Electric Cars: The New Future of Personal Travel?
Everyday, millions of Americans find themselves needing a method of transportation go to work, run errands, travel to visit family, or just to take their kids to soccer practice. Yet, despite each of these tasks being wildly different, they all have one thing in common: the means in which transportation is provided. What could that method transportation be?
Cars!
Cars are the most popular method of transportation in the United States, with 8 out of 10 Americans owning a car.
While cars can be a fantastic and fast way to move about, there are serious side effects that, especially the United State’s heavy use of, cars pose on the environment. This is due cars’ harmful fuel emissions, which include nitrous oxides, CO2, carbon monoxide, and sulfur, that create air pollution and overwhelming noise pollution, especially in cities.
However, as the push against the use of fossil fuels grows stronger every day, some car companies are developing new ways to allow for people to use personal cars while protecting the environment.
These companies have found and created the next era of transport: electric cars.
Know the Facts
According to the EPA, as of 2018, “greenhouse gas emissions from transportation accounted for about 28.2 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, making it the largest contributor of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.” This is in part due to the fact that use of light-duty motor vehicles, which includes cars and motorcycles, has increase 46% in the last 30 years (Sources of Greenhouse Gas).
As an alternative to combusting fuel to power cars, car manufacturers have begun to explore, while some have already successfully created, electric models!
How electric cars work is that they are built with electric engines instead of the traditional combustion engine. Electric cars have several large rechargeable batteries, set up in a pack, which have to be replenished by direct connecting to the main electric grid via an outlet or charging station. The electric motor will then turn the wheels without the producing the direct, harmful emissions gasoline and diesel engines make.
There are currently three types of electric cars out on the market: Battery Electric Vehicles, Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles, and Hybrid Electric Vehicles. The latter two both will end up using gasoline to function, but they vary in when they switch from electric to gasoline.
Battery Electric Vehicles are the type that rely solely on electricity to function. Examples of manufactures and cars that are BEVs include the Tesla’s Model 3, S, and X, Kia Soul, Nissan LEAF, and the BMW i3. There are about fourteen on the market today with several others in the design and production stage.
However, there are three classes of BEVs based on the rate in which the vehicles are able to be charged and what distance that charge will provide. Level 1 cars take charge from a basic 120V outlet and take about 8 hours to charge in order to go about 75-80 miles.
Level 2 cars take charge from a 240V specialized station and take about four hours to charge in order to go the same distance as Level 1 cars. Finally, there is level 3, or DC fast charging, cars which take 30 minutes to charge in order to go up to 90 miles!
This leads us to the major downside of electric cars: reliance on frequent charging as well as short distance-travel. This has been the greatest criticism of electric cars, but, for those who merely use their cars for errands or going to and from work, this car is a great option!
Overall, if the driver is not traveling far distances in remote areas, electric cars have proven to be more efficient and more environmentally friendly than traditional combustion engine vehicles. Now, after being on the market for just over 10 years, fully electric cars are starting to gain traction.
Development and Legislation
After studying the overwhelming evidence of the low-impact of electric cars, several car manufacturers have made promises to begin to phase out combustion engine vehicles.
This approach is actively being taken by manufacturers as seen by auto manufacturers pledge, “to spend a total of $225 billion developing new EVs in the near future” (Business Insider). Groups have also taken to releasing their individual statements on their company’s plan to increase their electric car options.
For example, Toyota, “announced plans to generate half of its sales from electrified vehicles by 2025, five years earlier than it previously estimated (Business Insider).” Another popular group, Volkswagen, plans to have up to 40% of its global vehicle count be electric cars by 2030. The group also plans to have their, “target of 1 million electric cars produced by the end of 2023 (Business Insider).”
In terms of Legislation, a major step towards clean transportation has been taken by the state of California! Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, signed an executive order just yesterday, September 23, 2020, which will require the phasing out of all gas-powered cars by 2035! This order will require all vehicles to be zero-emission modes of transportation which will see an increase in the use of electric cars!
What You can Do
The most simple, and obvious, thing you can do is to look into buying an electric car! Electric cars vary in price range depending on the degree of luxury you desire. For example, if you want to really ride in style, a Tesla, with a retail cost of up to $79,000, may be for you.
However, if that is out of your price range yet you still want to drive an environmentally-friendly car, most electric cars sell in the price range of $30,000, such as the Kia Soul or Nissan LEAF.
For some, that is still a hefty chunk of change to put out for a car, but there are other eco-friendly alternatives!
You can look into getting a partially electric car such as a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle! You can also actively work to decrease your carbon footprint by carpooling with spouses or coworkers (wait until after the pandemic though!).
You can also try walking and biking to places that are a short distance from your house. Also, be aware that by working from home, especially since the pandemic, helps to prevent carbon emissions! Some companies are discussing not switching back to an office setting so if you are able to make the choice to work remotely — take it!
There is still a lot of work to be done to reduce the waste created by an, overall cleaner, electric car. Yet with the push towards a heavier dependency on gas and diesel vehicles, the industry is working hard to make electric cars more efficient and more eco-friendly.
All in all, being aware of how the future of personal transportation works and its impact on our environment is going to be crucial to our development as environmentally aware citizens!
Expand Your Horizons (Sources)
EPA and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Business Insider and the Future of Cars
Every Electric Vehicle Expected in the Next 2 Years
This so well written and thought out! Great job! I love that you included some sources for us to look at and that you broke down the post into sub headings as well!
I really like this blog post. Personally, I care about the environment and I love Tesla so electric cars are a topic I read about from time to time. It is set up well and gets your message of environmentalism across. Tesla is developing a new battery that should make its cars cheaper to manufactur and more efficient to run and that would be something you should read about if you’re into the topic of electric cars.
This was really interesting. I like how this posts used scientific data to get its point across. I also liked how you offered to different alternatives to gas-fueled cars. But this biggest takeaway I got was from the “What Can You Do” section which really made me think what I can do in my own life to better the emissions from gas.
I really like how you don’t just tell us about the problem, you also say what other people are doing about it and what we can do about it individually. The organization is also really easy to follow too, so overall this is really really great!