EVs are cleaner than gas cars, but a growing share of Americans don't believe it

The only valid criticisms of EV's are:

1. They're harder to extinguish than a gas car if they end up catching on fire.

2. They don't really solve any of the major issues with car based infrastructure.

3. Tesla is a shit show because of that damn muskrat which pushes a lot of people away from EV's in general.

Public transportation is even better yet

We're going to run the country into the ground because we have such a large group of people being totally fine with (or even encouraging) their lack of education and the ability to reason properly. They're just proud to be "against" something together, they don't even care what it is they're against.

There are already EV battery recycling plants springing up now that there are enough used EVs to warrant them, there wasn't much point building them when there weren't any battery packs to process.

The renewable energy switch is already happening, because even without subsidies they're still cheaper.

But no... gotta get out there and roll coal.

Put them in a sealed room with a gas engine running and you'll see how fast they realize that they're cleaner

Because the conservative machine, despite the love of Elon's right-wing antics, never stop talking about how bad EVs are. Funny, the only time they act like they care about the environment is when they talk about how bad the EV batteries are to manufacture. While they roll coal and drive gas-guzzling mall cruiser bro-dozers all over the place.

Genuine question - are EVs better for the environment if the main source of electricity of my country is coal based? Most of the coal plants are pretty old too…

They all suck in their own unique ways. Automotive tires are a leading source of microplastics so EVs aren't exactly a darling angel, but getting to work has become a 500 billion a year industry in America and framed in such a way that people are debating which car is better for the environment when they're all horrible compared to mass transit. Because capitalism thrives on frivolity and consumption. That's the real crux

Over the longterm, and they also require a lot less maintenance because they don't have to deal with mini-explosions from combustion generating excess heat and stress. The problem is in the battery, and the industry hasn't even scratched the surface for solutions.

I see trucks carrying butane tanks all the time, where are the trucks carrying EV battery replacements? There aren't because the industry wants to charge extra for fixed installation ones depending on capacity and charging capacity and there is absolutely no profit incentive that offsets other losses to standardize battery systems in a way they can be easily extensible or replaceable.

can you really blame us?

let me run through the last 8 years of American history with four words, "we were lied to". doesn't matter from whom, doesn't matter what. we're constantly being lied to. truth is, it's been true for longer than 8 years, but the last 8 have been especially transparent.

we're learning that the upper echelon only trusts the American public to do three things; consume, produce, and die. if you can't even do that for them, you're removed as an undesirable.

so yeah, trust in the system is broken. it's going to take at least a generation or two just to repair it ** if they work on it**.

I can't fault anyone who's untrusting of a system that continuously covers lie after lie with more lies.

Its about 40% more power efficient per mile but theres a couple of other trade-offs, still better yeah.

Of course they're cleaner. As long as your electricity isn't coming from coal, you're doing better by the environment than an ICE.

zombie engineer voice "traiiiiiins"

Because we Americans are easily swayed by propaganda, unfortunately.

Cleaner than gas cars =/= Clean.

This is the lowest possible bar to pass. The point isn't that EVs are worse than gas. The point is that both are terrible for people, health, safety, climate, transit, sustainability, equity, freedom, etc.

IMO, I still think there's not enough infrastructure to support charging EVs. Don't get me wrong I've seen some. Just... Not a lot. Until charging is as prevalent as gas its just not worth it. Or if you have a house I guess.

In some areas I hear it's good. But in my area there's only 1 set of charging stations at a Wawa that I know of. And that Wawa is an hour drive away. Plus I'm at a rental complex that mows the lawns regularly and having a cable run from my house to the car is not allowed.

My current gas operated vehicle has about 160000 miles on it. I'm hopeful that my vehicle will last a long time. And then when my vehicle dies, I'll look at the infrastructure again and see if it's beneficial for me to switch to an EV. I'm going to continue to wait until it's beneficial for me to buy a new car.

We'll see how it goes.

An even larger portion of America can't afford them, so it doesn't even matter.

67% of GOP voters believe the Haitians (((n*****s))) are eating pets in Springfield, OH.

So, no surprise.

EVs have a lot of advantages over ICEs. It's good that things are evolving finally to make EVs more than a niche. It however doesn't remove the problem that they are still a car with all of those negatives, even if they pollute much less. In some ways providing an individual solution could harm efforts to reduce the number of cars on the road. It's not a final solution, only a step to fix a few of the most obvious problems while retaining others.

Not surprising. There has been a pretty successful campaign by the right to paint EVs as worse for the environment because we get our electricity from coal (we barely get anything from coal) and mining; more expensive to fuel up (using the highest priced fast charging vs lowest price of gas); and worse from a humanitarian perspective (cobalt mining).

Things to refute this: EVs, even with coal power as their energy source, emit less CO2 over the lifespan of the vehicle compared with gas vehicles. Mining sucks and is indeed environmentally damaging but oil is also fucking terrible. The benefit of EVs is that the vast majority of a battery can be recycled whereas oil is single use. So to meet a consistent demand, we do have to ramp up mining but once the demands is met, mining can be scaled back dramatically.

For fuel costs, it's easy to do the basic math but many don't. I've seen people complain that their electricity bill will just skyrocket. When I suggested my parents get a battery powered riding mower, my mom thought they would be more expensive and that the electricity bill would be just as much as the gas bill. The price of the mower is the same and the electricity cost was about 1/15th of what has is and you don't have to be riding around in gas fumes.

As for the humanitarian angle, the right obviously does not really give a shit. You could easily point out the atrocities that oil companies have done over the years. You could also point out that cobalt is being phased out. We could also do the mining here instead of having our done abroad. And there is the previous point that most of this just had to be done once then mining can be scaled back.

A venn diagram of Trumpers and people who believe gas cars are cleaner is a circle

I was always under the impression that the source of the electricity to charge electric vehicles matters greatly. Some areas use coal burning to generate power while others use hydroelectric.

I've been wondering... Those batteries are really heavy and I've already had to explain to multiple customers that their ~1000kg heavier and ~100kw stronger engine (to get similar acceleration in a comparable model to the gas vehicle) is going to eat up tires twice as fast. If you were burning through a set of tires a year you better budget for two sets and the extra time to come in and have them changed every 6 months. And all those extra tires have to come from something. And shipped from somewhere. And then the roads need repaving more often because of both the extra weight and higher power output. 1000's of km of road that will have repaving works going on twice as often. On top of reduced traffic throughput while roadworks are ongoing, is any of that taken into account when comparing environmental impact? How will the increase in airborne particles and toxic runoff from the roads affect the environment?

I believe it, but I don't give a shit. I buy a car/truck because of how capable it is, and how easy repairs are to do myself, not because of how many smug Californian's circlejerk over it.

I heard about this, although the positive news is it's mostly people who weren't in the market for an EV to begin with so it doesn't really impact EV sales or anything. Still hate to see disinformation win, though.

I'm a bit sad to hear Congress is more or less outlawing Chinese cars here, though. Affordable EVs are far and few between and it really feels like the national security rational they're giving thinly hides the real reason of preventing competition for US car makers, as if they even planned on making a decent EV.

Hybrids actually have the best longevity and repair scores, however.

The longevity of the vehicle actually does count towards its ecological impact, because if you have to replace it sooner, you're creating a bigger ecological impact of creating a short-term use device before more energy has to be used to recycle parts of it.

So, at the moment hybrids win that battle. I think its simply because hybrids have been around longer, not because they're special. Give it about 10-15 more years and I think you'll see a flip to EVs taking over that spot from hybrids.

EDIT: Also, the bad build quality of Teslas and the early adopters of EVs mostly being Tesla owners also means that the sample of hybrids having better longevity and repair scores is impacted by Tesla specifically being so bad. If you cut out Teslas from the equation, I bet EVs and hybrids would probably have similar longevity and repair scores.