Bad-faith actors spend a lot of energy maintaining the illusion that electric vehicle technology is more immature than it actually is. Combine anti-EV propaganda with the relative rarity of EVs in the US, and even well-intentioned people may believe long-discredited myths that still refuse to die. Does it seem credible that mining resources and battery manufacturing are so dirty that gas cars remain an environmentally superior choice? Sure. The problem is that that’s not true, and we’ve known this for years. In fact, even if you’re generally an EV supporter, you may not realize how quickly new EVs go clean compared to gas cars.
Then, there is no denying the fact that digging raw materials from the ground to make large EV batteries is a dirty process. New battery chemistries, including lithium-free sodium-ion batteries, promise to reduce the environmental impact of EV battery manufacturing, but you don’t need to wait for future battery technology to clean things up. back in 2024, BloombergNEF Looked at the numbers and found that for the typical American driver, an average EV breaks even after about 25,000 miles or a little over two years. Drive more miles a year, and you’ll get there even faster.
Of course, those are averages, so an EV owner in an area with a dirty power grid will need more time than someone living in an area that generates more electricity from renewable sources. As bad as lithium mining is, the fact that the break-even point averages about 25,000 miles, even including states that burn a lot of coal, emphasizes how much pollution you get when you burn a gallon of gasoline.
Facts don’t care about your feelings
Let’s say you don’t trust Bloomberg. Maybe the in-house research division of a professional news organization is too attractive for you, or the research seems too new to you. But this is far from the only research anyone has done on this topic, and if you look at this 2022 University of Michigan In the study, the results are not far from what BloombergNEF found. In fact, those results were even more positive for EVs than the previous study, with the average break-even point being slightly less than two years.
If EVs require new battery packs as frequently as the anti-EV crowd would like you to believe, this could be a big problem for their green credentials. Especially since we know the first generation Nissan Leaf batteries didn’t last very long. The thing is, time goes on, technology gets better and not every EV is first generation. A study published last year found that you can expect modern EV batteries to work fine for 15 years. Again, this is an average, so exceptions will exist, but 15 years without requiring any expensive power train repairs sounds pretty good.
Considering that none of this research is new, you might already know that the “battery manufacturing kills any claims that EVs are green” crowd was full of bullshit. But if the anti-EV crowd has deceived you, there’s no shame in admitting it. There is so much happening at once these days that it’s basically impossible to keep up. As xkcd To put it this way, you are one of the lucky 10,000 today. An EV, even a used EV, may not be the right purchase for you at this time. But if you’re worried about cradle-to-grave emissions, at least you now know that gas cars lose their head start faster than anti-EV keyboard warriors would like you to believe.
