The Push Is On to Force Us to Buy Electric Cars Car companies are gearing up to try and make us believe gasoline powered cars are old technology. The truth is so are electric cars. We are told gasoline powered cars are bad for the environment. A study stated the average gas powered car getting 22 mpg emits 4.6 tons of carbon dioxide a year. It was said building an electric car emits 17.5 tons of carbon dioxide. To build a gas powered car it takes 4.6 tons of carbon dioxide. The average car is owned between 5 to 7 years. Which means if we use the average of 6 years, a gasoline car will put out 37.6 tons of carbon dioxide and if we add the 4.6 tons of carbon dioxide to make it, we get a figure for the life of the gasoline powered car of emitting 42.2 tons of carbon dioxide. An electric car puts out 2 tons of carbon dioxide a year. If we multiply this by the same 6 years, we get 12 tons of carbon dioxide. Adding the 12 tons to the 17.5 tons of carbon dioxide we get 29.5 tons of carbon dioxide released for the life of an electric car. I just wanted to show it certainly is not zero emissions for an electric car. All the figures I used I got from Googling the questions. The reason building an electric car puts out so much carbon dioxide is the battery pack. While the electric car is more efficient, it is hardly carbon dioxide free. Over the average life span of both types of cars, the electric car seems to have more problems versus the gas powered car. The electric cars cost more, are more inconvenient to fuel and the battery packs when no longer in use are extremely dangerous to the environment. Are we being sold a bill of goods? Over the years the exhausts of gasoline cars has been getting cleaner. It might even surpass the electric cars in lifetime ownership in lessening pollution. If people are really worried about the environment, they have to consider the total life span of a car and what number of emissions it puts out over the lifetime of its ownership not just what it puts out per year. It is like trying to help the environment by getting oil from other countries, it still has to be drilled and this affects all of us no matter where the oil comes from. There is only one way to make electric cars more friendly to the environment and that is to remove the batteries. I like to refer to Nikola Tesla who was supposed to have been working on a car powered by cosmic rays. While I believe this is still beyond us, beaming energy to cars could solve the electric car pollution problem. It has been proven we can do this and we need more studies on how this would affect people. If it turns out it isn’t harmful, we could have power beamed down from satellites in space that were using solar cells. Another method might be beaming down powerful beams of sunlight and use them to power electric plants to beam energy. All this is far into the future however, and for now it really seems the disadvantages outweigh the advantages for the average person. As a matter of fact, the electrical grid is not equipped to handle everyone having electric cars. I am tired of hearing electric cars are not polluting when this isn’t true. They are less polluting on a yearly basis but this advantage is offset somewhat, by the pollution caused in building them with the batteries. It is said if one would buy a small gasoline powered car, it might be as efficient as an electric one in limiting carbon emissions. No one talks about that. Remember the stats I used for a gasoline powered car was for only an average of 22 miles per gallon. If a gasoline powered car would get about 30 miles a gallon, it would have had less carbon dioxide pollutants in its lifetime and as higher milage gasoline cars were produced, the number would get even better. I don’t hear many people talking about this. Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of an electric car and in the future, I could see owning one, but I just don’t think most people are ready for one right now. The technology doesn’t pass the test yet. First of all, we need to be able to drive anywhere we want and not have to take certain routs just because we have to make sure there is a charging station along the way. Secondly, we also need to be able to charge and go in the same time it takes a gasoline car to gas up. We have to make sure the electric car has the same range as the gasoline powered car. When you hear about an electric car having a certain range, that range decreases when you turn on the air conditioning, and all the electronics. The posted range of an electric car should be listed twice. Once without using anything extra in the car and once with everything turned on and maybe it should even be itemized. Such as showing what playing the radio on the trip does to the range and showing other things like air conditioning and heat. Have you ever noticed when charging times are talked about, they are for an 80 percent charge many times? Some people might say get an electric car with a smaller battery pack. It is true it reduces the carbon dioxide emissions for the build and annually, but most Americans don’t want a car with less range than they have with their gas cars. Many of us mostly drive around town, but I think it has been burned into our psyche we need more range, even if we really do not. Another point I would like to make, and have before, is electric cars have very expensive battery packs and they are so expensive once they need to be replaced, it just might not be worth it and would make more sense to get rid of the car. This would murder the trade-in value and make many electrics one battery pack cars. I would like to finish this article by saying there are several experiments going on now which would allow us to extract the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use it to create fuel. None have reached the point of being practical yet, as far as I know, but if successful could alleviate the problem or at least make it more manageable.
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