No. They’re a step.
They solve the wrong problem - we need fewer cars, not electric cars.
Came here to say this. Many changes need to be made, and some will be more effective than others, but we can’t afford to do nothing.
Electric cars are a solution to save the auto industry, not the planet
Electrification will happen somehow, electric cars will be part of that. But especially places like the us need to also become less dependent on cars
tl;dr ☝️
One thing that the article didn’t touch on, since it was focused on input costs, is the extra pollution from using EVs.
EVs are substantially heavier than ICEs of the same class, due to the battery. This leads to extra wear on the tires, break pads, and road surface -> even more micro plastics and particulate air pollution.
We need to reduce our ecological footprint, not merely change it from oil to reactive metals.
Brake pads tend to last longer due to regenerative braking. The rest of your point stands.
The ‘substantially heavier’ is doing a lot of work there, given the change is only about 5 to 10% on average and typically EV’s are still not the heaviest vehicles in their same class. Compared to the car obesity epidemic in North America, the drivetrain is irrelevant. A European EV for instance is nearly always going to far, far lighter than a modern US gas car.
Also, becuse if the road degradation is exponentially tied to tire wheight it is almost always a function of trucks, busses, and freeze thaw cycles, cars tend to be to light to cause significant share of the damage.
Break dust is an odd thing to bring up, seeing as one of the other common gripes with EVs is that they use their breaks so extremely rarely that they corrode and might be ineffective in an emergency.
Tire dust is an factor, but again one that’s more impacted by the increase in North America’s car size than drivetrain and which is reduced by getting cars back to sane sizes and out of dense areas like cities, not pretending that a 80 to 90% reduction in one of the largest causes of climate change is somehow the same.
No. If you think they are, then please look up how much of the plastic in the oceans and nature in general is from car tires. Also an electric car does nothing if the electricity is produced from fossil fuels,
Actually, because of just how inefficient small scale combustion is and how much fuel goes into getting that gas to the car in the first place, even if you run an EV directly off the most polluting coal plant in the North America it’s still significantly better for the environment. Admittedly if you use a more average energy mixture, the benefit is far larger, but there is still a benefit.
No.