Is the electric vehicle, the EV, the savior of the Planet?
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Many people believe, even and especially in the Green Movement, that the electric car and truck will allow them to continue business as usual even after cheap oil has run out but that is simply an illusion, conjured up by many a magician.
The fact is that once the oil is getting shorter in supply every gallon will get a lot more expensive and thus obtaining the materials to build all those EVs will also get dearer and thus the cost of those cars and trucks will rise beyond what any ordinary person can afford. Motoring, if it will continue, will, once again, become the reserve of the very rich.
Time and again the proponents of the electric vehicles – well, they are trying to sell those things after all – try to make those things out to be the very savior of the Earth, of our Planet.
That, however, is not just a half truth but a blatant and outright lie but so many do not want to see this because they do not want to give up on personal motoring.
Electric cars and trucks use materials that are, first of all, not very environmentally friendly, especially not in their extraction and processing, and they consume a great deal of energy in their manufacture. I know that gas and diesel cars and trucks do too but that is a given and gas and diesel cause emissions and pollution both during manufacture and during use.
However, EVs are not without and we must also look at the fact that the batteries have but a very limited lifespan.
Cost wise, this battery, if other lithium-ion batteries are anything to go by, will more than likely be about a third of the price of a new vehicle, and this battery will, probably, need replacing every three years or so. Obsolescence factored in, as per usual.
This means that the owner of such a vehicle will have to fork out about one third of the vehicle's purchase price every on a more or less regular basis of about every three or so years, thus making electric motoring rather an expensive undertaking in the long run.
Now we also have to consider that this battery will then have to be recycled somewhere and that, ideally, without too great an impact on the environment.
Considering all these costs, environmental and financial, the electric vehicle is far from being a savior in any way, shape or form and we must, therefore, reconsider our ways rather than going down another unproven road.
© 2012
