Are Electric Cars Really Better? (Why We Bought an Electric Car, 2-Year Update, Part Two!)

Are electric vehicles better for the environment, are they better for your wallet, and are they okay for our power grid? (Spoilers: yes.)

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Yesterday I tried to answer most of the questions about our vehicle specifically, including the day-to-day experience of driving it around town. Check out Part One here! 

Today I'm going to discuss Part Two: Are Electric Vehicles Really Better? Let's discuss three factors that have come up a lot when I mention EVs: environmental impact, cost, and electricity infrastructure.

If you want the summary of this post, here are the quick answers: electric vehicles are definitely better for the environment, much cheaper than gas cars, and can be accommodated even by our current infrastructure. For more information, read on!

Are electric cars really better for the environment?

This is one of the most frequent questions I get: people rightly point out that electricity has to be created somewhere (in our case, the coal plant near our house), and that causes pollution and carbon emissions just like burning gas. 

However, the emissions are much, much lower for an electric car than a gas car. It's more efficient to create and send electricity en masse than it is for individual cars to burn fuel.

I used a calculator recommended by the EPA to check our car's emissions as opposed to an electric car, measured in grams (of CO2) per mile (g/mi). The calculator accounts for both tailpipe emissions— which is zero for an EV, which doesn't have a tailpipe— and "upstream emissions," which is the emissions caused by generating electricity. With our car's model in our particular (very coal-reliant) area, our car emits 230 g/mi (and the national average, since the nation at large has cleaner energy production than our zip code, is 130 g/mi). In contrast, a brand-new gas car's emission is 410 g/mi.

As electrical grids continue to move toward renewable energy, electric cars won't need any modifications to keep running on clean energy. We're hoping that in a few years, our car will be fueled by solar and wind. 

There is also a common misconception that since electric vehicles require more energy and emissions to manufacture than regular cars, that they are worse for the environment. However, electric cars "pay themselves back" in terms of emissions/pollution within two years. 

Is an electric car really cheaper to run?

Yes! There has been a ton of misinformation going around about this, and it drives me nuts. Our car is soooo much cheaper to run than a gas car, for multiple reasons.

First of all, electricity has been consistently cheaper than gas— by a long shot. Our car gets roughly 5 miles per killowatt-hour (kWh). Our electricity averages 7.3¢ per kWh because of the Smart Savers Program we signed up for.* 

(*Side note: This program charges different fees for kWh's based on the time of day. The 7.3¢ figure is an average of the "mid-peak" prices from both winter and summer. The "off-peak" hours are even cheaper, and we have have programmed our car to mostly charge during these hours. So our energy is usually even cheaper than that! If Ameren is your electrical provider, definitely check out their programs!) 

Someone not on the Smart Savers Program in our region pays more: 11.81¢ per kWh during the peak season. 

So for us to drive one mile, it costs about 1.5¢. For a person not on the program in our area, it would be 2.3¢.

In contrast, gas is currently $2.75 per gallon, and an "average"car gets 25 mpg, meaning that it costs 11.0¢ per mile to drive. (Even a 2020 hybrid Prius, which can get 58mpg, is still 4.7¢ per mile.) So our electric car is seven times cheaper to fuel up!

Occasionally we do pay a premium to charge at a fast charger— usually three or four dollars— but with our current lifestyle, this happens less than once a month. 

In addition, we have almost no maintenance. No oil changes are required, there are very few moving parts (and therefore very few things that can go wrong), and many maintenance fees are cheaper (for instance, the brakes in an EV last longer due to regenerative braking). Win-win-win!

If everyone had an EV, the electrical grid couldn't even handle it! How is that sustainable?

As EVs rise in popularity, people have a lot of valid questions about what would happen if we phase out gas cars altogether. From my (limited) research, it seems that the problem is not so much the amount of energy grids are capable of producing, but the challenge of coordinating them so that the energy is used without gigantic peaks and dips. (For instance, the coal plant near my house has started mining Bitcoin during non-peak hours in order to use up all the excess energy!) 

This article sums up the challenge (and potential) quite well: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmorris/2021/11/13/electricity-grids-can-handle-electric-vehicles-easily--they-just-need-proper-management/?sh=44ef13187862

I'm not qualified to get into technical details, but electrical grids can adapt and expand— and gas cars aren't going to disappear overnight. We have lots of time and resources to pour into this transition, so there's no reason why it can't happen smoothly and efficiently.

Do you have any other questions? Leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer!

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