We got the first to replace our 10-year-old, gas-powered Subaru, and after only two years of driving, the E.V. has created fewer emissions over its lifetime than if we had kept the old car. It will take our second E.V. only four years to create fewer emissions over its lifetime than the 2005 hybrid Prius it replaced. That’s counting the production of the batteries and the emissions from charging the E.V.s, and the emissions payback time will only continue to drop as more emissions-free wind and solar power comes onto the grid and battery technology improves.
The author of course did not look at having one less car, and substituting an ebike or mass transit for part of their driving, which would have lowered emissions by a larger amount.
I’m immediately put off by “relax.” Complacency is not the solution to the climate crisis. Consumerism is not the solution to the climate crisis. It’s going to take continuous collective action. It will take doing things that feel uncomfortable at first. Your flashy new EV that lets all your neighbors know you have EV money is not a boilerplate one size fits all solution. Your local municipality buying a garage to house and maintain a fleet of EV buses that transport ~2 people at a time is the solution.
People misunderstand how to assess if a bus is helping. They see a mostly empty bus and declare that it would have been better to have the two bus users in EVs when the reality is that as soon as you have the emissions of a bus divided across 2 people, you’ve already beaten any possible single vehicle configuration thanks to scale. Not to mention, you want some leeway at 11pm so that at 5pm (rush hour) you have crush capacity.
The other thing with bus advocacy is that buses are not sexy like light rail or metro rail solutions, but you can effectively implement them immediately. They’re a magnificent transitional mass transit solution, and one you will probably want to have even after you have a light rail or metro rail solution because sometimes you’ll need to do track maintenance and move transit passengers onto buses for those portions, and that the attractiveness of your mass transit solution is all about the final mile of transit. You can put a bus stop almost anywhere, ensuring that people can arrive conveniently and safely at their destination, even if there’s absolutely no way you could put a rail station nearby.
“Relax, Electric Vehicles Really Are the Best Choice for the Climate” screams of privilege…