I love it when some electric vehicle advocates contend, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, that the environmental rationale is not the primary rationale for switching from gasoline vehicles to electric vehicles.
Say what? 🙄
The real reason, the core reason we are even pushing electric vehicles — as we absolutely must, and which I have myself been doing for more than a decade — is very clearly environmental: If we were not facing a Climate Emergency and EVs + renewable energy didn’t offer a way out, there is no way that EVs would have been developed to the point where they are now.
The 100% clear technological and technical advantage for EVs just is not there: They take longer to fuel, do not have the same range as gas cars, and are simply not as convenient nor as fast on long-distance road trips as gas cars due to these limitations. That doesn’t mean people have to buy EVs only for environmental reasons today, as they do offer many advantages over ICEs. Most notably, they’re cheaper to fuel, to maintain, and are just WAY quicker than ICEs 👍.
They also can be fueled by 100% renewable energy generated electricity, which, once again, is the primary reason that they are being pushed today, and have been being pushed for about a decade now.
Technologically, EVs’ superiority has never been a clear, hands down kind of victory, certainly not in the way smart phones — essentially mini, portable and exceedingly addictive computers that converge an incredible number of technologies into a handheld portable device — were, hands down, superior to flip phones.
In sum, without the original environmental impetus, there would have been very little reason to make a switch to EVs on a societal level, and very likely, without that impetus, we wouldn’t be seeking to transform an ICE world into an EV world.
One need to look no further than government mandates to end new ICE sales across the next 20 years for evidence that the environmental rationale is the primary rationale for EVs, and always has been: Every single one of these mandates is 100% linked to, and rooted in, a pressing need for environmental change.
Case closed.