain access to the Tesla charging network over the next year. That will dramatically improve both availability and reliability.
Regarding affordability, the continued fall of battery prices will allow manufacturers to create less expensive EVs. Without the battery, an EV is much cheaper to manufacture than a gasoline car. It doesn’t have an engine, a fuel tank, a complicated transmission, or an emissions control system. Offsetting the cost of those things is the battery. Battery prices have dropped by 82% in the last decade, and they continue to fall as manufacturing scales up.
U.S. car manufacturers focused first on luxury EVs. Automakers in other countries have moved much more aggressively into lower-cost cars. The Chinese automaker BYD just introduced an EV at a price of under $10,000. It doesn’t have the range or charging speed to be a primary vehicle for most U.S. drivers, but it’s a preview of things to come here. Ultra-cheap EVs are coming, and the U.S. auto market is not an island.
The pace of change looks slow here so far, but that’s the way technology advances often work — slow at first and then accelerating rapidly. Norway is the world’s leader in EVs. It took them only a decade to go from 10% EV sales to over 90%. China is currently at 38% EV sales and growing at an even faster rate than Norway did.
Sales of gasoline cars peaked back in 2018 — both in the United States and globally. They are now declining each year as EVs take a growing share of the market. EVs have already taken over the global market for two- and three-wheeled vehicles (popular in Asia), and are starting to ramp up in buses and delivery vans. Electric versions of those vehicles have higher upfront cost, but much lower ongoing fuel and maintenance costs.
The world is going electric, and we will too — but not without some disruption along the way. Federal legislation has now incentivized charging infrastructure, as well as the build-out of domestic supply chains for battery materials. The effects of these policies are just starting to play out and will help make sure the EV transition isn’t held back.
The Wasatch Back chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby works on these issues, along with other bipartisan legislation to reduce emissions. We meet monthly and have lots of local events. Join us by signing up at citizensclimatelobby.org.
Tom Moyer
Pinebrook