> Why adopt a solution that is worse than the status quo?
Depends. If you believe climate change is a hoax pushed by evil liberals or whatever, the status quo is fine.
If you understand that it is real, then you know that keeping the status quo of burning oil means working towards destroying human civilization. Then it's easy to decide that mild inconvenience of charging an EV is worth keeping humanity around.
Let’s not forget that simply driving an EV is enough to reduce your carbon emissions.
How many miles do you need to drive an EV until you break even on the emissions required to balance out manufacturing of the car, recycling of the battery and car once it has reached its max lifetime use, and how the electricity to charge your EV was generated?
If your concern is climate change, lobbying for EV use probably isn’t the biggest bang for the buck.
I’m not 100% convinced an EV is better for the environment when you consider all of the indirect emission sources.
(I’m bracing for the downvotes, but would much prefer to be proved wrong with citations and research studies)
> If your concern is climate change, lobbying for EV use probably isn’t the biggest bang for the buck.
Absolutely is not. Passenger road transport accounts for only about 10% of CO2 emissions[1], and reducing that is one of the more difficult approaches because you're asking millions of people to each change their personal habits which individually have essentially no impact.
State regulatory changes applying to large industrial emitters will have the biggest impact and while the costs will ultimately be borne by customers, it is more likely to actually happen. This includes both encouraging "green" energy production such as nuclear and renewables, as well as demanding capture and/or reduction of emissions.
Sounds like most studies point to a little over 20,000mi break even for cars based on the average US grid energy source mix. In my area it's an even higher mix of renewables than average, so probably 20,000 or less.
My EV is already a bit over 26,000mi, so it's most likely past it's break even and I plan on probably putting another 100,000+ miles on it before I sell it.
Depends. If you believe climate change is a hoax pushed by evil liberals or whatever, the status quo is fine.
If you understand that it is real, then you know that keeping the status quo of burning oil means working towards destroying human civilization. Then it's easy to decide that mild inconvenience of charging an EV is worth keeping humanity around.