essay on why electric cars are bad

• Accomplishments
• US DOT Reports
• Research & Development
• Deployment & Technology Transfer
• Education & Workforce Development
• Equity Initiatives
• Executive Leadership
• Student Leadership
• University Partners
• Advisory Council
• Deployment Partners
• Carnegie Mellon University Affiliates
• The National Mobility Summit
• Smart Mobility Connection Seminar Series
• What’s Happening
• Carnegie Mellon University
• University of Pennsylvania
• The Ohio State University

The 4 Biggest Arguments Against Electric Cars — and Why They’re Completely Wrong

Why haven’t electric cars gained more traction? They do come with certain drawbacks, and many skeptics have argued that these drawbacks will hold back EV adoption for many years, if not permanently. But the future is not static. The technology is improving all the time, with every little breakthrough and every marginal gain. Over time, many of the core drawbacks of EVs could be eliminated entirely. More>>

• Search Menu
• Sign in through your institution
• Browse content in A - General Economics and Teaching
• Browse content in A1 - General Economics
• A10 - General
• A11 - Role of Economics; Role of Economists; Market for Economists
• A12 - Relation of Economics to Other Disciplines
• A13 - Relation of Economics to Social Values
• A14 - Sociology of Economics
• Browse content in A2 - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics
• A20 - General
• A29 - Other
• A3 - Collective Works
• Browse content in B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches
• Browse content in B0 - General
• B00 - General
• Browse content in B1 - History of Economic Thought through 1925
• B10 - General
• B11 - Preclassical (Ancient, Medieval, Mercantilist, Physiocratic)
• B12 - Classical (includes Adam Smith)
• B13 - Neoclassical through 1925 (Austrian, Marshallian, Walrasian, Stockholm School)
• B14 - Socialist; Marxist
• B15 - Historical; Institutional; Evolutionary
• B16 - History of Economic Thought: Quantitative and Mathematical
• B17 - International Trade and Finance
• B19 - Other
• Browse content in B2 - History of Economic Thought since 1925
• B20 - General
• B21 - Microeconomics
• B22 - Macroeconomics
• B23 - Econometrics; Quantitative and Mathematical Studies
• B24 - Socialist; Marxist; Sraffian
• B25 - Historical; Institutional; Evolutionary; Austrian
• B26 - Financial Economics
• B27 - International Trade and Finance
• B29 - Other
• Browse content in B3 - History of Economic Thought: Individuals
• B30 - General
• B31 - Individuals
• Browse content in B4 - Economic Methodology
• B40 - General
• B41 - Economic Methodology
• B49 - Other
• Browse content in B5 - Current Heterodox Approaches
• B50 - General
• B51 - Socialist; Marxian; Sraffian
• B52 - Institutional; Evolutionary
• B53 - Austrian
• B54 - Feminist Economics
• B55 - Social Economics
• B59 - Other
• Browse content in C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods
• Browse content in C0 - General
• C00 - General
• C02 - Mathematical Methods
• Browse content in C1 - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General
• C10 - General
• C12 - Hypothesis Testing: General
• C13 - Estimation: General
• C14 - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods: General
• C18 - Methodological Issues: General
• C19 - Other
• Browse content in C2 - Single Equation Models; Single Variables
• C20 - General
• C21 - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models; Quantile Regressions
• C22 - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
• C23 - Panel Data Models; Spatio-temporal Models
• C25 - Discrete Regression and Qualitative Choice Models; Discrete Regressors; Proportions; Probabilities
• Browse content in C3 - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables
• C30 - General
• C32 - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models
• C34 - Truncated and Censored Models; Switching Regression Models
• C38 - Classification Methods; Cluster Analysis; Principal Components; Factor Models
• Browse content in C4 - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics
• C43 - Index Numbers and Aggregation
• C44 - Operations Research; Statistical Decision Theory
• Browse content in C5 - Econometric Modeling
• C50 - General
• Browse content in C6 - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling
• C60 - General
• C61 - Optimization Techniques; Programming Models; Dynamic Analysis
• C62 - Existence and Stability Conditions of Equilibrium
• C63 - Computational Techniques; Simulation Modeling
• C65 - Miscellaneous Mathematical Tools
• C67 - Input-Output Models
• Browse content in C8 - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs
• C82 - Methodology for Collecting, Estimating, and Organizing Macroeconomic Data; Data Access
• C89 - Other
• Browse content in C9 - Design of Experiments
• C90 - General
• C91 - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
• C92 - Laboratory, Group Behavior
• C93 - Field Experiments
• Browse content in D - Microeconomics
• Browse content in D0 - General
• D01 - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
• D02 - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
• D03 - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
• Browse content in D1 - Household Behavior and Family Economics
• D10 - General
• D11 - Consumer Economics: Theory
• D12 - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
• D13 - Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation
• D14 - Household Saving; Personal Finance
• Browse content in D2 - Production and Organizations
• D20 - General
• D21 - Firm Behavior: Theory
• D22 - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
• D23 - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
• D24 - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
• D25 - Intertemporal Firm Choice: Investment, Capacity, and Financing
• Browse content in D3 - Distribution
• D30 - General
• D31 - Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
• D33 - Factor Income Distribution
• D39 - Other
• Browse content in D4 - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design
• D40 - General
• D41 - Perfect Competition
• D42 - Monopoly
• D43 - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
• D46 - Value Theory
• Browse content in D5 - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium
• D50 - General
• D51 - Exchange and Production Economies
• D57 - Input-Output Tables and Analysis
• D58 - Computable and Other Applied General Equilibrium Models
• Browse content in D6 - Welfare Economics
• D60 - General
• D61 - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
• D62 - Externalities
• D63 - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
• D64 - Altruism; Philanthropy
• D69 - Other
• Browse content in D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
• D71 - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
• D72 - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
• D73 - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
• D74 - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
• Browse content in D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
• D80 - General
• D81 - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
• D82 - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
• D83 - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
• D84 - Expectations; Speculations
• D85 - Network Formation and Analysis: Theory
• D86 - Economics of Contract: Theory
• D87 - Neuroeconomics
• Browse content in D9 - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics
• D91 - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
• Browse content in E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Browse content in E0 - General
• E00 - General
• E01 - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts
• E02 - Institutions and the Macroeconomy
• Browse content in E1 - General Aggregative Models
• E10 - General
• E11 - Marxian; Sraffian; Kaleckian
• E12 - Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian
• E13 - Neoclassical
• E16 - Social Accounting Matrix
• E17 - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
• Browse content in E2 - Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy
• E20 - General
• E21 - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
• E22 - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
• E23 - Production
• E24 - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
• E25 - Aggregate Factor Income Distribution
• E26 - Informal Economy; Underground Economy
• E27 - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
• Browse content in E3 - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles
• E30 - General
• E31 - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
• E32 - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
• E37 - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
• Browse content in E4 - Money and Interest Rates
• E40 - General
• E41 - Demand for Money
• E42 - Monetary Systems; Standards; Regimes; Government and the Monetary System; Payment Systems
• E43 - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects
• E44 - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
• E49 - Other
• Browse content in E5 - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit
• E50 - General
• E51 - Money Supply; Credit; Money Multipliers
• E52 - Monetary Policy
• E58 - Central Banks and Their Policies
• Browse content in E6 - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook
• E60 - General
• E61 - Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination
• E62 - Fiscal Policy
• E63 - Comparative or Joint Analysis of Fiscal and Monetary Policy; Stabilization; Treasury Policy
• E64 - Incomes Policy; Price Policy
• E65 - Studies of Particular Policy Episodes
• Browse content in F - International Economics
• Browse content in F0 - General
• F00 - General
• F01 - Global Outlook
• F02 - International Economic Order and Integration
• Browse content in F1 - Trade
• F10 - General
• F11 - Neoclassical Models of Trade
• F12 - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
• F13 - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
• F14 - Empirical Studies of Trade
• F15 - Economic Integration
• F16 - Trade and Labor Market Interactions
• F17 - Trade Forecasting and Simulation
• F18 - Trade and Environment
• Browse content in F2 - International Factor Movements and International Business
• F20 - General
• F21 - International Investment; Long-Term Capital Movements
• F22 - International Migration
• F23 - Multinational Firms; International Business
• Browse content in F3 - International Finance
• F30 - General
• F31 - Foreign Exchange
• F32 - Current Account Adjustment; Short-Term Capital Movements
• F33 - International Monetary Arrangements and Institutions
• F34 - International Lending and Debt Problems
• F35 - Foreign Aid
• F36 - Financial Aspects of Economic Integration
• F37 - International Finance Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
• F39 - Other
• Browse content in F4 - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance
• F40 - General
• F41 - Open Economy Macroeconomics
• F42 - International Policy Coordination and Transmission
• F43 - Economic Growth of Open Economies
• F44 - International Business Cycles
• F45 - Macroeconomic Issues of Monetary Unions
• F47 - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
• Browse content in F5 - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy
• F50 - General
• F51 - International Conflicts; Negotiations; Sanctions
• F53 - International Agreements and Observance; International Organizations
• F54 - Colonialism; Imperialism; Postcolonialism
• F55 - International Institutional Arrangements
• F59 - Other
• Browse content in F6 - Economic Impacts of Globalization
• F60 - General
• F61 - Microeconomic Impacts
• F62 - Macroeconomic Impacts
• F63 - Economic Development
• F64 - Environment
• F65 - Finance
• Browse content in G - Financial Economics
• Browse content in G0 - General
• G00 - General
• G01 - Financial Crises
• Browse content in G1 - General Financial Markets
• G10 - General
• G11 - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
• G12 - Asset Pricing; Trading volume; Bond Interest Rates
• G13 - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing
• G14 - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
• G15 - International Financial Markets
• G18 - Government Policy and Regulation
• G19 - Other
• Browse content in G2 - Financial Institutions and Services
• G20 - General
• G21 - Banks; Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
• G22 - Insurance; Insurance Companies; Actuarial Studies
• G23 - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
• G24 - Investment Banking; Venture Capital; Brokerage; Ratings and Ratings Agencies
• G28 - Government Policy and Regulation
• Browse content in G3 - Corporate Finance and Governance
• G30 - General
• G32 - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
• G33 - Bankruptcy; Liquidation
• G34 - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance
• G35 - Payout Policy
• G38 - Government Policy and Regulation
• Browse content in G5 - Household Finance
• G51 - Household Saving, Borrowing, Debt, and Wealth
• Browse content in H - Public Economics
• Browse content in H1 - Structure and Scope of Government
• H10 - General
• H11 - Structure, Scope, and Performance of Government
• H12 - Crisis Management
• Browse content in H2 - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
• H20 - General
• H22 - Incidence
• H23 - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
• H25 - Business Taxes and Subsidies
• H26 - Tax Evasion and Avoidance
• Browse content in H3 - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents
• Browse content in H4 - Publicly Provided Goods
• H40 - General
• H41 - Public Goods
• Browse content in H5 - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies
• H50 - General
• H53 - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs
• H55 - Social Security and Public Pensions
• H56 - National Security and War
• Browse content in H6 - National Budget, Deficit, and Debt
• H60 - General
• H62 - Deficit; Surplus
• H63 - Debt; Debt Management; Sovereign Debt
• H68 - Forecasts of Budgets, Deficits, and Debt
• Browse content in H7 - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations
• H70 - General
• H74 - State and Local Borrowing
• H77 - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism; Secession
• Browse content in I - Health, Education, and Welfare
• Browse content in I0 - General
• I00 - General
• Browse content in I1 - Health
• I10 - General
• I12 - Health Behavior
• I14 - Health and Inequality
• I15 - Health and Economic Development
• Browse content in I2 - Education and Research Institutions
• I20 - General
• I21 - Analysis of Education
• I23 - Higher Education; Research Institutions
• I24 - Education and Inequality
• I26 - Returns to Education
• Browse content in I3 - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty
• I30 - General
• I31 - General Welfare
• I32 - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
• I38 - Government Policy; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
• Browse content in J - Labor and Demographic Economics
• Browse content in J0 - General
• J00 - General
• J01 - Labor Economics: General
• J08 - Labor Economics Policies
• Browse content in J1 - Demographic Economics
• J10 - General
• J13 - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
• J15 - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
• J16 - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
• J18 - Public Policy
• Browse content in J2 - Demand and Supply of Labor
• J20 - General
• J21 - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
• J22 - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
• J23 - Labor Demand
• J24 - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
• J26 - Retirement; Retirement Policies
• J28 - Safety; Job Satisfaction; Related Public Policy
• J29 - Other
• Browse content in J3 - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
• J30 - General
• J31 - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
• J32 - Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits; Retirement Plans; Private Pensions
• J33 - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods
• J38 - Public Policy
• Browse content in J4 - Particular Labor Markets
• J40 - General
• J41 - Labor Contracts
• J42 - Monopsony; Segmented Labor Markets
• J44 - Professional Labor Markets; Occupational Licensing
• J45 - Public Sector Labor Markets
• J46 - Informal Labor Markets
• J48 - Public Policy
• J49 - Other
• Browse content in J5 - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining
• J50 - General
• J51 - Trade Unions: Objectives, Structure, and Effects
• J52 - Dispute Resolution: Strikes, Arbitration, and Mediation; Collective Bargaining
• J53 - Labor-Management Relations; Industrial Jurisprudence
• J54 - Producer Cooperatives; Labor Managed Firms; Employee Ownership
• J58 - Public Policy
• Browse content in J6 - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers
• J60 - General
• J61 - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
• J62 - Job, Occupational, and Intergenerational Mobility
• J63 - Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs
• J64 - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
• J65 - Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant Closings
• J68 - Public Policy
• J69 - Other
• Browse content in J7 - Labor Discrimination
• J71 - Discrimination
• J78 - Public Policy
• Browse content in J8 - Labor Standards: National and International
• J80 - General
• J81 - Working Conditions
• J83 - Workers' Rights
• J88 - Public Policy
• Browse content in K - Law and Economics
• Browse content in K0 - General
• K00 - General
• Browse content in K1 - Basic Areas of Law
• K11 - Property Law
• K12 - Contract Law
• K13 - Tort Law and Product Liability; Forensic Economics
• Browse content in K2 - Regulation and Business Law
• K20 - General
• K21 - Antitrust Law
• K22 - Business and Securities Law
• K23 - Regulated Industries and Administrative Law
• K25 - Real Estate Law
• Browse content in K3 - Other Substantive Areas of Law
• K31 - Labor Law
• K39 - Other
• Browse content in K4 - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior
• K40 - General
• K41 - Litigation Process
• K42 - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
• Browse content in L - Industrial Organization
• Browse content in L0 - General
• L00 - General
• Browse content in L1 - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance
• L10 - General
• L11 - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
• L12 - Monopoly; Monopolization Strategies
• L13 - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
• L14 - Transactional Relationships; Contracts and Reputation; Networks
• L16 - Industrial Organization and Macroeconomics: Industrial Structure and Structural Change; Industrial Price Indices
• Browse content in L2 - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior
• L20 - General
• L21 - Business Objectives of the Firm
• L22 - Firm Organization and Market Structure
• L23 - Organization of Production
• L24 - Contracting Out; Joint Ventures; Technology Licensing
• L25 - Firm Performance: Size, Diversification, and Scope
• L26 - Entrepreneurship
• L29 - Other
• Browse content in L3 - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise
• L30 - General
• L31 - Nonprofit Institutions; NGOs; Social Entrepreneurship
• L32 - Public Enterprises; Public-Private Enterprises
• L33 - Comparison of Public and Private Enterprises and Nonprofit Institutions; Privatization; Contracting Out
• L39 - Other
• Browse content in L4 - Antitrust Issues and Policies
• L40 - General
• L41 - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices
• L44 - Antitrust Policy and Public Enterprises, Nonprofit Institutions, and Professional Organizations
• Browse content in L5 - Regulation and Industrial Policy
• L50 - General
• L52 - Industrial Policy; Sectoral Planning Methods
• Browse content in L6 - Industry Studies: Manufacturing
• L60 - General
• L61 - Metals and Metal Products; Cement; Glass; Ceramics
• L66 - Food; Beverages; Cosmetics; Tobacco; Wine and Spirits
• L67 - Other Consumer Nondurables: Clothing, Textiles, Shoes, and Leather Goods; Household Goods; Sports Equipment
• Browse content in L7 - Industry Studies: Primary Products and Construction
• L78 - Government Policy
• Browse content in L8 - Industry Studies: Services
• L80 - General
• L82 - Entertainment; Media
• Browse content in L9 - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities
• L97 - Utilities: General
• L98 - Government Policy
• Browse content in M - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics
• Browse content in M0 - General
• M00 - General
• Browse content in M1 - Business Administration
• M10 - General
• M12 - Personnel Management; Executives; Executive Compensation
• M13 - New Firms; Startups
• M16 - International Business Administration
• Browse content in M2 - Business Economics
• M21 - Business Economics
• Browse content in M3 - Marketing and Advertising
• M37 - Advertising
• Browse content in M4 - Accounting and Auditing
• M41 - Accounting
• M49 - Other
• Browse content in M5 - Personnel Economics
• M51 - Firm Employment Decisions; Promotions
• M52 - Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects
• M54 - Labor Management
• M55 - Labor Contracting Devices
• Browse content in N - Economic History
• Browse content in N0 - General
• N00 - General
• N01 - Development of the Discipline: Historiographical; Sources and Methods
• Browse content in N1 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations
• N10 - General, International, or Comparative
• N11 - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
• N12 - U.S.; Canada: 1913-
• N13 - Europe: Pre-1913
• N14 - Europe: 1913-
• N15 - Asia including Middle East
• N17 - Africa; Oceania
• Browse content in N2 - Financial Markets and Institutions
• N20 - General, International, or Comparative
• N23 - Europe: Pre-1913
• N24 - Europe: 1913-
• N25 - Asia including Middle East
• N26 - Latin America; Caribbean
• Browse content in N3 - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy
• N30 - General, International, or Comparative
• N32 - U.S.; Canada: 1913-
• N34 - Europe: 1913-
• Browse content in N4 - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation
• N43 - Europe: Pre-1913
• Browse content in N5 - Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment, and Extractive Industries
• N50 - General, International, or Comparative
• N51 - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
• N52 - U.S.; Canada: 1913-
• N55 - Asia including Middle East
• N7 - Transport, Trade, Energy, Technology, and Other Services
• Browse content in N8 - Micro-Business History
• N80 - General, International, or Comparative
• Browse content in O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth
• Browse content in O1 - Economic Development
• O10 - General
• O11 - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
• O12 - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
• O13 - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Energy; Environment; Other Primary Products
• O14 - Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology
• O15 - Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
• O16 - Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and Governance
• O17 - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements
• O18 - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
• O19 - International Linkages to Development; Role of International Organizations
• Browse content in O2 - Development Planning and Policy
• O20 - General
• O23 - Fiscal and Monetary Policy in Development
• O24 - Trade Policy; Factor Movement Policy; Foreign Exchange Policy
• O25 - Industrial Policy
• Browse content in O3 - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights
• O30 - General
• O31 - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
• O32 - Management of Technological Innovation and R&D
• O33 - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
• O34 - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital
• O35 - Social Innovation
• O38 - Government Policy
• O39 - Other
• Browse content in O4 - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity
• O40 - General
• O41 - One, Two, and Multisector Growth Models
• O43 - Institutions and Growth
• O44 - Environment and Growth
• O47 - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
• Browse content in O5 - Economywide Country Studies
• O50 - General
• O51 - U.S.; Canada
• O52 - Europe
• O53 - Asia including Middle East
• O54 - Latin America; Caribbean
• O55 - Africa
• Browse content in P - Economic Systems
• Browse content in P0 - General
• P00 - General
• Browse content in P1 - Capitalist Systems
• P10 - General
• P11 - Planning, Coordination, and Reform
• P12 - Capitalist Enterprises
• P13 - Cooperative Enterprises
• P14 - Property Rights
• P16 - Political Economy
• P17 - Performance and Prospects
• Browse content in P2 - Socialist Systems and Transitional Economies
• P20 - General
• P21 - Planning, Coordination, and Reform
• P25 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Browse content in P3 - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions
• P30 - General
• P31 - Socialist Enterprises and Their Transitions
• P32 - Collectives; Communes; Agriculture
• P35 - Public Economics
• P36 - Consumer Economics; Health; Education and Training; Welfare, Income, Wealth, and Poverty
• P37 - Legal Institutions; Illegal Behavior
• Browse content in P4 - Other Economic Systems
• P40 - General
• P41 - Planning, Coordination, and Reform
• P46 - Consumer Economics; Health; Education and Training; Welfare, Income, Wealth, and Poverty
• P48 - Political Economy; Legal Institutions; Property Rights; Natural Resources; Energy; Environment; Regional Studies
• Browse content in P5 - Comparative Economic Systems
• P50 - General
• P51 - Comparative Analysis of Economic Systems
• P52 - Comparative Studies of Particular Economies
• Browse content in Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics
• Browse content in Q0 - General
• Q00 - General
• Q01 - Sustainable Development
• Browse content in Q1 - Agriculture
• Q15 - Land Ownership and Tenure; Land Reform; Land Use; Irrigation; Agriculture and Environment
• Q18 - Agricultural Policy; Food Policy
• Browse content in Q3 - Nonrenewable Resources and Conservation
• Q30 - General
• Browse content in Q4 - Energy
• Q41 - Demand and Supply; Prices
• Q42 - Alternative Energy Sources
• Q48 - Government Policy
• Browse content in Q5 - Environmental Economics
• Q50 - General
• Q54 - Climate; Natural Disasters; Global Warming
• Q56 - Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth
• Q57 - Ecological Economics: Ecosystem Services; Biodiversity Conservation; Bioeconomics; Industrial Ecology
• Browse content in R - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics
• Browse content in R0 - General
• R00 - General
• Browse content in R1 - General Regional Economics
• R10 - General
• R11 - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
• R12 - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity
• R15 - Econometric and Input-Output Models; Other Models
• Browse content in R2 - Household Analysis
• R20 - General
• Browse content in R3 - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location
• R30 - General
• R31 - Housing Supply and Markets
• R4 - Transportation Economics
• Browse content in R5 - Regional Government Analysis
• R51 - Finance in Urban and Rural Economies
• R58 - Regional Development Planning and Policy
• Browse content in Y - Miscellaneous Categories
• Browse content in Y1 - Data: Tables and Charts
• Y10 - Data: Tables and Charts
• Browse content in Y3 - Book Reviews (unclassified)
• Y30 - Book Reviews (unclassified)
• Browse content in Y8 - Related Disciplines
• Y80 - Related Disciplines
• Browse content in Z - Other Special Topics
• Browse content in Z0 - General
• Z00 - General
• Browse content in Z1 - Cultural Economics; Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology
• Z10 - General
• Z11 - Economics of the Arts and Literature
• Z12 - Religion
• Z13 - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Social and Economic Stratification
• Z18 - Public Policy
• Browse content in Z2 - Sports Economics
• Z29 - Other
• Advance articles
• Editor's Choice
• Author Guidelines
• Submission Site
• Open Access
• About Cambridge Journal of Economics
• About the Cambridge Political Economy Society
• Editorial Board
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Self-Archiving Policy
• Dispatch Dates
• Terms and Conditions
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

Article Contents

1. introduction, 2. paris purposes and the future we made, 3. the problem of unmaking, 4. conclusion: unmaking and is paris possible, conflict of interest statement, bibliography.

• < Previous

Electric vehicles: the future we made and the problem of unmaking it

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Jamie Morgan, Electric vehicles: the future we made and the problem of unmaking it, Cambridge Journal of Economics , Volume 44, Issue 4, July 2020, Pages 953–977, https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/beaa022

• Permissions Icon Permissions

The uptake of battery electric vehicles (BEVs), subject to bottlenecks, seems to have reached a tipping point in the UK and this mirrors a general trend globally. BEVs are being positioned as one significant strand in the web of policy intended to translate the good intentions of Article 2 of the Conference of the Parties 21 Paris Agreement into reality. Governments and municipalities are anticipating that a widespread shift to BEVs will significantly reduce transport-related carbon emissions and, therefore, augment their nationally determined contributions to emissions reduction within the Paris Agreement. However, matters are more complicated than they may appear. There is a difference between thinking we can just keep relying on human ingenuity to solve problems after they emerge and engaging in fundamental social redesign to prevent the trajectories of harm. BEVs illustrate this. The contribution to emissions reduction per vehicle unit may be less than the public initially perceive since the important issue here is the lifecycle of the BEV and this is in no sense zero-emission. Furthermore, even though one can make the case that BEVs are a superior alternative to the fossil fuel-powered internal combustion engine, the transition to BEVs may actually facilitate exceeding the carbon budget on which the Paris Agreement ultimately rests. Whether in fact it does depends on the nature of the policy that shapes the transition. If the transition is a form of substitution that conforms to rather than shifts against current global scales and trends in private transportation, then it is highly likely that BEVs will be a successful failure. For this not to be the case, then the transition to BEVs must be coordinated with a transformation of the current scales and trends in private transportation. That is, a significant reduction in dependence on and individual ownership of powered vehicles, a radical reimagining of the nature of private conveyance and of public transportation.

According to the UK Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), the Tesla Model 3 sold 2,685 units in December 2019, making it the 9th best-selling car in the country in that month (by new registrations; in August, a typically slow month for sales, it had been 3rd with 2,082 units sold; Lea, 2019; SMMT, 2019 ). As of early 2020, battery electric vehicles (BEVs) such as the new Hyundai Electric Kona had a two-year waiting list for delivery and the Kia e-Niro a one-year wait. The uptake of electric vehicles, subject to bottlenecks, seems to have reached a tipping point in the UK and this transcends the popularity of any given model. This possible tipping point mirrors a general trend globally (however, see later for quite what this means). At the regional, national and municipal scale, public health and environmentally informed legislation are encouraging vehicle manufacturers to invest heavily in alternative fuel vehicles and, in particular, BEVs and plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs), which are jointly categorised within ‘ultra-low emission vehicles’ (ULEVs). 1 According to a report by Deloitte, more than 20 major cities worldwide announced plans in 2017–18 to ban petrol and diesel cars by 2030 or sooner ( Deloitte, 2018 , p. 5). All the major manufacturers have or are launching BEV models, and so vehicles are becoming available across the status and income spectrum that has in the past determined market segmentation. According to the consultancy Frost & Sullivan (2019) , there were 207 models (143 BEVs, 64 PHEVs) available globally in 2018 compared with 165 in 2017.

In 2018, the UK government published its Road to Zero policy commitment and introduced the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018 , which empowers future governments to regulate regarding the required infrastructure. Road to Zero announced an ‘expectation’ that between 50% and 70% of new cars and vans will be electric by 2030 and the intention to ‘end the sale of new conventional petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2040’, with the ‘ambition’ that by 2050 almost all vehicles on the road will be ‘zero-emission’ at the point of use ( Department for Transport, 2018 ). Progress towards these goals was to be reviewed 2025. 2 However, on 4 February 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that in the run-up to Conference of the Parties (COP)26 in Glasgow (now postponed), Britain would bring forward its 2040 goal to 2035. The UK is a member of the Clean Energy Ministerial Campaign (CEM), which launched the EV30@30 initiative in 2017, and its Road to Zero policy commitments broadly align with those of many European countries. 3 Norway has longstanding generous incentives for BEVs ( Holtsmark and Skonhoft, 2014 ) and 31% of all cars sold in 2018 and just under 50% in the first half of 2019 in Norway were BEVs. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Norway is the per capita global leader in electric vehicle uptake ( IEA, 2019A ). 4

BEVs, then, are being positioned as one significant strand in the web of policy intended to translate the good intentions of Article 2 of the COP 21 Paris Agreement into reality (see Morgan, 2016 ; IEA, 2019A , pp. 11–2). Clearly, governments and municipalities are anticipating that a widespread shift to electric vehicles will significantly reduce transport-related carbon emissions and, therefore, augment their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to emissions reduction within the Paris Agreement. And, since the BEV trend is global, the impacts potentially also apply to countries whose relation to Paris is more problematic, including the USA (for Trump and his context, see Gills et al. , 2019 ). However, matters are more complicated than they may appear. Clearly, innovation and technological change are important components in our response to the challenge of climate change. However, there is a difference between thinking we can just keep relying on human ingenuity to solve problems after they emerge and engaging in fundamental social redesign to prevent the trajectories of harm. BEVs illustrate this. In what follows we explore the issues.

The aim of this paper, then, is to argue that it is a mistake to claim, assert or assume that BEVs are necessarily a panacea for the emissions problem. To do so would be an instance of what ecological economists refer to as ‘technocentrism’, as though simply substituting BEVs for existing internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles was sufficient. The literature on this is, of course, vast, if one consults specialist journals or recent monographs (e.g. Chapman, 2007 ; Bailey and Wilson, 2009 ; Williamson et al. , 2018 ), but remains relatively under-explored in general political economy circles at a time of ‘Climate Emergency’, and so warrants discussion in introductory and indicative fashion, setting out, however incompletely, the range of issues at stake. To be clear, the very fact that there is a range is itself important. BEVs are technology, technologies have social contexts and social contexts include systemic features and related attitudes and behaviours. Technocentrism distracts from appropriate recognition of this. At its worse, technocentrism fails to address and so works to reproduce a counter-productive ecological modernisation: the technological focus facilitates socio-economic trends, which are part of the broader problem rather than solutions to it. In the case of BEVs, key areas to consider and points to make include:

Transport is now one of, if not, the major source of carbon emissions in the UK and in many other countries. Transport emissions stubbornly resist reduction. The UK, like many other countries, exhibits contradictory trends and policy claims regarding future carbon emissions reductions. As such, it is an error to simply assume prior emissions reduction trends will necessarily continue into the future, and the new net-zero goal highlights the short time line and urgency of the problem.

Whilst BEVs are, from an emissions point of view, a superior technology to ICE vehicles, this is less than an ordinary member of the public might think. ‘Embodied emissions’, ‘energy mix’ and ‘life cycle’ analysis all matter.

There is a difference between ‘superior technology’ and ‘superior choice’, the latter must also take account of the scale of and general trend growth in vehicle ownership and use. It is this that creates a meaningful context for what substitution can be reasonably expected to achieve.

A 1:1 substitution of BEVs for ICE vehicles and general growth in the number of vehicles potentially violates the Precautionary Principle. It creates a problem that did not need to exist, e.g. since there is net growth, it involves ‘emission reductions’ within new emissions sources and this is reckless. Inter alia , a host of fallacies and other risks inherent to the socio-economy of BEVs and resource extraction/dependence also apply.

As such, it makes more sense to resist rather than facilitate techno-political lock-in or path-dependence on private transportation and instead to coordinate any transition to BEVs with a more fundamental social redesign of public transport and transport options.

This systematic statement should be kept in mind whilst reading the following. Cumulatively, the points stated facilitate appropriate consideration of the question: What kind of solution are BEVs to what kind of problem? And we return to this in the conclusion. It is also worth bearing in mind, though it is not core to the explicit argument pursued, that an economy is a complex evolving open system and economics has not only struggled to adequately address this in general, it has particularly done so in terms of ecological issues (for relevant critique, see especially the work of Clive Spash and collected, Fullbrook and Morgan, 2019 ). 5 Since we assume limited prior knowledge on the part of the reader, we begin by briefly setting out the road to the current carbon budget problem.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was created in 1992. Article 2 of the Convention states its goal as, the ‘stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’ ( UNFCCC, 1992 , p. 4; Gills and Morgan, 2019 ). Emissions are cumulative because emitted CO 2 can stay in the atmosphere for well over one hundred years (other greenhouse gases [GHGs] tend to be of shorter duration). Our climate future is made now. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) collates existent models to produce a forecast range and has typically used atmospheric CO 2 of 450 ppm as a level likely to trigger a 2°C average warming. This has translated into a ‘carbon budget’ restricting total cumulative emissions to the lower end of 3,000+ Gigatonnes of CO 2 (GtCO 2 ). In the last few years, climate scientists have begun to argue that positive feedback loops with adverse warming and other climatological and ecological effects may be underestimated in prior models (see Hansen et al. , 2017 ; Steffen et al. , 2018 ). Such concerns are one reason why Article 2 of the UNFCCC COP 21 Paris Agreement included a goal of at least trying to do better than the 2°C target—restricting warming to 1.5°C. This further restricts the available carbon budget. However, current Paris Agreement country commitments stated as NDCs look set to exceed the 3,000+ target in a matter of a few short years ( UNFCCC, 2015 ; Morgan, 2016 , 2017 ).

Since the industrial revolution began, we have already produced more than 2,000 GtCO 2 . Total annual emissions have increased rather than decreased over the period in which the problem has been recognised. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) publishes periodic ‘emissions gap’ reports. Its recent 10-year summary report notes that emissions grew at an average 1.6% per year from 2008 to 2017 and ‘show no signs of peaking’ ( Christensen and Olhoff, 2019 , p. 3). In 2018, the 9th Report stated that annual emissions in 2017 stood at a record of 53.5 Gigatonnes of CO 2 and equivalents (GtCO 2e ) ( UNEP, 2018 , p. xv). This compares to less than 25 GtCO 2 in 2000 and far exceeds on a global basis the level in the Kyoto Protocol benchmark year of 1990. According to the 9th Emissions Gap Report, 184 parties to the Paris Agreement had so far provided NDCs. If these NDCs are achieved, annual emissions in 2030 are projected to still be 53 GtCO 2e . However, if the current ‘implementation deficit’ continues global annual emissions could increase by about 10% to 59 GtCO 2e . This is because current emissions policy is not sufficient to offset the ‘key drivers’ of ‘economic growth and population growth’ ( Christensen and Olhoff, 2019 , p. 3). By sharp contrast, the IPCC Global Warming of 1.5 ° C report states that annual global emissions must fall by 45% from the 2017 figure by 2030 and become net zero by mid-century in order to achieve the Paris target ( IPCC, 2018 ). According to the subsequent 10th Emissions Gap Report, emissions increased yet again to 55.3 GtCO 2e in 2018 and, as a result of this adverse trend, emissions need to fall by 7.6% per year from 2020 to 2030 to achieve the IPCC goal, and this contrasts with less than 4% had reductions begun in 2010 and 15% if they are delayed until 2025 ( UNEP 2019A ). Current emissions trends mean that we will achieve an additional 500 GtCO 2 quickly and imply an average warming of 3 to 4°C over the rest of the century and into the next. We are thus on track for the ‘dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’ that the COP process is intended to prevent ( UNFCCC, 1992 , p. 4). According to the 10th Emissions Gap Report, 78% of all emissions derive from the G-20 nations, and whilst many countries had recognised the need for net zero, only 5 countries of the G-20 had committed to this and none had yet submitted formal strategies. COP 25, December 2019, meanwhile, resulted in no overall progress other than on measurement and finance (for detailed analysis, see Newell and Taylor, 2020 ). As such, the situation is urgent and becoming more so.

Problems, moreover, have already begun to manifest ( UNEP 2019B , 2019B ; IPCC 2019A , 2019B ). Climate change does not respect borders, some countries may be more adversely affected sooner than others, but there is no reason to assume that cumulative effects will be localised. Moreover, there is no reason to assume that they will be manageable based on our current designs for life. In November 2019, several prominent systems and climate scientists published a survey essay in Nature highlighting nine critical climate tipping points that we are either imminently approaching or may have already exceeded ( Lenton et al. , 2018 ). In that same month, more than 11,250 scientists from 153 countries (the Alliance of World Scientists) signed a letter published in BioScience concurring that we now face a genuine existential ‘Climate Emergency’ and warning of ‘ecocide’ if ‘major transformations’ are not forthcoming ( Ripple et al. , 2019 ). We live in incredibly complex interconnected societies based on long supply chains and just in time delivery–few of us (including nations) are self-sufficient. Global human civilisation is extremely vulnerable and the carbon emission problem is only one of several conjoint problems created by our expansionary industrialised-consumption system. Appropriate and timely policy solutions are, therefore, imperative. Cambridge now has a Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and Oxford a Future of Humanity Institute (see also Servigne and Stevens, 2015 ). This is serious research, not millenarian cultishness. The Covid-19 outbreak only serves to underscore the fragility of our systems. As Michael Marmot, Professor of epidemiology has commented, the outbreak reveals not only how political decisions can make systems more vulnerable, but also how governments can, when sufficiently motivated, take immediate and radical action (Harvey, 2020). To reiterate, however, according to both the IPCC and UNEP, emissions must fall drastically. 6

Policy design and implementation are mainly national (domestic). As such, an initial focus on the UK provides a useful point of departure to contextualise what the transition to BEVs might be expected to achieve.

The UK is a Kyoto and Paris signatory. It is a member of the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). The UK Climate Change Act 2008 was the world’s first long-term legally binding national framework for targeted statutory reductions in emissions. The Act required the UK to reduce its emissions by at least 80% by 2050 (below the 1990 baseline; this has been broadly in line with subsequent EU policy on the subject). 7 The Act put in place a system of five yearly ‘carbon budgets’ to keep the UK on an emissions reduction pathway to 2050. The subsequent carbon budgets have been produced with input from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), an independent body created by the 2008 Act to advise the government. In November 2015, the CCC recommended a target of 57% below 1990 levels by the early 2030s (the fifth carbon budget). 8 Following the Paris Agreement’s new target of 1.5°C and the IPCC and UNEP reports late 2018, the CCC published the report Net Zero: The UK’s contribution to stopping global warming ( CCC, 2019 ). 9 The CCC report recognises that Paris creates additional responsibility for the UK to augment and accelerate its targets within the new bottom-up Paris NDC procedure. The CCC recommended an enhanced UK net-zero GHG emissions target (formally defined in terms of long-term and short-term GHGs) by 2050. This included emissions from aviation and shipping and with no use of strategies that offset or swap real emissions. In June 2019, Theresa May, then UK Prime Minister, committed to adopt the recommendation using secondary legislation (absorbed into the 2008 Act—but without the offset commitment). So, the UK is one of the few G-20 countries to, so far, provide a formal commitment on net zero, though as the UNEP notes, a commitment is not itself necessarily indicative of a realisable strategy. The CCC responded to the government announcement:

This is just the first step. The target must now be reinforced by credible UK policies, across government, inspiring a strong response from business, industry and society as a whole. The government has not yet moved formally to include international aviation and shipping within the target , but they have acknowledged that these sectors must be part of the whole economy strategy for net zero. We will assist by providing further analysis of how emissions reductions can be delivered in these sectors through domestic and international frameworks. 10

The development of policy is currently in flux during the Covid-19 lockdown and whilst Brexit reaches some kind of resolution. As noted in the Introduction section, however, May’s replacement, Boris Johnson has signalled his government’s commitment to achieving its statutory commitments. However, this has been met with some scepticism, not least because it has not been clear what new powers administrative bodies would have and over and above this many of the Cabinet are from the far right of the Conservative Party, and are on record as climate change sceptics or have a voting record of opposing environmentally focussed investment, taxes, subsidies and prohibitions (including the new Environment Secretary, George Eustice, formerly of UKIP). The policy may and hopefully will change, becoming more concrete, but it is still instructive to assess context and general trends.

The UK has one of the best records in the world on reducing emissions. However, given full context, this is not necessarily a cause for congratulation or confidence. It would be a mistake to think that emissions reduction exhibits a definite rate that can be projected from the past into the future. 11 This applies both nationally and globally. Some sources of relative reduction that are local or national have different significance on a global basis (they are partial transfers) and overall the closer one approaches net zero the more resistant or difficult it is likely to become to achieve reductions. The CCC has already begun to signal that the UK is now failing to meet its existent budgets. This follows periods of successive emissions reductions. According to the CCC, the UK has reduced its GHG emissions by approximately one-third since 1990. ‘Per capita emissions are now close to the global average at 7–8 tCO 2 e/person, having been over 50% above in 2008’ ( CCC, 2019 , p. 46). Other analyses are even more positive. According to Carbon Brief, emissions have fallen in seven consecutive years from 2013 to 2019 and by 40% compared with the 1990 benchmark. Carbon Brief claim that since 2010 the UK has the fastest rate of emissions reduction of any major economy. However, it concurs with the CCC that future likely reductions are less than the UK’s carbon budgets and that the new net-zero commitment requires: amounting to only an additional 10% reduction over the next decade to 2030. 12

Moreover, all analyses agree that the reduction has mainly been achieved by reducing coal output for use in electricity generation (switching to natural gas) and by relative deindustrialisation as the UK economy has continued to grow—manufacturing is a smaller part of a larger service-based economy. 13 And , the data are based on a production focussed accounting system. The accounting system does not include all emissions sources. It does not include those that the UK ‘imports’ based on consumption. UK consumption-based emissions per year are estimated to be about 70% greater than the production measure (for different methods, see DECC, 2015 ). 14 If consumption is included, the main estimates for falling emissions change to around a 10% reduction since 1990. Moreover, much of this has been achieved by relatively invisible historic transitions as the economy has evolved in lock-step with globalisation. That is, reductions have been ones that did not require the population to confront behaviours as they have developed. No onerous interventions have been imposed, as yet . 15 However, it does not follow that this can continue, since future reductions are likely to be more challenging. The UK cannot deindustrialise again (nor can the global economy, as is, simply deindustrialise in aggregate if final consumption remains the primary goal), and the UK has already mainly switched from coal energy production. Emissions from electricity generation may fall but it also matters what the electricity is being used to power. In any case, future emissions reductions, in general, require more effective changes in other sectors, and this necessarily seems to require everyone to question their socio-economic practices. Transport is a key issue.

As a ‘satellite’ of its National Accounts, the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes Environmental Accounts and these data are used to measure progress. Much of the data refer to the prior year or earlier. In 2017, UK GHG emissions were reported to be 566 million tonnes CO 2 e (2% less than 2016 and, as already noted about one-third of the 1990 level; ONS, 2019 ). The headline accounts break this down into four categories (for which further subdivisions are produced by various sources) and we can usefully contrast 1990 and recent data ( ONS, 2019 , p. 4):

The Environmental Accounts’ figures indicate some shifting in the relative sources of emissions over the last 30 years. As we have intimated, electricity generation and manufacturing have experienced reduced emissions, though they are far from zero; household and transport, meanwhile, have remained stubbornly high. Moreover, the accounts are also slightly misleading for the uninitiated, since transport refers to the industry and not all transport. Domestic car ownership and use are part of the household sector, and it is the continued dependence on car ownership that provides, along with heating and insulation issues, one of the major sources of the persistently high level of household emissions. The UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (DBEIS) provides differently organised statistics and attributes cars to its transport category and uses a subsequent residential category rather than household category. The Department’s statistical release in 2018 thus attributes a higher 140 MtCO 2 e to transport for 2016, whilst the residential category is a correspondingly lower figure of approximately 106 MtCO 2 e. The 140 MtCO 2 e is just slightly less than the equivalent figure for 1990, although transport achieved a peak of about 156 MtCO 2 e in 2005 ( DBEIS, 2018 , pp. 8–9). As of 2016, transport becomes the largest source of emissions based on DBEIS data (exceeding energy supply) whilst households become the largest in the Environmental Accounts. In any case, looking across both sets of accounts, the important point here is that since 1990 transport as a source of emissions has remained stubbornly high. Transport emissions have been rising as an industrial sector in the Environmental Accounts or relatively consistent and recently rising in its total contribution in the DBEIS data. The CCC Net Zero report draws particular attention to this. Drawing on the DBEIS data, it states that ‘Transport is now the largest source of UK GHG emissions (23% of the total) and saw emissions rise from 2013 to 2017’ ( CCC, 2019 , p. 48). More generally, the report states that despite some progress in terms of the UK carbon budgets, ‘policy success and progress in reducing emissions has been far from universal’ ( CCC, 2019 , p. 48). The report recommends ( CCC, 2019 , pp. 23–6, 34):

A fourfold increase by 2050 in low carbon (renewables) electricity

Developing energy storage (to enhance the use of renewables such as wind)

Energy-efficient buildings and a shift from gas central heating and cooking

Halting the accumulation of biodegradable waste in landfills

Developing carbon capture technology

Reducing agricultural emissions (mainly dairy but also fertiliser use)

Encouraging low or no meat diets

Land management to increase carbon retention/absorption

Rapid transition to electric vehicles and public transport

As we noted in the Introduction section, the UK Department for Transport Road To Zero document stated a goal of ending the sale of conventional diesel- and petrol-powered ICE vehicles by 2040. The CCC suggested improving on this:

Electric vehicles. By 2035 at the latest all new cars and vans should be electric (or use a low-carbon alternative such as hydrogen). If possible, an earlier switchover (e.g. 2030) would be desirable, reducing costs for motorists and improving air quality. This could help position the UK to take advantage of shifts in global markets. The Government must continue to support strengthening of the charging infrastructure, including for drivers without access to off-street parking. ( CCC, 2019 , p. 34)

The UK government’s response to these and other similar suggestions has been to bring the target date forward to 2035 and to propose that the prohibition will also apply to hybrids. However, the whole is set to go out to consultation and no detail has so far (early 2020) been forthcoming. In its 11 March 2020 Budget, the government also committed £1 billion to ‘green transport solutions’, including £500 million to support the rollout of the electric vehicle charging infrastructure, whilst extending the current grant/subsidy scheme for new electric vehicles (albeit at a reduced rate of £3000 from £3500 per new registration). It has also signalled that it may tighten the timeline for sales prohibition further to 2030. 16 As a policy, much of this is, ostensibly at least, positive, but there is a range of issues that need to be considered regarding what is being achieved. The context of transition matters and this may transcend the specifics of current policy.

3.1 BEV transition: life cycles?

The CCC is confident that a transition to electric vehicles can be a constructive contribution to achieving net-zero emissions by mid-century. However, the point is not unequivocal. The previously quoted CCC communique following the UK government’s commitment to implement Net Zero uses the phrase ‘credible UK policies, across government, inspiring a strong response from business, industry and society as a whole’, and the CCC report places an emphasis on BEVs and a transition to public transport. The relative dependence between these two matters (and see Conclusion). BEVs are potentially (almost) zero emissions in use. But they are not zero emissions in practice. Given this, then the substitution of BEVs for current carbon-powered ICEs is potentially problematic, depending on trends in ownership of and use of powered vehicles (private transportation). These points will become clearer as we proceed.

BEVs are not zero emission in context and based on the life cycle. This is for two basic reasons. First, a BEV is a powered vehicle and so the source of power can be from carbon-based energy supply sources (and this varies with the ‘energy mix’ of electricity production in different countries; IEA, 2019A , p. 8). Second, each new vehicle is a material product. Each vehicle is made of metals, plastics, rubber and so forth. Just the cabling in a car can be 60 kg of metals. All the materials must be mined and processed, or synthesised, the parts must be manufactured, transported and assembled, transported again for sale and then delivered. For example, according to the SMMT in 2016, only 12% of cars sold in the UK were built in the UK and 80% of those built in the UK were exported in that year. Some components (such as a steering column) enter and exit the UK multiple times whilst being built and modified and before final assembly. Vehicle manufacture is a global business in terms of procuring materials and a mainly regional (in the international sense) business in terms of component manufacture for assembly and final sales. Power is used throughout this process and many miles are travelled. Moreover, each vehicle must be maintained and serviced thereafter, which compounds this utilisation of resources. BEVs are a subcategory of vehicles and production locations are currently more concentrated than for vehicles in general (Tesla being the extreme). 17 In any case, producing a BEV is an economic activity and it is not environmentally costless. As Georgescu-Roegen (1971) noted long ago and ecologically minded economists continue to highlight (see Spash, 2017 ; Holt et al. , 2009 ), production cannot evade thermodynamic consequences. In terms of BEVs, the primary focus of analysis in this second sense of manufacturing as a source of contributory emissions has been the carbon emissions resulting from battery production. Based on current technology, batteries are heavy (a significant proportion of the weight of the final vehicle) and energy intensive to produce.

Comparative estimates regarding the relative life cycle emissions of BEVs with equivalent fossil fuel-powered vehicles are not new. 18 Over the last decade, the number of life cycle studies has steadily risen as the interest in and uptake of BEVs have increased. Clearly, there is great scope for variation in findings, since the energy mix for electricity supply varies by country and the assumptions applied to manufacturing can vary between studies. At the same time, the general trend over the last decade has been for the energy mix in many countries to include more renewables and for manufacturing to become more energy efficient. This is partly reflected in metrics based on emissions per $GDP, which in conjunction with relative expansion in service sectors are used to establish ‘relative decoupling’. So, given that both the energy mix of power production and the emissions derived from production can improve, then one might expect a general trend of improved emissions claims for BEVs in recent years and this seems to be the case.

For example, if we go back to 2010, the UK Royal Academy of Engineering found that technology would likely favour PHEVs over BEVs in the near future because the current energy mix and state of battery technology indicated that emissions deriving from charging were typically higher for BEVs than an average ordinary car’s fuel consumption—providing a reason to persist with ICE vehicles or, more responsibly, choose hybrids over pure electric ( Royal Academy of Engineering, 2010 ). Using data up to 2013, but drawing on the previous decade, Holtsmark and Skonhoft (2014) come to similar conclusions based on the most advanced BEV market—Norway. Focussing mainly on energy mix (with acknowledgement that a full life cycle needs to be assessed) they are deeply sceptical that BEVs are a significant net reduction in carbon emissions ( Holtsmark and Skonhoft, 2014 , pp. 161, 164). Neither the Academy nor Holtsmark and Skonhoft are merely sceptical. The overall point of the latter was that more needed to be done to accelerate the use of low or no carbon renewables for power infrastructure (a point the CCC continues to make). This, of course, has happened in many places, including the UK. That is, acceleration of the use of renewables, though it is by no means the case government can take direct credit for this in the UK (and there is also evidence on a global level that a transition to clean energy from fossil fuel forms is much slower than some data sources indicate; see Smil, 2017A , 2017B ). 19 In terms of BEVs, however, recent analyses are considerably more optimistic regarding emissions potential per BEV (e.g. Hoekstra, 2019 ; Regett et al. , 2019 ). Research by Staffell et al. (2019) at Imperial for the power corporation, Drax, provides some interesting insights and contemporary metrics.

Staffell et al. split BEVs into three categories based on conjoint battery and vehicle size: a 30–45 kWh battery car, equivalent to a mid-range or standard car; a heavier, longer-range, 90–100 kWh battery car, equivalent to a luxury or SUV model; and a 30–40 kWh battery light van. They observe that a 40-litre tank of petrol releases 90–100 kgCO 2 when burnt and the ‘embodied’ emissions represented by the manufacture of a standard lithium-ion battery are estimated at 75–125 kgCO 2 per kWh. They infer that every kWh of power embodied in the manufacture of a battery is, therefore, approximately equivalent to using a full tank of petrol. For example, a 30 kWh battery embodies thirty 40-litre petrol tank’s worth of emissions. The BEV’s are also a source of emissions based on the energy mix used to charge the battery for use. The in-use emissions for the BEV are a consequence of the energy consumed per km and this depends on the weight of car and efficiency of the battery. 20 They estimate 33 gCO 2 per km for standard BEVs, 44–54 gCO 2 for luxury and SUVs and 40 gCO 2 for vans. In all cases, this is significantly less than an equivalent fossil-fuel vehicle.

The insight that the estimates and comparisons are leading towards is that the battery embodies an ‘upfront carbon cost’ which can be gradually ‘repaid’ by the saving on emissions represented by driving a BEV compared with driving an equivalent fossil fuel-powered vehicle. That is, the environmental value of opting for BEVs increases over time. Moreover, if the energy mix is gradually becoming less carbon based, this effect is likely to improve further. Based on these considerations, Staffell et al. estimate that it may take 2–4 years to repay the embodied emissions in the battery for a standard BEV and 5 to 6 for the luxury or SUV models. Fundamentally, assuming 15 years to be typical for the on-the-road life expectancy of a vehicle, they find lifetime emissions for each BEV category are lower than equivalent fossil-fuel vehicles.

Still, the implication is that BEVs are not zero emission. Moreover, the degree to which this is so is likely to be significantly greater than a focus on the battery alone indicates. Romare and Dahlöff (2017) , assess the life-cycle of battery production (not use), and in regard of the stages of battery production find that the manufacturing stages account for about 50% of the emissions and the mining and processing stages about the same. They infer that there is significant scope for further emissions reductions as manufacturing processes improve and the Drax study seems to confirm this. However, whilst the battery may be the major component, as we have already noted, vehicle manufacture is a major process in terms of all components and in terms of distance travelled in production and distribution. It is also worth noting that the weight of batteries creates strong incentives to opt for lighter materials for other parts of the vehicle. Most current vehicles are steel based. An aluminium vehicle is lighter, but the production of aluminium is more carbon intensive than steel, so there are also further hidden trade-offs that the positive narrative for BEVs must consider. 21

The general point worth emphasising here is that there is basic uncertainty built into the complex evolving process of transition and change. There is a basic ontology issue here familiar in economic critique: there is no simple way to model the changes with confidence, and in broader context confidence in modelling may itself be a problem here when translated into policy, since it invites complacency. 22 That said, the likely direction of travel is towards further improvements in the energy mix and improvements in battery technology. Both these may be incremental or transformational depending on future technologies (fusion for energy mix and organics and solid-state technologies for batteries perhaps). 23 But one must still consider time frames and ultimate context. 24 The context is a carbon budget and the need for radical reductions in emissions by 2030 and net zero by mid-century. Consider: if just the battery of a car requires four years to be paid back then there is no significant difference in the contribution to emissions from the vehicle into the mid 2020s. For larger vehicles, this becomes the later 2020s, and each year of delay in transition for the individual owner is another year closer to 2030. Since transport is (stubbornly) the major source of emissions in the UK and a major source in the world, this is not irrelevant. BEVs can readily be a successful failure in Paris terms. This brings us to the issue of trends in vehicle ownership and substitutions. This also matters for what we mean by transition.

3.2 Substitutions and transformations: successful failure?

There are many ways to consider the problem of transition. Consider the ‘Precautionary Principle’. This is Principle 15 of the 1992 Rio Declaration: ‘In order to protect the environment, the precautionary principle shall be widely applied by the States [UN members] according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation’ (UNCED). Assuming we can simply depend on unrealised technology potentially violates the Principle. Why is this so? If BEVs are a source of net emissions, then each new vehicle continues to contribute to overall emissions. The current number of vehicles to be replaced, therefore, is a serious consideration, as is any growth trend. Here, social redesign rather than merely adopting new technology is surely more in accordance with the Precautionary Principle. BEVs may be sources of lower emissions than fossil fuel-powered vehicles, but it does not follow that we are constrained to choose between just these two options or that it makes sense to do so in aggregate, given the objective of radical and rapid reduction in emissions. If time is short and numbers of vehicles are large and growing then the implication is that substitution of BEVs should (from a precautionary point of view) occur in a context that is oppositional to this growing trend. That is, the goal should be one of reducing private car ownership and use, and increasing the availability, pervasiveness and use of public transport (and alternatives to private vehicle ownership). This is an issue compounded by the finding that there is an upfront carbon cost from BEVs. Some consideration of current vehicle numbers and trends in the UK and globally serve to reinforce the point.

The UK Department for Transport publishes annual statistics for vehicle licensing. According to the 2019 statistical release for 2018 data, there were 38.2 million licensed vehicles in Britain and 39.4 million including Northern Ireland ( Department for Transport, 2019 ). Vehicles are categorised into cars, light goods vehicles, heavy goods vehicles, motorcycles and buses and coaches. Cars comprised 31.5 million of the total (82%) and the total represented a 1.2% increase in the year 2017. There is, furthermore, a long-term year-on-year trend increase in vehicles since World War II and over the last 20 years that growth (the net change as new vehicles are licensed and old vehicles taken off the road) has averaged 630,000 vehicles per year ( Department for Transport, 2019 , p. 7). This is partly accounted for not only by population growth, and business growth, but also by an increase in the number of vehicles per household. According to the statistical release, 2.9 million new vehicles were registered in 2018, and though this was about 5% fewer than 2017 the figure remained broadly consistent with long-term trends in numbers and still represented growth (contributing to the stated 1.2% increase). 25 Of the total new registrations in 2018, 2.3 million were cars and 360,000 were light goods vehicles. Around 2 million has been typical for cars.

The point to take from these metrics is that numbers are large and context matters. Cars represent 31.5 million emission sources and there are 39.4 million vehicles in the UK. Replacing these 1:1 reproduces an emissions problem. Replacing them in conjunction with an ownership growth trend exacerbates the emissions problem that then has to be resolved. If around 2 million new cars are registered per year then the point at which the BEVs amongst these new registrations can be assumed to begin payback for embodied emissions prior to the point at which they become net sources of reduced (and not zero ) emissions is staggered over future years based on the rate of switching. There are then also net new vehicles. Given there are 31.5 million cars to be replaced over time (plus net growth), there is a high likelihood of significant transport emissions up to and beyond 2030. The problem, of course, is implicit in the Department for Transport policy commitment to end sales of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2035 and ensure all vehicles are zero-emission in use by 2050. Knowingly committing to this ingrained emission problem, given we have already recognised the urgency and challenge of the carbon budget and the ‘stubbornness’ of transport emissions, is not prudent, if alternatives exist . It is producing a problem that need not exist purely because enabling car ownership and use is a line of least resistance in policy terms (it requires the least change in behaviour and thus provokes limited opposition). It is also worth noting that the UK, like most countries, has an ‘integrated’ transport policy. However, the phrasing disguises the relative levels of investment between different modes of transport. Austerity politics may have resulted in declining road quality in the UK but, in general terms, the UK is still committed to heavy investment in and expansion of its road system. 26 This infrastructure investment not only seems ‘economically rational’, but it is also a matter of relative emphasis and ‘lock-in’. The future policy is predicated on the dominance of road use and thus vehicle use.

The crux of the matter here is how we view political expedience. Surely this hinges on the consequences of policy failure. That is, the failure to implement an effective policy given the genuine problem expressed in the goal of 1.5 or 2°C. ‘Alternatives’ may seem unrealistic, but this is a matter of will and policy—of rational social design rather than impossibility. The IPCC and other sources suggest that achieving the Paris goals requires mobilisation of a kind not previously seen outside of wartime. Policy can pivot on this quite quickly, even if perhaps this can seem unlikely in 2020. Climate events may make this necessary and popular pressure and opinion may be transformed. This is currently uncertain. Positions on this may yet move quite quickly.

Lock-in also implies an underlying sociological issue. This is important to consider regarding simply opting for substitution without greater emphasis on reduction. Even if substitution occurs smoothly, it places greater pressure on areas of reduction over which we have less control as societies and involves an orientation that has further potential policy consequences that cannot be readily quantified and which increase the overall uncertainty regarding NDCs. As any modern historian, urban geographer or sociologist will attest, car ownership has been imbricate with the development and design—the configuration—of modern societies, and it has been deeply integrated into identity. Cars are social technologies and philosophers also have much to say about this sociality in general (e.g. Faulkner and Runde, 2013 ; Lawson, 2017 ). Cars are more than merely convenient; they are sources of autonomy and status (e.g. John Urry explored the sociology of ‘automobility’; see, Dennis and Urry, 2009 ). As such, the more that environmental and transport policy validate the car, then the more that the car is normalised through socialisation for the citizen, perhaps leading to citizens being more prepared to countenance locked-in harms (congestion, etc.) prior to change, in turn, making it less likely (sub)urban spaces are redesigned in ways predicated on the absence of (or severe limits to) private transport. The trend in many countries over the car era has been that building roads leads to more car use, which leads to congestion, which leads to more roads (especially in concentrated zones around [sub]urban spaces).

According to the UK Ordnance Survey, Britain has increased its total road surface by 132 square miles over the decade since 2010 (a 9% increase). According to the UK Department for Transport, vehicle traffic increased by 0.8% in 2019 (September to September) to 330.1 billion miles travelled and car travel, as a subset, increased to 258 billion miles (a 1.5% increase). 27 The 11 March 2020 Budget seems to confirm the trend. Whilst it commits around £1 billion to ‘green transport solutions’, this is in the context of a £27 billion announced investment in roads, including upgrading and a proposed 4,000 miles of new road. As the Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas, noted there is a basic disconnect here, since this seems set to increase the UK’s dependence on private transport, when it makes more sense to begin to curtail that dependence, given how significant the UK’s transport emissions are. 28 So, within the various tensions in policy, there seems to be a tendency to facilitate techno-political lock-in or path-dependence on private transportation. As Mattioli et al. (2020) argue, the multiple strands of policy and practice that maintain car dependence contribute to ‘carbon lock-in’. The systemic consequences matter both for the perpetuation of fossil fuel vehicle use in the short term and, given they are not net zero for emissions, powered vehicles in the longer term. Not only does this matter in the UK, but it also matters globally. All the issues stated are reproduced globally. Moreover, in some ways, they are compounded for countries where widespread car ownership is relatively new.

3.3 The fallacy of composition, problems that need not exist and resource risk

Estimates vary for the global total number of vehicles. According to Wards Intelligence, the global total was 1.32 billion in 2016 ( Petit, 2017 ). Extrapolated estimations imply that the total likely increased to more than 1.5 billion in 2019. In 1976, the figure was 342 million and in 1996, 670 million, so the trend implies an approximate doubling every 20 years, which if it continued would imply a figure approaching 3 billion by end of the 2030s. Clearly, it is problematic to simply extrapolate a linear trend, but it is not unreasonable to assume a general trend of growth. Observed experience is that many ‘developed’ country middle-class households have accommodated more than one car per household. This is classically the case in the USA. In 2017, the USA, with a population of 325.7 million in that year, reported a total of 272.5 million registered vehicles compared with 193 million in 1990 ( Statista, 2019A ). In any case, the world population is still growing, incomes are growing and many countries are far from a position of one car per household. China with a population of 1.3 billion overtook the USA in the total number of registered vehicles around 2016 to 2017, with 300.3 million registered vehicles in March of 2017 (Zheng, 2017). Growth is rapid and the China Traffic Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security reported a total of 325 million registered vehicles, December 2018, an increase of 15.56 million in the year ( China Daily , 2018 ). The People’s Republic is now the world’s largest car market and the number of registered cars increased to 240 million in 2018 ( Statista, 2019B ). India too has rapidly growing car ownership and on a lesser scale this is replicated across the developing world.

For our purposes, two well-known concepts and a further resource dependence risk seem to apply here. First, there is patently a ‘fallacy of composition’ issue. That is, the assumption that many can do what few previously did without changing the conditions or producing different (adverse) consequences than arose when only a few adopted that behaviour or activity. Those consequences are climatological and ecological. It remains the case that we are socialised to desire and appreciate cars and it remains a fact that private transport can be extremely convenient. It can also, given the commentary above, appear hypocritical to be suggesting shifting to a far greater reliance on public transport, since this implicitly involves denying to developing country citizens a facet of modernity enjoyed previously by developed country citizens. But this is a distraction from the underlying collective interest in reduced car ownership and use. It denies the basic premise that a Precautionary Principle applies to all and that societies that are not yet car dependent have the opportunity to avoid a problem, rather than have to manage it via either moving straight to private transport BEVs or a transition from fossil fuel-powered ICEs to BEVs with all that entails in terms of ingrained emissions. Policy may be mainly domestic, but climate change is global and aggregate effects do not respect borders, which brings us to a second concept or risk that may be exacerbated.

Second, a ‘quasi-Jevons’ effect’ may apply. Growth of vehicle use is a problem of resource use and this is a thermodynamic and emissions problem. However, it is, as we have noted, also the case that battery technology and energy mix for BEVs are improving. So, this may involve significant declines in relative cost, which in turn may create a tendency for BEV ownership to accelerate which could exacerbate net growth in numbers of vehicles. Net growth could ironically be to the detriment of emissions savings. Whether this is so, depends, in part, on what kind of overall transport policy countries adopt and whether consumers, corporations and markets are allowed to be the arbiter of which area of transport dominates. It also depends, in part, on what materials are required for future batteries. Current technology implies massive increases in costs based on securing sources of lithium and cobalt as battery demand rises. So even if a Jevons’ effect is avoided, a different issue may apply. Resource procurement is a Precautionary Principle issue since effective BEVs at the kind of numbers necessary to substitute for all vehicles seem to require technological transformation—without it, multiple problems apply whilst emissions remain ingrained.

For example, when the UK CCC announced its 2035 recommendation to accelerate the BEV transition, members of the Security of Supply of Mineral Resources (SSMR) project wrote a research note to the CCC (Webster, 2019). They pointed out that the current total European demand for cobalt is 19,800 tonnes and that producing the batteries to replace 2.3 million cars in the UK (in accordance with contemporary statistics for new registrations) would require 15,600 tonnes. The UK would also need 20,000 tonnes of lithium, which is 45% of the current total European demand. If we replicate this ramping up of demand across Europe and the globe for vehicles, recognising that there are other growing demands for the minerals and metals (including batteries for other purposes) then it seems unlikely that supply can respond, unless dependence on lithium and cobalt (and other constituents) falls sharply as technology changes. Clearly, the problem is also contingent on the uptake of BEVs. Over recent years, there has, in fact, been an oversupply of the main materials for battery production because several of the main mining corporations anticipated that battery demand would take off faster than it actually has. For example, global prices of cobalt, nickel and lithium carbonate have increased significantly over the last decade but have fallen in 2018 to the end of 2019. However, industry analysis indicates that current annual global production is the equivalent of about 10 million standard BEVs based on current technology, and as the previous statistics on global vehicle numbers (see also next section) indicate, this is far less than transition via substitution would seem to require in the next decade. 29

Shortages and price rises, therefore, are if not inevitable, at least likely. Currently, about 60% of the cost of a BEV is the battery and 80% of that 60% (about 50% of the vehicle) is the cost of battery materials. It is, therefore, important to achieve secure supply and stable costs. The further context here is the issue of UK domestic battery capacity. In 2013, the government created the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) with a 10 year £500 million investment commitment matched by industry. The APC’s remit is to address supply chain issues for electric vehicles. Not unexpectedly, the APC quickly identified lack of domestic battery production capacity as a major impediment. In response in 2016 another government initiative, Innovate UK set up the Faraday Battery Challenge to encourage domestic capacity and innovation. The Battery Industrialisation Centre was then set up in Coventry, to attract manufacturers in the supply chain for BEVs to locate there, focussed around a centre of research excellence. However, the APC has no control over the global supply and prices of battery materials, the investment and location decisions of battery manufacturers or the necessary infrastructure for BEVs to be a feasible technology. 30 For example, according to the APC, if domestic BEV demand were 500,00 per year by 2025, then the UK would need three ‘gigafactories’. Battery manufacture is currently dominated by LG Chem and Samsung in South Korea, CATL in China and Panasonic in Japan. None of these have current plans to build a gigafactory in the UK. In any case, there is a further problem here which raises a whole set of environmental and ethical issues explored in ecological circles under the general heading ‘extractivism’ (see, e.g. Dunlap, 2019 ). As time goes by, the UK and the world may become dependent on high price supplies of materials drawn from unstable or hostile regimes (the Democratic Republic of Congo, etc.), which is a risk in many ways (and a likely source of Dutch disease—the ‘resource curse’—for unstable regimes). So, not placing a relative emphasis on substituting BEVs for ICEs and not endorsing the current vehicle growth trend (which is different as a suggestion than rejecting BEVs entirely) avoid multiple problems and risks.

It is also worth noting that simple market decisions can have a further collective adverse consequence based on individual consumer preference and reasoning, which may also affect BEVs in the short term. Many current BEVs have smaller or low efficiency batteries and thus short ranges. These favour urban use for short journeys, but most people own cars with a view also to range further afield. As such, it seems likely that until the technology is all long range (and the charging infrastructure is pervasive) many consumers, if the choice exists and income allows, will own BEVs as an additional vehicle, not a replacement vehicle. 31 This may be a short-term issue, given the regulatory changes focussed from 2030 to 2040 in many countries. But, again, from a Paris point of view, taking the IPCC 1.5°C and UNEP Emissions Gap reports into consideration, this matters. This brings us to a final issue. What is the actual take-up of BEVs (and ULEVs)? How rapid is the transition? In the Introduction section, I suggested that the UK had reached a tipping point and that this mirrored a general trend globally. This, however, needs context.

3.4 How many electric vehicles?

The data emerging in recent years and stated in the Introduction section are a step-change, but as a possible tipping point it begins from a low base and BEVs (the least emitting of the low emission vehicles) are a subset, albeit a rapidly expanding one, of ULEVs. According to the UK Department for Transport statistical release for 2018, there were 200,000 ULEVs registered in total, of which 63,992 ULEVs were newly registered in that year ( Department for Transport, 2019 , p. 4). 93% of the total registrations were cars and the total constitutes a 39% increase on the year 2017 total and a 20% increase in the rate of registration—there were just 9,500 ULEVs at the beginning of 2010 (so, about 20 times greater in a decade). However, the 2018 data mean that ULEVs accounted for just 0.5% of all licensed vehicles and were still only 2.1% of all new registrations in that year. Preliminary data available early 2020 indicate continued growth with almost 38,000 new BEV registrations in 2019, a 144% year-on-year increase. As a recent UK House of Commons Briefing Paper notes, however, the government prefers to emphasise the percentage changes in take-up rather than the percentages of the absolute numbers or the absolute numbers themselves ( Hirst, 2019 ). The International Energy Agency (IEA) places the UK in its leading countries list by ULEV and BEV market share (measured by the percentage of total annual registration): Norway dominates, followed by Iceland, Sweden, the Netherlands and then a significant drop-off to a trailing group including China, the USA, Germany, the UK, Japan, France, Canada and South Korea. However, the market share in this trailing group is less than 5% in every case (see appended Figure 1 ). China, given its size (and because of the urgency of its urban air quality problems and its capacity for authoritarian implementation), dominates the raw numbers in terms of total ULEVs and BEVs. All this notwithstanding, the IEA confirms the general point that up-take is accelerating, but the base is low and so achieving total ULEV or BEV coverage is some way off:

The global electric car fleet exceeded 5.1 million in 2018, up by 2 million since 2017, almost doubling the unprecedented amount of new registrations in 2017. The People’s Republic of China… remained the world’s largest electric car market with nearly 1.1 million electric cars sold in 2018 and, with 2.3 million units, it accounted for almost half of the global electric car stock. Europe followed with 1.2 million electric cars and the United States with 1.1 million on the road by the end of 2018 and market growth of 385000 and 361000 electric cars from the previous year. Norway remained the global leader in terms of electric car market share at 46% of its new electric car sales in 2018, more than double the second-largest market share in Iceland at 17% and six-times higher than the third-highest Sweden at 8%. In 2018, electric buses continued to witness dynamic developments, with more than 460000 vehicles on the world’s road, almost 100000 more than in 2017…In freight transport, electric vehicles (EVs) were mostly deployed as light-commercial vehicles (LCVs), which reached 250000 units in 2018, up 80000 from 2017. Medium truck sales were in the range of 1000–2000 in 2018, mostly concentrated in China. ( IEA, 2019A , p. 9)

Over the next few years, it seems likely we will see rapid changes in these metrics. There is a great deal of discussion in policy analysis regarding bottlenecks and impediments and these, of course, are also important (consumer uncertainty, ‘range anxiety’, availability of sufficient infrastructure for charging and so on). 32 However, as everything argued so far indicates regarding transition and trends, underlying the whole is the conditionality of success and the potential for failure, involving avoidable ingrained emission and risks. There is a basic difference between a superior technology and a superior choice since the latter is a socio-economic matter of context: of rates of change, scales and substitutions. Ultimately, this creates deep concerns in terms of achieving the Paris goals. The IEA explores two forecast scenarios for the uptake of ULEVs. Both involve a projection of annual ULEV sales and total stock to 2030 ( IEA, 2019A ). First a ‘New Policies’ Scenario. This takes the current policy commitments of individual countries and extrapolates. By 2030, the scenario projects global ULEV sales at 23 million in that year and a total stock of 130 million. This is considerably less than 30% of all vehicles now and in 2030. Second, the EV30@30 Scenario. This assumes an accelerated commitment that adopts the @30 goals (notably 30% annual sales share for BEVs by 2030; IEA, 2019A , pp. 29–30). By 2030, the scenario projects global ULEV sales at 43 million in that year and a total stock of 250 million. Again, this is less than 30% of all vehicles now and in 2030.

The figures, of course, are highly conditional, but the point is clear, even the best-case scenario currently being anticipated has ULEVs and BEVs as a minority of all vehicles in 2030—and 2030 is a key year for achieving Paris, according to the October 2018 IPCC 1.5°C report. Moreover, it is notable that the projections assume continuous growth in the number of vehicles (and so continuous growth in ICE vehicles) and the major areas of numerical growth in BEVs continue to be China, so some significant part of the anticipated total will be new ingrained emissions that arguably did not need to exist. 33 Again, this is highly conditional but it at least creates questions regarding what is being ‘saved’ when the IEA claims that the New Policies Scenario results in 2.5 million barrels a day less demand for oil in 2030 and the EV30@30 Scenario 4.3 million barrels a day ( IEA, 2019A , p. 7). 34 Less of more is not a saving in an objective sense, if this is a preventable future, and it is not a rational way to set about ‘saving’ the planet. It remains the case, of course, that this is better than nothing, but it is deeply questionable whether in policy terms any of this is the ‘best that can be done’. As stated in the Introduction section, technocentrism distracts from appropriate recognition of this. At its worse, technocentrism fails to address and so works to reproduce a counter-productive ecological modernisation: the technological focus facilitates socio-economic trends, which are part of the broader problem rather than solutions to it. The important inference is that there are multiple reasons to think that greater emphasis on social redesign and less private transport avoids successful failure and is more in accordance with the Precautionary Principle.

I ended the introduction to this essay by stating that we would be exploring the foregrounding question: What kind of solution are BEVs to what kind of problem? It should be clearer now what was meant by this. Ultimately, the balance between private and public transport matters if the Paris goals are to be achieved. Equally clearly, this is not news to the UK CCC or to any serious analyst of electric vehicles and the transport issue for our climatological and ecological future (again, e.g. Chapman, 2007 ; Bailey and Wilson, 2009 ; Williamson et al. , 2018 ; Mattioli et al. , 2020 ). At the same time, the context and issues are not widely understood and the problems are often understated, at least in so far as, discursively, most weight is placed on stating progress in achieving a transition to ULEVs and BEVs. This is technocentric. Despite its general concerns and careful critical stance, the CCC is also partly guilty of this. For example, Ewa Kmietowicz, Transport Team Leader of the CCC Secretariat, refers to the UK Road to Zero strategy as a ‘lost opportunity’, and the CCC identifies a number of shortfalls in the strategy. 35 However, the general thrust of the CCC position is to focus on a rapid transition to BEVs and to overcoming bottlenecks. 36 Broader feasibility is subsumed under general assumptions about continued economic expansion and expansion of the transport system. So, there is more of a situation of complementarity (with caveats) between public and private transport, and the whole becomes an exercise in types of investment within expansionary trends, rather than a more radical recognition of the fundamental problems that we ought to think about avoiding. It is also worth noting that many of the major advocates of BEVs are industry organisations. The UK Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, for example, are not unconcerned but they are not impartial either; they have a vested interest in the vehicle industry and its growth. For industry, ULEVs and BEVs are an opportunity before they are a solution to a problem. There are, however, recognitions that a rethink is required. These range from direct activism, such as ‘Rocks in the Gearbox’ (along the lines of Extinction Rebellion), to analysis from establishment think tanks, such as the World Economic Forum 37 , and statements from government oversight committees. For example, the UK Commons Science and Technology Committee (CSTC) not only endorses the CCC 2035 accelerated BEV target but also states more explicitly:

In the long-term, widespread personal vehicle ownership does not appear to be compatible with significant decarbonisation. The Government should not aim to achieve emissions reductions simply by replacing existing vehicles with lower-emissions versions. Alongside the Government’s existing targets and policies, it must develop a strategy to stimulate a low-emissions transport system, with the metrics and targets to match. This should aim to reduce the number of vehicles required, for example by: promoting and improving public transport; reducing its cost relative to private transport; encouraging vehicle usership in place of ownership; and encouraging and supporting increased levels of walking and cycling. ( CSTC, 2019 )

This, as Caroline Lucas suggests, speaks to the need to coordinate public and private transport policy more effectively and clearly, and there is a need for broader informed debate here. In political ecological circles, for example, there is a growing critique of the tensions encapsulated in the concept of an ‘environmental state’ (see Koch, 2019 ). That is the coordination and coherence of environmental imperatives with other policy concerns. State-rescaling and degrowth and postgrowth work highlight the profound problems that are now starting to emerge as states come to terms with the basic mechanisms that have been built into our economies and societies (see also Newell and Mulvaney, 2013 ; Newell, 2019 ). 38 New thinking is required and this extends to the social ontology and theory we use to conceptualise economies (see Spash and Ryan, 2012 ; Lawson, 2012 , 2019 ) and political formations (see Bacevic, 2019 ; Patomäki, 2019. Covid-19 does not change this ( Gills, 2020 ).

In transport terms, there are many specific issues to consider. Some solutions are simple but overlooked because we are always thinking in terms of sophisticated innovations and inventions. However, we do not need to conform to the logics of ‘technological fixes’, that we somehow think will enable the impossible, to perhaps see some scope in ‘fourth industrial revolution’ transformations ( Center for Global Policy Solutions, 2017 ; Morgan, 2019B ). For example, public transport may also extend to a future where no individual owns a range extensive powered vehicle (perhaps just local scooters for the young and mobility scooters for the infirm) and instead a system operates of autonomous fleet vehicles that are coordinated by artificial intelligence with logistics implemented through Smartphone calendar access booking systems—and coordination functions could maximise sharing, where vehicles could also be (given no drivers are involved) adaptable connective pods that chain together to minimise congestion and energy use. This seems like science fiction now, and perhaps a little ridiculous, but a few years ago so did the Smartphone. And the technology already exists in infancy. Such a system could be either state-funded and run or private partnership and franchise, but in either case, it radically redraws the transport environment whilst working in conformity with the geography of living spaces we have already developed. Will is what is required and if the outcome of COP24 ( UNFCCC, 2018 ) and COP25 ( Newell and Taylor, 2020 ) with limited progress towards the Paris goals persists, then it seems likely that emissions will accumulate rapidly in the near future and the likelihood of a serious climate event with socio-economic consequences rises. At that stage, more invasive statutory and regulatory intervention may start to occur as the carbon budget becomes a more urgent target. Prohibitions, transport rationing and various other possibilities may then be on the agenda if we are to unmake the future we are currently writing and, to mix metaphors, avoid a road to nowhere.

None declared

Thanks to two anonymous reviewers for extensive and useful comment—particularly regarding the systematic statement of issues in the Introduction section and for additional useful references. Jamie Morganis Professor of Economic Sociology at Leeds Beckett University, UK. He coedits the Real-World Economics Review with Edward Fullbrook. RWER is the world’s largest subscription based open access economics journal. He has published widely in the fields of economics, political economy, philosophy, sociology, and international politics. His recent books include: Modern Monetary Theory and its Critics (ed. with E. Fullbrook, WEA Books, 2020), Economics and the ecosystem (ed. with E. Fullbrook, WEA Books, 2019); Brexit and the political economy of fragmentation: Things fall apart (ed. with H. Patomäki, Routledge, 2018); Realist responses to post-human society (ed. with I. Al-Amoudi, Routledge, 2018); Trumponomics: Causes and consequences (ed. with E. Fullbrook, College Publications, 2017); What is neoclassical economics? (ed., Routledge, 2015); and Piketty’s capital in the twenty-first century (ed. with E. Fullbrook, College Publications, 2014).

Bacevic , J . 2019 . Knowing neoliberalism , Social Epistemology , vol. 33 , no. 4 , 380 – 92

Google Scholar

Bailey , I. and Wilson , G . 2009 . Theorising transitional pathways in response to climate change: technocentrism, ecocentrism, and the carbon economy , Environment and Planning A , vol. 41 , no. 10 , 2324 – 41

CCC. 2019 . Net Zero: The UK’s Contribution to Stopping Global Warming , London , Author

Google Preview

Center for Global Policy Solutions. 2017 . Stick Shift: Autonomous Vehicles, Driving Jobs and the Future of Work , Washington DC , Author

Chapman , L . 2007 . Transportation and climate change: a review , Journal of Transport Geography , vol. 15 , no. 5 , 354 – 67

China Daily. 2018, December 1 . China has 325 million motor vehicles , China Daily

Christensen , J. and Olhoff , A . 2019 . Lessons from a Decade of Emissions Gap Assessments , Nairobi , UNEP

CSTC. 2019 . Clean Growth: Technologies for Meeting the UK’s Emissions Reduction Targets , London , Author

DBEIS. 2018 . Annex: 1990–2016 UK Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Final Figures by end User , London , Author

DECC. 2015 . Different Approaches to Reporting UK Greenhouse Gas Emissions , London , Author

Deloitte. 2018 . Battery Electric Vehicles. New market. New entrants. New challenges , London , Author

Dennis , K. and Urry , J . 2009 . After the Car , Cambridge , Polity

Department for Transport. 2018 . The Road to Zero: Next Steps Towards Cleaner Road Transport and Delivering our Industrial Strategy , London , Author

Department for Transport. 2019 . Vehicle Licensing Statistics: Annual 2018 , London , Author

Dunlap , A . 2019 . Wind, coal and copper: the politics of land grabbing, counterinsurgency and the social engineering of extraction , Globalizations vol. 17 , no. 4 , 661 – 82

Environmental Audit Committee. 2016 . Sustainability in the Department of Transport [Third Report of Sessions 2016–17], London , House of Commons

Faraday Institution. 2019 . UK Electric Vehicle and Battery Production Potential to 2040 , London , Author

Faulkner , P. and Runde , J . 2013 . Technological objects, social positions and the transformational model of social activity , MIS Quarterly , vol. 37 , no. 3 , 803 – 18

Frost & Sullivan. 2019 . Global Electric Vehicle Market Outlook, 2019 , Author , London

Fullbrook , E. and Morgan , J. (eds.). 2019 . Economics and the Ecosystem , London , World Economic Association Books

Georgescu-Roegen , N . 1971 . The Entropy Law and the Economic Process , Cambridge and London , Harvard University Press

Gills , B . 2020 . Deep Restoration: from the Great Implosion to the Great Awakening , Globalizations , vol. 17 , no. 4 , 577 – 9

Gills , B. and Morgan , J . 2019 . Global Climate Emergency: after COP24, climate science, urgency, and the threat to humanity , Globalizations

Gills , B. , Morgan , J. and Patomäki , H . 2019 . President Trump as status dysfunction , Organization , vol. 26 , no. 2 , 291 – 301

Hansen , J. et al.  2017 . Young people’s burden: requirement of negative CO2 emissions , Earth System Dynamics , vol. 8 , 577 – 616

Harvey , F . 2020, March 28 . Tackle climate crisis and poverty with zeal of Covid-19 fight scientists urge , The Guardian

Hirst , D . 2019 . ‘ Electric Vehicles and Infrastructure’ , Briefing Paper no. CBP07480, London , House of Commons Library

Hoekstra , A . 2019 . The underestimated potential of battery electric vehicles to reduce emissions , Joule , vol. 3 , no. 6 , 1412 – 4

Holt , R. , Pressman , S. and Spash , C. (eds.). 2009 . Post Keynesian and Ecological Economics , Cheltenham , Edward Elgar

Holtsmark , B. and Skonhoft , A . 2014 . The Norwegian support and subsidy policy for electric cars. Should it be adopted by other countries? Environmental Science & Policy , vol. 42 , 160 – 8

IEA. 2019A . Global EV Outlook 2019: Scaling up the Transition to Electric Mobility , Paris , Author

IEA. 2019B . World Energy Outlook , Paris , Author

IPCC. 2018 . Global Warming of 1.50C: Summary for Policymakers , Geneva , Author

IPCC. 2019A . IPCC Special Report on Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation Sustainable Land Management Food Security and Greenhouse Gas fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems , Geneva , Author

IPCC. 2019B . The Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate , Geneva , Author

Koch , M . 2019 . The state in the transformation to a sustainable postgrowth economy , Environmental Politics , vol. 29 , no. 1 , 115 – 33

Lawson , C . 2012 . Aviation lock-in and emissions trading , Cambridge Journal of Economics , vol. 36 , no. 5 , 1221 – 43

Lawson , C . 2017 . Technology and Isolation , Cambridge , Cambridge University Press

Lawson , T . 2019 . The Nature of Social Reality: Issues in Social Ontology , London , Routledge

Lea , R . 2019, September 6 . Tesla Model 3 enters sales chart at No3 , The Times

Lenton , T. , Rockstrom , J. , Gaffney , O. , Rahmstorf , S. , Richardson , K. , Steffen , W. and Schellnuber , H . 2018 . Climate tipping points too risky to bet against , Nature , vol. 575 , 592 – 5

Manzetti , S. and Mariasiu , F . 2015 . Electric vehicle battery technologies: from present state to future systems , Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews , vol. 51 , 1004 – 12

Mattioli , G. , Roberts , C. , Steinberger , J. , and Brown , A . 2020 . The political economy of car dependence: a systems of provision approach , Energy Research & Social Science , vol. 66 , 1 – 18

Morgan , J . 2016 . Paris COP21: power that speaks the truth? Globalizations , vol. 13 , no. 6 , 943 – 51

Morgan , J . 2017 . Piketty and the growth dilemma revisited in the context of ecological economics , Ecological Economics , vol. 136 , 169 – 77

Morgan , J . 2019A . Intervention, policy and responsibility: economics as over-engineered expertise?, pp. 145 – 63 in Dolfsma , W. and Negru , I. (eds.), 2019 The Ethical Formation of Economists , London , Routledge

Morgan , J . 2019B . Will we work in twenty-first century capitalism? A critique of the fourth industrial revolution literature , Economy and Society , vol. 48 , no. 3 , 371 – 98

Morgan , J. and Patomäki , H . 2017 . Contrast explanation in economics: its context, meaning, and potential , Cambridge Journal of Economics , vol. 41 , no. 5 , 1391 – 418

Nasir , A. and Morgan , J . 2018 . The unit root problem: affinities between ergodicity and stationarity, its practical contradictions for central bank policy, and some consideration of alternatives , Journal of Post Keynesian Economics , vol. 41 , no. 3 , 339 – 63

National Audit Office. 2019 . Department of Transport Sustainability Update , London , Author

Newell , P . 2019 . Transformismo or transformation? The global political economy of energy transitions , Review of International Political Economy , vol. 26 , no. 1 , 25 – 48

Newell , P. and Mulvaney , D . 2013 . The political economy of the “just transition” , The Geographical Journal , vol. 179 , no. 2 , 132 – 40

Newell , P. and Taylor , O . 2020 . Fiddling while the planet burns? COP 25 in perspective , Globalizations , vol. 17 , no. 4 , 580 – 92

ONS. 2019 . UK Environmental Accounts: 2019 , London , Author

Patomäki , H . 2019, July 9 . ‘The Climate Movement? What’s Next?’, available at https://patomaki.fi/en/2019/07/the-climate-movement-whats-next/

Petit , S . 2017 . World vehicle population rose 2.6% in 2016 , Ward Intelligence

Regett , A. , Mauch , W. and Wagner , U . 2019 . Carbon Footprint of Electric Vehicles – A Plea for More Objectivity , available at https://www.ffe.de/attachments/article/856/Carbon_footprint_EV_FfE.pdf

Ripple , W. , Wolf , C. , Newsome , T. , Barnbard , P. , Moomaw , W. and 11,258 signatories. 2019 . World Scientists’ warning of a climate emergency , BioScience , vol. 70 , no. 1 , 8 – 12

Romare , M. and Dahlöff , L . 2017 . ‘ The Life Cycle Energy Consumption and Greenhouse gas Emissions From Lithium-Ion Batteries’ , Report No. C243, Stockholm , IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute

Royal Academy of Engineering. 2010 . Electric Vehicles: Charged with Potential , London , Author

Servigne , P. and Stevens , R . 2015 . Comment tout peut s’efondrer , Paris , Science Humaines , available at https://www.seuil.com/ouvrage/comment-tout-peut-s-effondrer-pablo-servigne/ 9782021223316

Smil , V . 2017A . Energy and Civilization , Boston , MIT Press

Smil , V . 2017B . Energy Transitions , Colorado , Praeger

SMMT. 2019 . UK Electric Car Registrations Surge in August but it’s a Long Road to Zero and Barriers Must be Addressed , Press Release September 5th, London , Author

Spash , C. (ed.). 2017 . Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics: Nature and Society , New York , Routledge

Spash , C . 2020 . A tale of three paradigms: realising the revolutionary potential of ecological economics , Ecological Economics vol. 169 ,

Spash , C. and Ryan , A . 2012 . Economic schools of thought on the environment: investigating unity and division , Cambridge Journal of Economics , vol. 36 , no. 5 , 1091 – 121

Staffell , I. Green , R. Gross , R. and Green , T . 2019 . How clean is my car? , Electric Insights Quarterly , vol. Q2 , 7 – 10

Statista. 2019A . Number of Motor Vehicles Registered in the United States from 1990 to 2017 (in 1000s) , [data updated June 2019], available at https://www.statista.com/statistics/183505/number-of-vehicles-in-the-united-states-since-1990/

Statista. 2019B . Car “Parc” in China from 2007 to 2018 (millions) , [data updated August 2019], available at https://www.statista.com/statistics/285306/number-of-car-owners-in-china/

Steffen , W. et al.  2018 . Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene , Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA , vol. 115 , 8252 – 9

Taylor , M . 2015 . The Political Ecology of Climate Change Adaptation , London , Routledge/Earthscan

UNEP. 2012 . Global Environmental Outlook Report 5: Environment for the Future We Want , New York , Author

UNEP. 2018 . Emissions Gap Report 2018 , 9th ed., New York , Author

UNEP. 2019A . Emissions Gap Report 2019 , 10th ed., New York , Author .

UNEP. 2019B . Global Environmental Outlook Report 6: Healthy Planet Healthy People , New York , Author

UNFCCC. 1992 . United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change , New York , Author

UNFCCC. 2015 . Adoption of the Paris Agreement and Annex: Paris Agreement , Paris , Author

UNFCCC. 2018 . Katowice Texts , Katowice , Author

Webster , B . 2019, June 6 . Britain “could be held to ransom” on electric cars , The Times

Williamson , K. , Satre-Meloy , A. , Velasco , K. and Green , K . 2018 . Climate Change Needs Behaviour Change: Making the Case for Behavioural Solutions to Reduce Global Warming , Arlington, VA , Centre for Behaviour and the Environment

Zheng , S . 2017, April 19 . China now has over 300 million vehicles… that’s almost America’s total population , South China Morning Post

Global electric car sales and market share, 2013–18.

Source : IEA (2019, p. 10).

ULEV refers to vehicles that emit less than 75 gCO 2 per km. This essentially means BEVs, PHEVs, range-extended (typically an auxiliary fuel tank) electric vehicles, fuel cell (non-plug-in) electric vehicles and hybrid models (non-plug in vehicles with a main fuel tank but whose battery recharges and which drive short distances in electric mode).

Note, there is little sign of legislative and regulatory detail to plans as of early 2020. Furthermore, there is a difference between acknowledging that the uptake of alternatively fuelled vehicles, including BEVs, is growing and drawing the inference that UK government policy (channelled primarily via the Department for Transport) is as effective as it might be (see Environmental Audit Committee, 2016 ; National Audit Office, 2019 and also later discussions).

CEM is coordinated by the IEA and is an initiative lead by Canada and China (but including a steadily growing number of signatory countries). The EV30@30 initiative aims to achieve a 30% annual sales share for BEVs by 2030.

IEA headline statistics include plug-in hybrids so 2018 becomes 46% for Norway (IEA, 2019A, p. 10).

For example, Spash (2020) and Spash and Ryan (2012) . One might also note the work of John O’Neill at Manchester University. Perhaps the most prominent ‘realist’ working on transport and ecology is Petter Naess, at Norwegian University of Life Sciences.

The UNEP 9th Report calls for a 55% reduction by 2030.

The initial rationale in 2008 was that to achieve a maximum limit of 2°C warming global emissions needed to fall from the levels at that time to 20–24 GtCO 2 e with an implied average of 2.1–2.6 t CO 2 per capita on a global basis in 2050. This translated to a 50–60% reduction to the then global total. Since UK emissions were above average per capita, the UK reduction required was estimated at about 80%. Given that emissions then increased and atmospheric ppm has risen the original calculations are now mainly redundant.

For the work of the CCC, see: https://www.theccc.org.uk/about/ .

The report also provides useful context regarding the UN sustainable development goals ( CCC, 2019 : p. 66) and CCC thinking on growth and economics ( CCC, 2019 : pp. 46–7).

https://www.theccc.org.uk/2019/06/11/response-to-government-plan-to-legislate-for-net-zero-emissions-target/ .

And further methodological issues apply in economics (see; Morgan and Patomäki, 2017 ; Nasir and Morgan, 2018 ; Morgan, 2019A ).

For a full analysis, see https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uks-co2-emissions-have-fallen-29-per-cent-over-the-past-decade . The Carbon Brief analysis omits shipping and aviation. As the campaign group Transport and Environment notes UK shipping was responsible for 14.4 MtCO 2 , which is the third highest in Europe (after the Netherlands and Spain) and shipping is exempt from tax on fossil fuels under EU law. See p. 20: https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publications/Study-EU_shippings_climate_record_20191209_final.pdf .

UK coal use for energy supply reduced by approximately 90% from 1990 to 2017 and in 2019 amounted to just 2% of the energy mix and in 2019 the UK went two weeks without using any coal at all for power production (the first time since 1882); 1990 to 2010 natural gas use steadily increased from a near-zero base but has declined since 2010 as use of renewables has grown. Coal use in manufacturing has decreased by 75% from 1990 to 2017 ( ONS, 2019 ). As noted, some assessments place the reduction in total emissions at around 40% based on other metrics and the tabulated figures I provide indicate yet another percentage— all however are trend decreases indicative of a general direction of travel.

‘Embedded emissions’ or the UK carbon footprint is addressed by the UK Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). To be clear, there is a whole set of further issues that one might address in regard of measurement of emissions—how they are attributed and what this means (where created, where induced through demand, which state, what corporation and so different ‘Cartesian’ claims regarding the significance of location are possible), and this is indicative of the conflict over representation and partition of responsibility (so whilst the climate does not care about borders, they have infected measurement and policy). There is no scientifically neutral way to achieve this, merely different sets of criteria with different consequences (I thank an anonymous referee for extended comment on this, see also Taylor, 2015 ; who argues that adaptation politics produces a focus on governance within existing political and economic structures based on borders, etc.).

Congestion charges in London or a plastic bag tax do not meet this threshold.

This is supported, for example, by The Climate Group’s EV100 initiative: a voluntary scheme where corporations commit to making electric the ‘new normal’ of their vehicle fleets by 2030 (recognising that over half of annual new registrations are owned by businesses) https://www.theclimategroup.org/project/ev100 .

Until recently Tesla had one main production centre in California. However, it now also has a $5 billion factory in Shanghai and plans for a factory in Berlin. Tesla is currently the world’s largest producer of BEVs (368,000 units in 2019), followed by the Chinese company BYD Auto (195,000 units in 2019). Tesla was founded in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Mark Tarpenning in response to General Motors scrapping its EV programme (as unprofitable). Elon Musk joined as a HNWI first-round investor in February 2004 (he put in $6.5 m of the total $7.5 m and became chairman of the Tesla board); Eberhard was initially CEO but was removed and replaced by Musk in 2007 and Tarpenning left in 2008. Tesla floated on the Nasdaq in June 2010 at $17 per share and exceeded $500 per share for the first time in January 2020. Tesla is the USA’s most valuable car manufacturer by market capitalisation (worth more than Ford and GM combined).

The European Commission’s collaborative research forum JEC has been producing ‘well-to-wheels’ analyses of energy efficiency of different engine technologies since the beginning of the century. The USA periodically publishes the findings of its GREET model (the Greenhouse gases Regulated Emissions and Energy use in Transportation model). See https://greet.es.anl.gov .

For example, since 1985 according to Carbon Brief global coal use in power production measured in terawatt hours only reduced in 2009 and 2015 (though it seems likely to do so in 2019); China notably continues to build coal-fired power plants though the rate of growth of use has slowed. (According to the IEA Coal report, 2019, China consumed 3,756 million tonnes of coal in 2018 (a 1% increase) and India 986 million tonnes (a 5% increase). Renewables are a growing part of an expanding global energy system.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-global-coal-power-set-for-record-fall-in-2019 .

Staffell et al . observe that the British electricity grid produces an average 204 gCO 2 per kWh in 2019 and a standard petrol car emits 120–160 gCO 2 per km.

This is a point made by Richard Smith. There are, of course, alternatives to aluminium. One should also note that manufacturers are responding to consumer preference by increasing the average size of models and this is increasing the weight and resource use. In February 2020, for example, Which Magazine analysed 292 popular car models and found that they were on average 3.4% or 67 kg heavier than older models and this was offsetting some of the efficiency gains for emissions.

And the argument this is leading to is that it makes far greater sense to default to greater dependence on prudential social redesign, rather than optimistic technocentrism, behind which is techno-politics.

For discussion of battery technology and scope for improvement, see Manzetti and Mariasiu (2015) and Faraday Institution (2019) . Currently, most BEVs use lithium-ion phosphate, nickel-manganese cobalt oxide or aluminium oxide batteries. Liquid electrolyte constituents require containment and shielding. Specifically, a battery creates a flow of electrons from the positive electrode (the cathode made of a lithium metal oxide, etc. from the previous list) through a conducting electrolyte medium (lithium salt in an organic solution) to a negative electrode (the anode made typically of carbon, since early experiment with metals tended to produce excess heating and fire). This creates a current. Charging flows to the anode and discharge oxidises the anode which must then be recharged. The batteries are relatively low ‘energy density’ and can be a fire hazard when they heat. Given the chemical constituents, battery disposal is also a significant environmental hazard (see IEA, 2019A: pp. 8, 22–3). A ‘solid-state’ battery uses a specially designed (possibly glass or ceramic) solid medium that allows ions to travel through from one electrode to another. The solid-state technology is in principle higher energy density, much lighter and more durable. The implication is higher kWh batteries with greater range, charging capacity and durability and efficiency. Jeremy Dyson has reportedly invested heavily in solid-state technology and though his proposed own brand BEV is not now going ahead, reports indicate the battery technology investment will continue.

One might also consider hydrogen battery technology. Hydrogen fuel cell technology for vehicles is different than BEV. The vehicle has a tank in the rear for compressed cooled gas, which supplies the cell at the front of the car whilst driving. Refuelling is a rapid pumping process rather than a long wait. The gas has two possible origins: natural gas conversion where ‘steam methane reformation’ separates methane into hydrogen and CO 2 or water electrolysis, where grid AC electricity is converted to DC, which is applied to water and using a membrane splits it into hydrogen and waste oxygen. Currently, over 95% of hydrogen is from the former. Major investors in hydrogen technology are Shell (for natural gas conversion), IMT Power (in partnership with Shell) for water conversion and Toyota whose Mirai model is hydrogen powered.

Though fewer new cars were registered than in previous years, this significant metric for the total number of vehicles is the cumulative number of registrations (taking into account cars no longer registered). There are, however, some underlying issues: uncertainty regarding the status of diesel cars and problems of availability, cost and trust in BEVs seems to be causing many people in the UK to delay buying a new car; the expansion of Uber meanwhile has had a generational and urban effect, reducing car ownership as an aspiration amongst the young.

And re aviation, a new runway at Heathrow between 2026 and 2050.

See: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/852708/provisional-road-traffic-estimates-gb-october-2018-to-september-2019.pdf .

See: https://greenworld.org.uk/article/budget-deeply-disappointing-says-caroline-lucas

For example, global production of cobalt in 2018 was 120,000 tonnes, and production of about 2 million BEVs currently requires around 25,000 tonnes, so 10 million BEVs would require all of the current output. Cobalt traded at more than US$90,000 per ton 2018 but had fallen to around US$30,000 at the end of 2019.

In the UK, the current daily consumption of petrol and diesel for road transport is about 125 million litres or about 45 billion litres per year. So, BEVs are essentially substituting for this scale of energy use, shifting demand to electricity generation. National Grid attempted to model this in 2017. Their forecast (highly contingent obviously) suggests that if all cars sold by 2040 were BEVs and thus the car market was dominated by BEVs by 2050 and if most vehicles were charged at peak times in 2050 then an additional 30 gigawatts of electricity would be required. This is about 50% greater than the current peak winter demand in 2017. This was widely reported in the press. This best/worst case, of course, does not allow for innovative solutions such as off-peak home charging pioneered by Ovo and other niche suppliers. However, even with such solutions, there will still be a net increase in required capacity from the system. This has been estimated at about 10 new Hinckley power stations.

One possible long-term solution currently in development is toughened solar panel devices that can be laid as a road or car park surfaces, enabling contact recharging of the vehicle (in motion or otherwise). There are, however, multiple problems with the technology so far.

For example, analysis from Capital Economics suggests a three-way charging split is likely to develop: home recharging is likely to dominate, followed by an on-route charging model (substituting for current petrol forecourts at roadside) and destination recharging (given charging is slower than filling a fuel tank it makes sense to transform car parks at destinations into charging centres—supermarkets, etc.). They estimate UK demand at 25 million BEV chargers by 2050 of which all but 2.6 million will be home charging. As of early 2020, there were 8,400 filling stations which might be fully converted. Tesco has a reported commitment to install 2,400 charging points. These are issues frequently reported in the press.

This point can also be made in other ways. Not only does the emissions saving relate to net new sources of cars, but the contrast is also in terms of trend changes in the size of vehicle. According to the recent IEA World Energy Outlook report ( IEA, 2019B ), the number of SUVs is increasing and these consume around 25% more fuel than a mid-range car. If current growth trends continue (SUVs are 42% of new sales in China, 30% in India and about 50% in the USA), the IEA projects that the take-up of ICE SUVs will more than offset any marginal gains in emissions from the transition to BEVs.

It is also the case that the projected ‘savings’ from ULEVs are likely inaccurate. Following the EU, most countries adopted (and manufacturers report using) the Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP). This became mandatory in the UK from September 2018. The WLTP is the new laboratory defined test for car distance-energy metrics. Vehicles are tested at 23°C, but without associated use of A/C or heating. Though claimed to as realistic than its predecessors, it is still basically unrealistic. Temperature range for ULEVs has significant consequences for battery performance and for use of on-board services, so real distance travelled per unit of energy is liable to be less. For similar reasons, ICEs will also travel less distance per litre of fuel so this is not a comparative gain for ICEs, it is likely a comparative loss to all of us if we rely on the figures.

See https://www.theccc.org.uk/2018/07/10/road-to-zero-a-missed-opportunity/ .

See https://www.theccc.org.uk/2018/07/10/governments-road-to-zero-strategy-falls-short-ccc-says/ .

See https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/shared-avs-could-save-the-world-private-avs-could-ruin-it/ .

For practical network initiatives, see, for example, https://climatestrategies.org .

Email alerts

Citing articles via.

• Contact Cambridge Political Economy Society
• Recommend to your Library

Affiliations

• Online ISSN 1464-3545
• Print ISSN 0309-166X
• Copyright © 2024 Cambridge Political Economy Society
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

5 Ways Electric Cars Are Bad for the Environment

Your changes have been saved

Email is sent

Email has already been sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

Many people tend to associate electric cars with a greener planet. But is this an apt association? What you may not know is that EVs come with their own environmental cost. So, what are the downsides of electric cars, and why are they bad for the environment?

1. The Manufacturing Process

Like any other vehicle, EVs need to be manufactured. Today, electric cars are produced in huge numbers to meet ever-increasing demand, which requires factories, machinery, and other resources. The process of producing EVs results in a hefty carbon footprint, as many manufacturers use electricity sourced from non-renewable resources.

It's also important to note that battery production is at the core of the EV manufacturing process. We'll discuss EV batteries in more detail a little later, but battery components considerably increase the overall energy requirements needed for an EV compared to a traditional vehicle.

2. The Electricity Used for Charging

While electric cars do not require fossil fuels to operate, they do require electricity. We use electricity all day, every day, in almost every aspect of our lives. But most of our electricity is produced using non-renewable resources, including fossil fuels.

The US Energy Information Administration found that most of the electricity consumed within the US in 2021 came from natural gas, petroleum, nuclear energy, and coal. A shocking 61 percent of the electricity generated was derived from coal, while an additional 19 percent came from nuclear power.

This isn't the case across the board, however. For example, the UK derived over 26 percent of its electricity from wind power in 2021, with biofuel (organic materials) making up for an additional 12.7 percent of all electricity used (as per the National Grid , the company responsible for electricity and gas transmission in the UK). But, globally, we still rely heavily on non-renewable resources to provide electricity. So there's a good chance that when you plug your EV in to charge , a hefty chunk of the electricity will come from a non-renewable fuel.

To charge a Tesla Model X, for example, around 118kWh of electricity is required (as stated by Energy Sage ). A Bulb (a UK energy provider) study found that each kWh of electricity used resulted in the release of 0.193kg of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) into the atmosphere, which means around 22.7g of CO2e is released from each charge of a Model X. So charging an electric car still leaves a carbon footprint, however indirect it may be.

3. EV Batteries Require Rare Metal Extraction

One of the biggest cons of electric cars is their batteries. The majority of EV manufacturers use lithium-ion batteries for their electric cars (though other EV battery types do exist ). Lithium is an elemental metal extracted from the planet via an evaporation process or ore mining. But both of these extraction processes have an environmental impact.

Let's start with lithium evaporation.

In certain countries, such as Argentina, lithium is harbored in salt deserts. One of the most lithium-rich salt deserts is the Salar de Atacama, Chile. The saltwater of the Atacama Desert contains lithium, which is extracted via evaporation and then stored in basins. But this is not a harmless process. Not only is electricity required to operate the machinery used, but evaporation can lead to increased water salinity and contamination, and the water supply of nearby communities is also affected by this.

When it comes to lithium ore mining, the situation is similarly dire. Lithium ore mining often involves the extraction of clay ore. This looks similar to traditional mining, wherein the earth must be "harvested" to access the desired metal. But lithium ore mining is no friend to the planet. Biodiversity loss, CO2 emissions, air contamination, and water loss are just a few of the dangerous side effects associated with this process.

The MIT Climate Portal reports that for every ton of lithium mined, 15 tonnes of CO2 is released into the atmosphere. This alarming statistic shows just how much this process is contributing to climate change.

But it doesn't stop there. A variety of other metals are also used in EV batteries, including cobalt and nickel. Like lithium, cobalt and nickel must be mined for extraction, which brings another slew of dangerous side effects, including high CO2 emissions, water pollution, and decreased crop yields, and that's without delving into the considerable human cost (including exploitation, slavery, child workers, and horrendous working conditions) of extracting these rare metals.

The increasing demand for EV batteries, and therefore the metals within, is a huge cause for concern.

4. Tire and Brake Emissions

You've heard of exhaust emissions before, but are you aware of the emissions released by our brakes and tires? That's right. The brakes and tires used by our vehicles produce emissions, regardless of whether what we're driving is fuel-powered or electric-powered.

As you likely know, tires wear down over time and must be replaced. This is because as our tires work away on the road, tiny particles are released from friction. Unfortunately, it's these particles that pose a big environmental issue. In fact, Emissions Analytics believes that tire emissions could be 1,000 times worse than exhaust emissions.

Tires contain a range of carcinogens, such as dibenzopyrenes. When these particles pollute bodies of water, they can harm aquatic life. When they pollute the air we breathe, we are also at risk.

The situation is similar with brake emissions. Whenever you apply the brakes on your vehicle, the brake pads lining your brake discs get worn down, releasing particles. Brake emissions contribute a worrying 20% of the atmosphere's roadside traffic pollution (as found by the Air Quality Expert Group ), which signifies a serious environmental risk.

5. EV Battery Disposal

As previously discussed, EV batteries require certain metals to operate. These materials aren't just an extraction issue; they're also a disposal issue.

You may have already heard about lithium-ion batteries and the hazards they pose to the environment (such as toxic gas emissions, excess waste, and water contamination). Given that many EV brands use lithium-ion batteries, the disposal process has become an environmental concern.

If EV batteries were disposed of in the same way as typical trash (like wrappers, baby wipes, and cotton buds), they would have a harmful effect on the environment. But there is a solution to this issue. EV batteries can be recycled so their effect on our planet is substantially lessened.

EV battery recycling is a hot topic, with more and more batteries expiring after long-term use. Various suggestions have been made on how EV batteries can find a new lease of life . For example, older EV batteries could be repurposed as on-the-go vehicle chargers or even put back into use as the main battery of another EV once refurbished.

If a given EV battery is so degraded that it can no longer be repurposed, the materials can be smelted down and reused elsewhere. These options can greatly reduce EV waste and take some pressure off our environment.

The Downsides of Electric Cars

Today, most manufacturing and maintenance processes result in some form of environmental impact, and the case is no different for electric vehicles. To create and operate EVs, our planet must still pay a price. Hopefully, this will change as renewable energy sources become more popular and EV battery recycling schemes become more efficient, but for now, it's safe to say that electric cars are by no means environmentally benign.

• Electric Vehicles
• Technology Explained
• Electric Car

• Dec 29, 2021

A Debate: Are Electric Vehicles Really Worth the Hype?

The progression of the use of motor vehicles from being gasoline-powered to completely electric is becoming more relevant, with around 10 million electric cars on the road in 2020, but what caused the significant jump in its increased use? Are they really worth the hype?

When people began to mass-produce automobiles during the industrialization era, electric vehicles (EVs) were produced on a small-scale but weren’t as popular in comparison to gasoline vehicles which were anticipated to transform the industry globally due to their low cost of maintenance and the discovery of oils and gas in many locations. The concept and cost of production of EVs were not initially cheap either, including the components that are used to power the car’s engine such as its batteries. They did not become popular amongst civilians and were seen as mechanically redundant as they were slow, although being noticeably convenient to use in urban areas by bringing reductions to noise and air pollution. Thus, there was a decline in their use. People wanted something fast, something cheap, and a gasoline-fueled auto engine car has a clear advantage.

The switch from gasoline-powered vehicles to electric cars is predominantly due to the increasing awareness that individuals have concerning the effects of gas-based vehicles to the environment, in comparison to electric vehicles. Typically, a regular gasoline vehicle emits 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year on average, and per kilometer driven emits around 175-650g of carbon dioxide pertaining to the type of vehicle. In contrast, electric vehicles rely on batteries which are its key components that power its other major components that help run the vehicle. Moreover, they are lightweight, possess a fast torque, and are far quieter since they do not have a gas-based engine and may potentially reduce noise pollution in cities.

Could batteries truly be considered as clean-energy?

The type of battery that was frequently assembled in the early inventions of electric vehicles was the nickel-iron battery. Firstly developed by Thomas Edison in the 1900s, it was also referred to as a backup battery as they are only used as a popular secondary storage to lithium-ion batteries, similar to lead-acid batteries. It generates sustainably, in comparison to lithium-ion and lead-acid batteries. When electricity passes through the nickel-iron battery while it is being recharged, it undergoes a chemical reaction and releases both hydrogen and oxygen through a process called electrolysis.

They are still being used today, lasting more than 50 years on average with high resiliency. However, they are evidently expensive because of their high manufacturing cost. The nickel-iron battery is still continuously being researched by engineers and scientists to enhance its effectiveness due to its poor charge retention, which could eventually affect their value to become more affordable. Currently, Stanford University scientists are improving the battery to become more fast charged, with the aim to help power electric vehicles more powerful than Edison’s fundamental development. It can also withstand high temperatures, and does not create chemically toxic fumes that harm the environment.

Lead-acid batteries also function similarly to nickel-iron batteries through electrolysis, but are inexpensive and possibly damaging to the environment, provided that it disposes quickly due to its short lifespan and relies on effective recycling management that varies in countries. Moreover, they were the first form of rechargeable battery to exist, firstly appearing in 1860. Despite its large current capability and tolerance to overcharging, it only has an applicable few years of lifespan, so they are only commonly used in vehicles as a secondary, or third source. Lead-acid batteries need lead to work, which is not environmentally friendly when mined, as when they are stored improperly could contaminate water and pollute the air through fumes. When humans are exposed to lead fumes through inhalation, it could adversely affect the health and increase the risk for cardiovascular diseases.

The lithium-ion battery is the most popular option in powering electric vehicles. It requires lithium and mining for it has a lower environmental footprint in comparison to coal and copper. It also contains less hazardous chemicals such as lead or cadmium, which are found in lead-acid and nickel-cadmium batteries- banned in most countries because of its waste. It also requires low maintenance. There has been a sharp increase in the demand for lithium, which signifies an expansion in the lithium-ion battery industry to subsidize electric vehicles. This is because in comparison with other battery counterparts, lithium-ion batteries are mechanically durable, and have one of the highest energy densities and provide a longer lifespan. Not only are the batteries used for vehicles, but they could be found in recently newly released portable technologies, such as in Apple, due to their efficiency. However, the downsides to the lithium-ion batteries is that their inventions require essential natural resource investments through mining and to receive lithium itself is labor intensive.

In May 2016, China’s largest lithium mine was found to contaminate Liqi River from leaking toxic chemicals coming from the mine and killing wildlife. Fishes were found dead, and cow and yak carcasses were seen lifelessly floating on the river. This shows that extracting lithium harms the soil and water extensively , which affects. Research indicates that the management of lithium-ion batteries does not have a radical implementation or framework, but it solely depends on the country it is being extracted in, as countries have differing policies regarding recycling and resource management. In addition, there have been cases of unregulated child labour in the Republic of Congo in regards to lithium mining.

The world’s incentive to increase the use of electric vehicles

Electric vehicles (EVs) are becoming more affordable to produce with the constant advancements in battery engineering, and are becoming easier to maintain. Although their upfront cost might be more expensive than gas-powered cars, they emit less pollution in comparison to gas-powered cars, keep in mind that electric vehicles still have adverse effects that are detrimental to the environment. This includes the mismanagement of resources, including lithium and lead, that provide components to create batteries, and also the effects of battery-use pertaining to its type (nickel-iron, lead-acid, lithium-ion). However, it still weighs out the use of fossil fuels for vehicles. Moreover, vehicles are still being shipped across the world through cargo ships, which needs intensive energy, and may create marine traffic that harms marine biodiversity.

A major car manufacturer group, Volkswagen, which manages car brands such as Porsche, Bugatti, Audi and Lamborghini, is planning the initiative to completely create electric cars by 2030 and aims to be carbon dioxide neutral by 2050. In addition to this, other major car manufacturing companies such as Honda, Tesla, and Toyota have started producing their own electric vehicles and might go completely electric. In more than 20 countries, governments are encouraging its production in regards to their impact towards energy consumption and the environment with decarbonization and a green economy, marking the start to a new industrialization revolution given the EV popularity.

Amelang S. Volkswagen places massive EV bet to master green mobility shift [Internet]. Clean Energy Wire. 2021 [cited 2021Dec9]. Available from: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/dieselgate-forces-vw-embrace-green-mobility

How do all-electric cars work? [Internet]. Alternative Fuels Data Center: How Do All-Electric Cars Work? [cited 2021Dec9]. Available from: https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/how-do-all-electric-cars-work

How do electric car batteries work? [Internet]. EnergySage. 2021 [cited 2021Dec9]. Available from: https://www.energysage.com/electric-vehicles/101/how-do-electric-car-batteries-work/

IER. The environmental impact of lithium batteries [Internet]. IER. 2020 [cited 2021Dec9]. Available from: https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-environmental-impact-of-lithium-batteries/

Lithium-Ion Battery [Internet]. Clean Energy Institute. University of Washington; 2020 [cited 2021Dec9]. Available from: https://www.cei.washington.edu/education/science-of-solar/battery-technology/

Matulka R. The history of the Electric Car [Internet]. Energy.gov. Department of Energy; [cited 2021Dec9]. Available from: https://www.energy.gov/articles/history-electric-car

Murray J. Is the lithium-ion battery having a positive impact on the environment? [Internet]. NS Energy. 2019 [cited 2021Dec9]. Available from: https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/lithium-ion-battery - environmental-impact/

Notes E. How Do Lead Acid Batteries Work [Internet]. Electronics Notes. [cited 2021Dec9]. Available from: https://www.electronics-notes.com/articles/electronic_components/battery-technology/how-do-lead-acid-batteries-work-technology.php

Shwartz M. Stanford scientists develop Ultrafast Nickel-Iron Battery [Internet]. Stanford University. 2012 [cited 2021Dec9]. Available from: https://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/june/ultrafast-edison-battery-062612.html

Recent Posts

Menuju Adopsi Massal Motor Listrik: Melawan Polusi Udara dengan Transportasi yang Berkelanjutan

Analisis Perbandingan Manajemen dan Kuantitas Municipal Solid Waste di Indonesia dan Malaysia

Seascape: Mahasiswa President University Berinisiatif Tangani Isu Lingkungan di Pantai Sederhana, Bekasi

Have a question?

Are electric vehicles definitely better for the climate than gas-powered cars, yes: although electric cars' batteries make them more carbon-intensive to manufacture than gas cars, they more than make up for it by driving much cleaner under nearly any conditions..

October 13, 2022

Although many fully electric vehicles (EVs) carry “zero emissions” badges, this claim is not quite true. Battery-electric cars may not emit greenhouse gases from their tailpipes, but some emissions are created in the process of building and charging the vehicles. Nevertheless, says Sergey Paltsev, Deputy Director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, electric vehicles are clearly a lower-emissions option than cars with internal combustion engines. Over the course of their driving lifetimes, EVs will create fewer carbon emissions than gasoline-burning cars under nearly any conditions.

“We shouldn't claim victory that with this switch to electric cars, problem solved, we are going to have zero emissions,” he says. “No, that's not the case. But electric cars are actually much, much better in terms of the impact on the climate in comparison to internal combustion vehicles. And in time, that comparative advantage of electric cars is going to grow.”

One source of EV emissions is the creation of their large lithium-ion batteries . The use of minerals including lithium, cobalt, and nickel, which are crucial for modern EV batteries, requires using fossil fuels to mine those materials and heat them to high temperatures. As a result, building the 80 kWh lithium-ion battery found in a Tesla Model 3 creates between 2.5 and 16 metric tons of CO 2 (exactly how much depends greatly on what energy source is used to do the heating). 1 This intensive battery manufacturing means that building a new EV can produce around 80% more emissions than building a comparable gas-powered car. 2

But just like with gasoline cars, most emissions from today’s EVs come after they roll off the production floor. 3 The major source of EV emissions is the energy used to charge their batteries. These emissions, says Paltsev, vary enormously based on where the car is driven and what kind of energy is used there. The best case scenario looks like what’s happening today in Norway, Europe’s largest EV market: the nation draws most of its energy from hydropower, giving all those EVs a minuscule carbon footprint. In countries that get most of their energy from burning dirty coal, the emissions numbers for EVs don’t look nearly as good—but they’re still on par with or better than burning gasoline.

To illustrate how EVs create fewer emissions than their counterparts, Paltsev points to MIT’s Insights Into Future Mobility study from 2019. 4 This study looked at comparable vehicles like the Toyota Camry and Honda Clarity across their gasoline, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, battery electric, and hydrogen fuel cell configurations. The researchers found that, on average, gasoline cars emit more than 350 grams of CO 2 per mile driven over their lifetimes. The hybrid and plug-in hybrid versions, meanwhile, scored at around 260 grams per mile of carbon dioxide, while the fully battery-electric vehicle created just 200 grams. Stats from the U.S. Department of Energy tell a similar story: Using the nationwide average of different energy sources, DOE found that EVs create 3,932 lbs. of CO 2 equivalent per year, compared to 5,772 lbs. for plug-in hybrids, 6,258 lbs. for typical hybrids, and 11,435 lbs. for gasoline vehicles. 5

MIT’s report shows how much these stats can swing based on a few key factors. For example, when the researchers used the average carbon intensity of America’s power grid , they found that a fully electric vehicle emits about 25 percent less carbon than a comparable hybrid car. But if they ran the numbers assuming the EV would charge up in hydropower-heavy Washington State, they found it would emit 61 percent less carbon than the hybrid. When they did the math for coal-heavy West Virginia, the EV actually created more carbon emissions than the hybrid, but still less than the gasoline car.

In fact, Paltsev says, it’s difficult to find a comparison in which EVs fare worse than internal combustion. If electric vehicles had a shorter lifespan than gas cars, that would hurt their numbers because they would have fewer low-emissions miles on the road to make up for the carbon-intensive manufacture of their batteries. Yet when the MIT study calculated a comparison in which EVs lasted only 90,000 miles on the road rather than 180,000 miles, they remained 15 percent better than a hybrid and far better than a gas car.

And while internal combustion engines are getting more efficient, EVs are poised to become greener by leaps and bounds as more countries add more clean energy to their mix. MIT’s report sees gasoline cars dropping from more than 350 grams of CO 2 per mile to around 225 grams by the year 2050. In that same span, however, battery EVs could drop to around 125 grams, and perhaps even down to 50 grams if the price of renewable energy were to drop significantly.

“Once we decarbonize the electric grid—once we get more and more clean sources to the grid—the comparison is getting better and better,” Paltsev says.

Thank you to several readers for sending in related questions, including Ross Burlington of Riverside, California, Lloyd Olson of Webberville, Texas, and Thomas Marshall of Lake Charles, Louisiana. You can submit your own question to Ask MIT Climate here .

Read more Ask MIT Climate

1 These figures are derived from comparison of three recent reports that conducted broad literature reviews of studies attempting to quantify battery manufacturing emissions across different countries, energy mixes, and time periods from the early 2010s to the present. We discard one outlier study from 2016 whose model suggested emissions from manufacturing the battery in our example could total as high as almost 40 metric tons. The lowest estimates typically come from studies of U.S. and European battery manufacturing, while the highest come from studies of Chinese and other East Asian battery manufacturing—which is consistent with the different energy mixes in these regions. For more information, see:

Erik Emilsson and Lisbeth Dahllöf. " Lithium-ion vehicle battery production: Status 2019 on energy use, CO 2 emissions, use of metals, products environmental footprint, and recycling ." IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, in cooperation with the Swedish Energy Agency, Report C444, November 2019.

Hans Eric Melin. " Analysis of the climate impact of lithium-ion batteries and how to measure it ." Circular Energy Storage Research and Consulting, July 2019. Commissioned by the European Federation for Transport and Environment.

Dale Hall and Nic Lutsey. " Effects of battery manufacturing on electric vehicle life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions ." The International Council on Clean Transportation, February 2018.

2 This estimate comes from Argonne National Laboratory's GREET (Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Technologies) Model, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. It assumes comparable models of EV and gas-powered car, and that the EV has a battery with a range of 300 miles, similar to a Tesla Model 3. Different assumptions about battery manufacture would offer different comparisons; in this model, the battery of the EV entails close to 12 metric tons of CO 2 emissions.

3 Using the same GREET figures as above, manufacturing and end-of-life disposal account for around 9% of a gas car’s emissions, and around 29% of an EV’s (more than half of which comes from the battery alone). A plug-in hybrid EV is in the middle at around 17%. This analysis assumes the EV is charged with the average emissions intensity of the U.S. electric grid; that all cars drive around 173,000 miles in their lifetime; and that the gas car gets 30.7 miles to the gallon.

4 MIT Energy Initiative: Insights Into Future Mobility , November 2019.

5 U.S. Department of Energy Alternative Fuels Data Center: Emissions from Electric Vehicles . Accessed October 13, 2022.

More Resources for Learning

Want to learn more.

Listen to this episode of MIT's "Today I Learned: Climate" podcast on electric cars.

Keep Exploring

Check out these related Explainers, written by scientists and experts from MIT and beyond.

Energy Storage

Freight Transportation

Related pieces, can solar panels be recycled, can we do anything useful with excess solar and wind energy, besides store it, can wind turbines be recycled, why are lithium-ion batteries, and not some other kind of battery, used in electric cars and grid-scale energy storage, mit climate news in your inbox.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

How Green Are Electric Vehicles?

In short: Very green. But plug-in cars still have environmental effects. Here’s a guide to the main issues and how they might be addressed.

By Hiroko Tabuchi and Brad Plumer

Listen to This Article

Around the world, governments and automakers are promoting electric vehicles as a key technology to curb oil use and fight climate change. General Motors has said it aims to stop selling new gasoline-powered cars and light trucks by 2035 and will pivot to battery-powered models. This week, Volvo said it would move even faster and introduce an all-electric lineup by 2030.

But as electric cars and trucks go mainstream, they have faced a persistent question: Are they really as green as advertised?

While experts broadly agree that plug-in vehicles are a more climate-friendly option than traditional vehicles, they can still have their own environmental impacts, depending on how they’re charged up and manufactured. Here’s a guide to some of the biggest worries — and how they might be addressed.

It matters how the electricity is made

Broadly speaking, most electric cars sold today tend to produce significantly fewer planet-warming emissions than most cars fueled with gasoline. But a lot depends on how much coal is being burned to charge up those plug-in vehicles. And electric grids still need to get much, much cleaner before electric vehicles are truly emissions free.

One way to compare the climate impacts of different vehicle models is with this interactive online tool by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who tried to incorporate all the relevant factors: the emissions involved in manufacturing the cars and in producing gasoline and diesel fuel, how much gasoline conventional cars burn, and where the electricity to charge electric vehicles comes from.

If you assume electric vehicles are drawing their power from the average grid in the United States, which typically includes a mix of fossil fuel and renewable power plants, then they’re almost always much greener than conventional cars. Even though electric vehicles are more emissions-intensive to make because of their batteries, their electric motors are more efficient than traditional internal combustion engines that burn fossil fuels.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

Every print subscription comes with full digital access

Science News

How electric vehicles offered hope as climate challenges grew.

In the midst of a climate crisis, the EV began to gain traction

Volkswagen employees in Emden, Germany, learn how to produce electric cars, as auto­makers respond to new carbon dioxide emissions limits.

Sina Schuldt/picture alliance via Getty Images

Share this:

By Carolyn Gramling

December 22, 2021 at 7:00 am

This was another year of bleak climate news. Record heat waves baked the Pacific Northwest . Wildfires raged in California, Oregon, Washington and neighboring states. Tropical cyclones rapidly intensified in the Pacific Ocean. And devastating flash floods inundated Western Europe and China. Human-caused climate change is sending the world hurtling down a road to more extreme weather events, and we’re running out of time to pump the brakes, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in August ( SN: 9/11/21, p. 8 ).

The world needs to dramatically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and fast, if there’s any hope of preventing worse and more frequent extreme weather events. That means shifting to renewable sources of energy — and, importantly, decarbonizing transportation, a sector that is now responsible for about a quarter of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.

But the path to that cleaner future is daunting, clogged with political and societal roadblocks, as well as scientific obstacles. Perhaps that’s one reason why the electric vehicle — already on the road, already navigating many of these roadblocks — swerved so dramatically into the climate solutions spotlight in 2021.

Just a few years ago, many automakers thought electric vehicles, or EVs, might be a passing fad, says Gil Tal, director of the Plug-in Hybrid & Electric Vehicle Research Center at the University of California, Davis. “It’s now clear to everyone that [EVs are] here to stay.”

Globally, EV sales surged in the first half of 2021, increasing by 160 percent compared with the previous year. Even in 2020 — when most car sales were down due to the COVID-19 pandemic — EV sales were up 46 percent relative to 2019. Meanwhile, automakers from General Motors to Volkswagen to Nissan have outlined plans to launch new EV models over the next decade: GM pledged to go all-electric by 2035, Honda by 2040. Ford introduced electric versions of its iconic Mustang and F-150 pickup truck.

Consumer demand for EVs isn’t actually driving the surge in sales, Tal says. The real engine is a change in supply due to government policies pushing automakers to boost their EV production. The European Union’s toughened CO 2 emissions laws for the auto industry went into effect in 2021, and automakers have already bumped up new EV production in the region. China mandated in 2020 that EVs make up 40 percent of new car sales by 2030. Costa Rica has set official phase-out targets for internal combustion engines.

In the United States, where transportation has officially supplanted power generation as the top greenhouse gas–emitting sector, President Joe Biden’s administration set a goal this year of having 50 percent of new U.S. vehicle sales be electric — both plug-in hybrid and all-electric — by 2030. That’s a steep rise over EVs’ roughly 2.5 percent share of new cars sold in the United States today. In September, California announced that by 2035 all new cars and passenger trucks sold in the state must be zero-emission.

There are concrete signs that automakers are truly committing to EVs. In September, Ford announced plans to build two new complexes in Tennessee and Kentucky to produce electric trucks and batteries. Climate change–related energy crises, such as the February failure of Texas’ power system, may also boost interest in EVs, Ford CEO Jim Farley said September 28 on the podcast Columbia Energy Exchange.

“We’re seeing more extreme weather events with global warming, and so people are looking at these vehicles not just for propulsion but for … other benefits,” Farley said. “One of the most popular features of the F-150 Lightning is the fact that you can power your house for three days” with the truck’s battery.

More to navigate

Although the EV market is growing fast, it’s still not fast enough to meet the Paris Agreement goals, the International Energy Agency reported this year. For the world to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 — when carbon emissions added to the atmosphere are balanced by carbon removal — EVs would need to climb from the current 5 percent of global car sales to 60 percent by 2030 , the agency found.

As for the United States, even if the Biden administration’s plan for EVs comes to fruition, the country’s transportation sector will still fall short of its emissions targets, researchers reported in 2020 in Nature Climate Change . To hit those targets, electric cars would need to make up 90 percent of new U.S. car sales by 2050 — or people would need to drive a lot less.

And to truly supplant fossil fuel vehicles, electric options need to meet several benchmarks. Prices for new and used EVs must come down. Charging stations must be available and affordable to all, including people who don’t live in homes where they can plug in. And battery ranges must be extended. Average ranges have been improving. Just five or so years ago, cars needed a recharge after about 100 miles; today the average is about 250 miles, roughly the distance from Washington, D.C., to New York City. But limited ranges and too few charging stations remain a sticking point.

Today’s batteries also require metals that are scarce, difficult to access or produced in mining operations rife with serious human rights issues . Although there, too, solutions may be on the horizon, including finding ways to recycle batteries to alleviate materials shortages ( SN: 12/4/21, p. 4 ).

EVs on their own are nowhere near enough to forestall the worst effects of climate change. But it won’t be possible to slow global warming without them.

And in a year with a lot of grim climate news — both devastating extreme events and maddeningly stalled political action — EVs offered one glimmer of hope.

“We have the technology. It’s not dependent on some technology that’s not developed yet,” Tal says. “The hope is that now we are way more willing to [transition to EVs] than at any time before.”

More Stories from Science News on Climate

Can solar farms and crop farms coexist?

Mega El Niños kicked off the world’s worst mass extinction

California droughts may help valley fever spread

Summer-like heat is scorching the Southern Hemisphere — in winter

Extreme heat and rain are fueling rising cases of mosquito-borne diseases

Zapping sand to create rock could help curb coastal erosion

The world’s record-breaking hot streak has lasted 14 months. When will it end?

Your medications might make it harder for you to beat the heat

Subscribers, enter your e-mail address for full access to the Science News archives and digital editions.

Not a subscriber? Become one now .

Essay on Electric Cars And The Environment

Students are often asked to write an essay on Electric Cars And The Environment in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Electric Cars And The Environment

Introduction to electric cars.

Electric cars are vehicles that use electricity instead of gasoline. They have a large battery that stores electricity. When you drive, the battery powers the motor, which moves the car. Electric cars are becoming more popular because they don’t produce harmful emissions like traditional cars do.

Electric Cars and Air Quality

Electric cars are great for the environment. They don’t release harmful gases into the air like cars that run on gasoline. This means cleaner air for everyone. When more people use electric cars, it can help reduce air pollution and improve public health.

Energy Efficiency of Electric Cars

Electric cars are more energy-efficient than gasoline cars. They convert a higher percentage of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels. This means you get more mileage out of the same amount of energy, which is good for the environment.

Electric Cars and Noise Pollution

Electric cars are also quieter than gasoline cars. This means less noise pollution. In busy cities, noise pollution can be a big problem. So, electric cars can help make cities quieter and more pleasant to live in.

Challenges with Electric Cars

250 words essay on electric cars and the environment, introduction.

Electric cars are vehicles that use electric motors instead of traditional fuel engines. They are becoming more popular because they are better for the environment.

Why Electric Cars are Good for the Environment

Electric cars are good for the environment because they don’t release harmful gases. Regular cars burn fuel and release carbon dioxide, which is a major cause of global warming. Electric cars, on the other hand, don’t burn fuel, so they don’t release these harmful gases.

Battery Production and the Environment

Yet, it’s important to note that making electric cars can also harm the environment. The process of making batteries for these cars can produce a lot of pollution. But, once the car is made and being used, it is much cleaner than regular cars.

Electric Cars and Renewable Energy

Electric cars can also use renewable energy. This means they can run on power made from the sun, wind, or water. This is much better for the environment than using fossil fuels like oil or gas.

In conclusion, electric cars are better for the environment than regular cars. They don’t release harmful gases and can use renewable energy. But, it’s also important to remember that making electric cars can still harm the environment. So, we need to keep working on ways to make electric cars even more eco-friendly.

500 Words Essay on Electric Cars And The Environment

One of the biggest ways electric cars help the environment is by improving the air quality. Cars that run on gasoline or diesel produce exhaust fumes. These fumes are bad for the air and can make people sick. But electric cars don’t produce these harmful fumes. Instead, they run on clean electricity. This means they don’t pollute the air, making it healthier for everyone.

Reducing Greenhouse Gases

Electric cars also help to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases are gases that trap heat in the earth’s atmosphere, causing it to warm up. This is known as global warming, and it’s a big problem for our planet. Cars that run on fossil fuels, like gasoline or diesel, release a lot of these gases. But electric cars don’t. This means they help to slow down global warming.

Energy Efficiency

Use of renewable energy.

Another great thing about electric cars is that they can use renewable energy. Renewable energy is energy that comes from sources that won’t run out, like the sun or the wind. Many people who own electric cars also have solar panels on their homes. They can use these panels to charge their cars, making their driving even more environmentally friendly.

In conclusion, electric cars are a great choice for the environment. They don’t pollute the air, they help to reduce greenhouse gases, they are more energy-efficient, and they can use renewable energy. As more people start to use electric cars, we can hope to see big improvements in our environment. This is why electric cars are an important part of our future.

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Electric Car and the Environment Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

How electric cars conserve the environment, personal opinion.

An electric car refers to an automobile that runs on electric energy. Batteries and other energy storage devices attached to the car supply electrical energy. The manufacture of electric cars began in the 1880s (Boxwell, 2010). However, the development of internal combustion engines led to their popularity during the early years of the 20 th Century. The situation was eased by the energy crises that hit the global market during the 1970s and 1980s (Boxwell, 2010). The crisis led to a rise in the demand for electric cars among people. However, the demand was not enough to sustain mass production.

The demand for electric cars emerged again after the development of power management technologies that gave electric cars advantages over internal combustion cars (Boxwell, 2010). Other factors that contributed to the rise in demand of electric cars included a rise in oil prices and the need to conserve the environment by controlling the rate of greenhouse gas emission.

The main advantages of electric cars over internal combustion cars include reduction of air pollution, low maintenance cost, and reduction of overreliance on oil (Bullis, 2013). The high rate of the depletion of oil reserves has prompted many nations to invest in technologies that use other sources of energy. The demand and manufacture of electric cars have grown significantly in past years. However, high costs and the unreliability of batteries discourage many people from embracing electric cars.

One of the benefits of electric cars is that they conserve the environment because they do not release greenhouse gases, which are the main cause of environmental pollution (Bomford, 2013). In recent years, debates regarding the effects of internal combustion vehicles have dominated discussions on environmental conservation. The main issues frequently discussed include global warming, air pollution, and reliance on oil as the major source of energy.

One of the solutions to the challenges of air pollution and global warming is the manufacture of electric cars. Electric cars do not produce greenhouse gases, thus reducing the level of air pollution. Cars that run on oil products produce carbon monoxide, ozone, hydrocarbons, soot, and oxides of nitrogen that pollute the environment (Bomford, 2013).

Another benefit of electric cars is their ability to regulate noise pollution. The absence of a combustion engine means that they do not produce loud noises that pollute the environment (Bomford, 2013). Therefore, they prevent air and noise pollution. Electric cars that are charged using hydroelectric power further reduce pollution because the process of electricity production does not cause pollution.

People opposed to electric cars argue that the process of manufacturing them is a major concern because it significantly pollutes the environment. Materials used in manufacturing electric cars require high quantities of energy to produce. However, the net effect from the manufacture of electric cars is less than that of the manufacture and operation of gas as well as diesel vehicles (Bomford, 2013). A study conducted by Renault revealed that electric cars are better for the environment than cars that run on gas and oil products.

The study considered the effects of manufacturing and operating different types of vehicles. Factors considered during the study included emissions from cars, manufacturing plants, resources used in production, and the environmental impacts of the whole process. According to the study, the process of manufacturing electric cars pollutes the environment more than that of manufacturing other types of cars. However, the impact of using diesel and gas cars has a greater environmental impact than that of using electric cars (Bullis, 2013).

I think that electric cars are good for the environment because they do not produce gases that pollute the environment. Even though their manufacturing process has adverse effects on the environment, their operation does not affect the environment negatively.

Cars that operate on oil products produce greenhouse gases and other substances that pollute the environment and contribute to global warming. The gases released by internal combustion cars also cause acid rain that has adverse environmental effects. I also think that electric cars should be encouraged because they reduce dependence on oil as the main source of energy.

Electric cars have been in existence for more than hundred years. However, they are not as popular as internal combustion cars. Their manufacture commenced in the 1880s. However, after the development of internal combustion engines, their popularity waned. During the energy crises of the 1970s and the 1980s, they regained popularity again.

However, it was short-lived and did not lead to mass production of electric cars. Currently, their popularity is on the rise due to the instability of oil prices and a high depletion rate of oil reserves. Electric cars are advantageous because they do not produce gas emissions that pollute the environment. Opponents have criticized them because their manufacture includes processes that have adverse environmental effects. However, the net effect of manufacturing and using them is lower than that of internal combustion cars.

Bomford, A. (2013). How Environmentally Friendly are Electric Cars ? Web.

Boxwell, M. (2010). Owing an Electric Car . New York: Greensteram Publishing.

Bullis, K. (2013). Are Electric Vehicles Better for the Environment than Gas-Powered Ones? Web.

• Safe Drinking Water Importance
• Maori Health Development and Environmental Issue
• Comparison of Electric and Gas-Powered Vehicles
• Discussion: Electric Cars and the Future
• Electric Cars: Types, Pros and Cons
• Marine Ecosystems in Oceanography Studies
• The Hurricane Katrina Disaster
• Baby Boomers Positive and Negative Aspects
• Emission of Greenhouse Gases
• Scientific Research: Safety and Dignity of Subjects
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2020, April 8). Electric Car and the Environment. https://ivypanda.com/essays/electric-car-and-the-environment/

"Electric Car and the Environment." IvyPanda , 8 Apr. 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/electric-car-and-the-environment/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Electric Car and the Environment'. 8 April.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Electric Car and the Environment." April 8, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/electric-car-and-the-environment/.

1. IvyPanda . "Electric Car and the Environment." April 8, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/electric-car-and-the-environment/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Electric Car and the Environment." April 8, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/electric-car-and-the-environment/.

IvyPanda uses cookies and similar technologies to enhance your experience, enabling functionalities such as:

• Basic site functions
• Ensuring secure, safe transactions
• Secure account login
• Remembering account, browser, and regional preferences
• Remembering privacy and security settings
• Analyzing site traffic and usage
• Personalized search, content, and recommendations
• Displaying relevant, targeted ads on and off IvyPanda

Please refer to IvyPanda's Cookies Policy and Privacy Policy for detailed information.

Certain technologies we use are essential for critical functions such as security and site integrity, account authentication, security and privacy preferences, internal site usage and maintenance data, and ensuring the site operates correctly for browsing and transactions.

Cookies and similar technologies are used to enhance your experience by:

• Remembering general and regional preferences
• Personalizing content, search, recommendations, and offers

Some functions, such as personalized recommendations, account preferences, or localization, may not work correctly without these technologies. For more details, please refer to IvyPanda's Cookies Policy .

To enable personalized advertising (such as interest-based ads), we may share your data with our marketing and advertising partners using cookies and other technologies. These partners may have their own information collected about you. Turning off the personalized advertising setting won't stop you from seeing IvyPanda ads, but it may make the ads you see less relevant or more repetitive.

Personalized advertising may be considered a "sale" or "sharing" of the information under California and other state privacy laws, and you may have the right to opt out. Turning off personalized advertising allows you to exercise your right to opt out. Learn more in IvyPanda's Cookies Policy and Privacy Policy .

Home — Essay Samples — Environment — Environmental Issues — Electric Cars vs Gas Cars

Electric Cars Vs Gas Cars

• Categories: Environmental Issues

About this sample

Words: 1028 |

Published: Feb 12, 2024

Words: 1028 | Pages: 2 | 6 min read

Table of contents

Similarities, differences, advantages of electric cars, advantages of gas cars.

Cite this Essay

To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below:

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Prof Ernest (PhD)

Verified writer

• Expert in: Environment

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

1 pages / 574 words

3 pages / 1368 words

3 pages / 1308 words

1 pages / 654 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Environmental Issues

Industrialization has been a significant driver of economic growth and development across the world. The shift from agrarian-based economies to industrial ones has brought about significant changes in the way societies function, [...]

As our world continues to face an impending environmental crisis, it's becoming increasingly important to take our personal impact on the environment into account. One popular tool for measuring an individual's ecological [...]

Human beings have always had a significant impact on the natural environment, and this impact has become increasingly evident over the last century. Grasslands are biodiverse biomes that are widespread in various parts of the [...]

Our environment plays a significant role in shaping who we are as individuals. Whether it be the physical surroundings we grow up in or the cultural and social influences that we are exposed to, our environment has a profound [...]

Littering and pollution is a major issue around the world today. It affects all of our lives, and will affect us for years to come. Littering and pollution play a major part in our lives. Everywhere we walk and drive there is [...]

The Earth is slowly dying, and one of the reasons why is because of us. We are hurting the planet through our actions. The world’s air quality has been rapidly declining due to air pollution mainly caused by human activities. [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free