Electric Vehicles Now More Than Ever

 

Do you get tired of visiting the gas station, draining your wallet, breathing in those toxic vapors and spilling fuel on your clothes and nice shoes. How about also paying out the big bucks for maintenance. With the whipsawing gas prices and global uncertainty, more people are investigating electric vehicles, and why not?

 

If you are able to charge at home, an EV (electric vehicle) is much cheaper than paying at the gas pump. If you have solar panels on your roof, you’ve got a free source of power. How about installing a charger in your garage? The majority of owners do this and it saves trips to the gas station, and you have a charged up car overnight.

 

Let’s look at the numbers: my car has a 79 kilowatt hour battery and I pay 14 cents per kWh, If I were to charge to 100%, the cost would be $11.06. When my car (Tesla Model Y) was new, the range was 357 miles on a full charge. Note that the recommendation is to charge EVs to 80% to prevent battery degradation. As with any lithium ion battery, degradation occurs over time, but Tesla claims the serviceable life of the battery is 200-300k miles.

 

Consider traveling 350 miles in a gas car that gets 30 miles per gallon at $3.00 per gallon. That’s $35 or more than three times the cost of the electric car! The insurance on my car is comparable to a gas car.

 

An EV doesn’t require fluid changes (radiator and transmission flushes and oil changes), spark plugs/injectors and exhaust systems and tune ups. Plus brake jobs are much less frequent as the EV’s motor slows and stops the car instead of applying brakes, similar to operating a golf cart. Consider how much you will save by not visiting your car dealer or repair shop for maintenance. A gas car has about 2000 moving parts compared to my vehicle’s 20; the former has a greater potential for repairs.

 

 

A recent report examined health effects from internal combustion engines and found various pollutants, like small particulate matter, ozone and nitrogen dioxide, each of which largely come from vehicle exhaust. In 2024, these pollutants caused 700,000 premature deaths and 250,000 new childhood asthma cases. About 42,000 of those deaths each year are in America. https://electrek.co/2026/06/29/new-study-shows-how-many-millions-would-be-saved-by-quicker-ev-adoption/

 

According to data from Edmunds, the shift from gas to electric has increased from 67.1% in January this year to 72.1% in April; this is the rate at which EV buyers are trading in their gasoline-powered vehicles, even without federal tax incentives.

 

Our planet is heating and fossil fuel emissions are to blame. EVs have a larger CO₂ footprint in their manufacture than gas cars, largely because of the battery. The disparity evens out at about 1 1/2 years and then EVs have zero emissions whereas gas cars pollute their entire life. Electricity production to charge EVs is increasingly supplied from renewable sources, and as the grid greens, CO₂ levels will continue to drop. Adoption of EVs has already resulted in diminished levels and reduction in gas consumption.

 

One objection often heard about EVs is that mining causes environmental damage; so does oil and gas extraction with water contamination, fugitive emissions associated with wells and pipelines, transport, refining and delivery to gas stations. EV batteries are recycled and ~95% of their metals-lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper-can be recovered and repurposed into new batteries. Eventually mining will be reduced as more and more batteries are recycled and the circle reaches critical mass.

 

I’d love to keep the conversation going, so if you’d like to chat, no matter which side of the EV vs Gas fence you’re on, please let’s be in touch. And if you have other ideas for district environmental action, I’m all ears.

 

Mike Weaver

Environmental Coordinator for District 5790

mikboy327@gmail.com or 940-391-9614