Should Your Next Car Be Electric?

For most of us, the main reason for purchasing an EV revolves is climate change: we see climate change as destroying lives, nature, and livelihoods. In our area of the world climate change is most famously causing megadroughts, which are progressively reducing stream flows (irrigation water, fisheries, water-based recreation, hydroelectric power generation), shriveling crops (hurting agricultural incomes), killing trees (reducing lumber, inciting forest fires, promoting insect epidemics), and directly hurting tourism (another economic pillar of our communities). When such impacts occur in other countries, they can lead to starvation, bankruptcies, and immigrants clawing at our border fences to obtain economic relief. Oil is the primary need of non-EV automobiles, and it has notoriously stimulated wars in which the US has become invested and then become tied to unsavory dictators who peddle a product that compromises our national interests and moral standing.

In other parts of the US, climate change has resulted in catastrophic floods, crop failures, hurricanes, violent weather, heat waves, coastal flooding. These will lead internal US migrants to move to the Rockies and exacerbate existing housing shortages, among many other impacts.

Less attention has been paid to the human health consequences of our gasoline addiction. A recent study of Britons provided evidence of a new and stronger type (washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/03/27/dementia-aging-rksk-brain-diabetes-pollution-alchohol/). The researchers studied brain scans of 40,000 volunteers, to quantify the shrinkage of brain regions that are associated with various kinds of dementias. Unlike most correlational studies (e.g., old age is correlated with spreading waistlines), this quantification of brain shrinkage provided physical evidence for which regions of the brain are likely to cause dementia by their loss of gray matter. The researchers then considered 161 types of potentially modifiable risk factors, such as blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, alcohol consumptions, smoking, inflammation, hearing, etc., asking whether any of those statistically predicted the shrinkage of the specific brain regions found to be associated with dementia. They statistically factored out items such as head size, which is correlated with the size of the quantified and unquantified brain regions, and therefore is unlikely to be causal specifically for dementia. They also factored out the role of specific genes that can predispose certain individuals to dementia. With these other factors removed from consideration, only three of the 161 potentially modifiable risk factors were found to predict shrinkage of the brain regions associated with dementia: diabetes, air pollution, and alcohol consumption. The specific air pollutant considered – nitrous oxides – was chosen to represent the pollution produced by the burning of fossil fuels in automobiles.

What do we value in life? For many of us, we do not fear death but are frightened by the prospect of unmanageable pain and the loss of our ability to think. Yet by driving conventional gas cars we are causing those breathing our exhaust to be progressively robbed of their ability to reason. Is this fair?

MIT (https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/are-electric-vehicles-definitely-better-climate-gas-powered-cars#:~:text=The%20researchers%20found%20that%2C%20on,vehicle%20created% 20just%20200%20grams.) determined that the lifetime CO₂-emissions (including all those from mining and manufacturing the car) of an average EV (charged using the 2022 electricity generation fuel mix of an average state) averaged 200 mg/mi traveled, those of partially electric vehicles averaged 260 mg/mi, and regular gas cars average 350 mg/mi. This emissions reduction of EVs will increase over time as the grid electricity converts from natural gas to renewables.

But perhaps you don’t care about the health or economic viability of your children or neighbors; you still might want to drive an EV because they are better automobiles. You will see that once you have gotten used to driving one. In our area there are generally spring (~22 April for Earth Day) and fall opportunities to test drive a wide variety of EVs each year, often sponsored by 4Core, the Four Corners Office for Resource Efficiency fourcore.org. You can also test drive individual models by visiting a dealership that carries EVs in our area, (at present – Apr 2024 – primarily Durango Motors: 970 385-4822), or by asking a friend who owns an EV to give you a demo. You will find that EVs accelerate faster and smoother than a conventional car, haul more cargo, cost less to fuel, require less maintenance, and have many new safety features.

You may be surprised to hear that EV driving saves money. The impression that they cost more is based in part on initial product offerings of only upscale models, as is typical for the introduction of any new technology (do you remember when only “jet setters” could afford to fly?). There is still a shortage of used and cut-rate models. Some dealerships go out of their way to steer customers away from EVs, as most profit in a dealership comes from repairs rather than purchases, and EVs need fewer repairs (electric models have ~2000 fewer moving parts than conventional gasoline equivalents). In our area most dealerships do not stock or repair the EVs that their brand produces. With the available price and tax incentives, the costs of purchasing an EV are roughly comparable to those of purchasing an equivalent gas car. The main savings come from cheaper fuel.

The Washington Post recently computed the average costs of fueling a car in each of the 50 states (https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/electric-vehicle-charging-price-vs-gasoline/) and concluded that the fuel savings per fillup of owning an EV were as follows (based on average costs and driving habits):

Wouldn’t you like to be handed a $50 bill every time you didn’t go to the gas station?

The primary counter argument is that we’re not quite ready to make that transition. For renters who live without reliable access to public charging stations, or homeowners who do not have off-street or workplace charging, that counter argument is compelling. The charging infrastructure has not been provided for those citizens; in fact, most manufacturers/cities/states/countries have not even figured out how they are going to provide charging access to those without off-street parking. A few individuals will live near enough to a public charger that they can easily park their car there and walk home, but this usually requires also walking back to the fully charged car and moving it away from the charger, so as to allow others to use it: a tenable solution for only a lucky few. Workplace charging makes a great deal of sense for businesses that provide employee parking in the Four Corners area, as our electric grids have the biggest surplus of clean power in the middle of the day, when solar generation outpaces demand. Mercy Hospital, for example, provides workplace charging. But many businesses do not provide workplace parking. Another solution is needed, and we don’t yet know what that solution will be.

For those fortunate enough to have off road parking at their home, daily charging is very simple, and for many EV owners can be done with no more than a regular 110 V outlet. Most EV owners are flush enough to upgrade to a 220 V outlet, which restores their EV’s daily commuting range in a few hours and supports daily commutes of a couple of hundred miles. For those with off-street parking, the charging requires less time than a stop at a gas station and is much cheaper (fueling a Tesla model 3 during off-peak hours costs about 1 cent per mile driven). LPEA heavily subsidizes the installation of home EV chargers if you are lucky enough to be in their service area (most La Plata and Archuleta County residents).

One EV anxiety that dominates all others is range anxiety: the fear of running out of juice on a road trip and being unable to reach a charging station. This is a critical concern, even if the problem recedes with every passing day (The state of Colorado, today – 05Apr2024 – announced a 30% increase in the number of fast chargers). As of mid-December 2023 the federal governments alternative fuels station locator (https://afdc.energy.gov/stations/#/analyze?region= US-CO&country=US&fuel=ELEC&ev_levels=dc_fast) reported that Colorado has 339 fast charging stations (915 working ports; see plugshare.com or the afdc website for a current map). A March 2024 update shows a dramatic increase in the number of ports in just the last few months: Colorado now has 986 public fast chargers and Arizona has even more (1044). New Mexico lags at 234 and Utah is also thinly covered (378).

Here is the December 2023 Alternate Fuels Station Locator (federal government) map for Colorado:

 Most fast chargers are spaced at 50 miles along major highways (including US 160, US 285, I-70, etc.), of which most are in the Front Range and few in the Four Corners (sadly, the city of Cortez recently blocked Tesla’s free offer to provide and maintain fast chargers in Cortez). Fifty miles between chargers means that no pure electric vehicle (full-charge ranges of 140-500 miles) will want for convenient recharging. Four Corners drivers headed towards Denver or Salt Lake City have many options for fast charging along the way.

But thinly populated parts of NM, southern Utah, and northern Arizona are hard to access if your electric range is limited. See the FAQs for charging maps of those regions (link). Some range risks can be ameliorated with a large battery (ranges of >350 miles are available).

Another source of reluctance is that fast charging can take a few minutes or up to an hour, an annoyance. This problem is rapidly going away, as charging stations are increasing their speed, but for car types that are capped at slow speeds (e.g., Chevy Bolt), the speed limit is in the car not the charger and it will not go away. Aside from taking care to purchase only a fast-charging car (plugstar.com displays an index of fast-charging speeds for all models, and see our model reviews), here are some tactics for coping: 1) do your food shopping while you are waiting (many fast chargers are in Walmart parking lots), 2) grab a bite to eat or sack lunch, so you don’t have to interrupt your trip at another time, 3) exercise or play hacky sack to improve your health during an otherwise sedentary car trip, 4) return emails, texts, or phone calls that were (we hope) left unanswered while driving, or 5) think about all the time you saved through reduced EV maintenance or by charging at home (requiring only seconds of your time each day instead of 10-15 minutes filling your gas tank and grabbing an unhealthy drink from the convenience store).

For those who might suppose that hypocrites come only wearing MAGA hats, we would also offer the following observation. When traveling by air, many an hour has been spent waiting in lines or lounges for connections, rerouting, or delayed flights or weather to clear. We understand that this is just the cost of flying. The wait is worth it to be able to span the globe in the matter of hours, a small inconvenience. Well, waiting a few minutes for a battery to fill up is a very small price to pay for driving a great car and saving humanity from strife stimulated by pollution. If you consider yourself a generous and responsible person, be generous and responsible with a few minutes of your time.

            If you find yourself wondering if there is a suitable EV for you, try this: Which EV model would be best for me?