Electric Cars: Environmental Protection or Political Fraud

Although electric powered vehicles have been around since the late eighteen hundreds, the oil crisis of 1973 resulted in greater interest in them for general purposes. At some point thereafter, the actual development of the concept began to emerge and has certainly gathered and gained interest over the succeeding fifty years. The current pressure to go electric with the vehicles that many, if not most of us, use on a daily or almost daily basis has increased to the point that in 2021, Joe Biden announced a ruling stating that by 2030 fifty percent of new vehicles sold in our country would have to be electric.

Obviously, driving vehicles powered by on-board electric battery power would appear, at first glance, to result in a significant reduction in atmospheric emissions when compared to those powered by on-board engines burning hydrocarbon fuels such as gasoline or diesel fuel. Clearly that would be the case with the emissions of the vehicles, themselves, but is that correct when the entire energy production/consumption process is considered?

All electric vehicles consume energy that was produced elsewhere to power them. That energy must then, in effect, be “moved” to where the vehicles are in order to charge their batteries where it is stored until used to move the vehicle. The same is similar regarding fuel burning vehicles. The fuel that is used to power them must be produced then “moved” to the vehicle’s location and put in the vehicle’s fuel tank until used to move the vehicle. In both cases the total production and delivery of the energy that each vehicle consumes must be considered IN TOTAL for any comparison to be meaningful.

It is certainly true that, when operated, electric powered vehicles produce very little or no air pollution where they are being operated. However, the electricity required to charge the electric vehicle’s batteries must come from somewhere and, according to the U.S Energy Administration in 2022 the sources of energy used for electrical generation were as follows:

• Natural Gas--40%
• Nuclear--18%
• Coal--18%
• Renewables--22%

Those numbers show that over half of our electricity still comes from burning natural gas and coal (58%). That just means that the air pollution that is, “in effect” generated by the operation of electric vehicles is produced “somewhere else” but it is still part of the total required energy cycle. As such, any meaningful comparison of the pollution released by electric powered vehicles as opposed to those burning fuel must take in to account ALL of the energy consumed and the pollution released in the total process.

There is absolutely no question but that the Biden Administration’s ORDERING America’s citizens to “go electric” with our vehicles will cost citizens a HUGE amount of money. Obviously, the expense of converting manufacturing facilities to produce electric powered vehicles will have to be covered by those purchasing them. Also, what will happen to the value of all the fuel powered vehicles that we currently own? 

At some point in the future will the continued operation of such vehicles become restricted or even outlawed? That may sound extreme to some but is really no less so than the Biden Administration’s 2021 ORDER regarding electric vehicles

Another problem that has not even been mentioned to the author’s knowledge is “How is the additional demand on our electrical generation and distribution system going to handle the additional load that millions of electric vehicles will put on it?” Although most of our electric services are reliable for the most part, virtually all of us have had “blackouts” and “brownouts” on occasion. With more and more citizens using electric vehicles should the “lights go off” as they currently do from time to time, those in an affected area will not only find themselves “in the dark” but also with “limited mobility” until power is restored.

All living humans must constantly breathe air in order to survive. As such, breathing cleaner air is preferable to breathing dirtier air so reducing air pollution is likely to be an advantage to all of us, but at what cost? 

When any idea is put forth to “reduce pollution” it is always wise to ask how much of what kind of pollution will be reduced and “what will it cost”? It is quite likely that the Biden Administration’s ORDER that Americans MUST start “going electric” with our vehicles in only six years from now is going to be very, very costly. And, with the rest of the world still driving fuel powered vehicles, how much “improvement” are we likely to see?

In the title of this article, the question is asked, could this administration’s ORDER that we start “going electric” be nothing more than a “Political Fraud”? In other words are there those individuals in politics, today, that stand to benefit from its implementation? Such a “benefit” does not have to be a matter of financial reward for those individuals, at least not initially. What this ruling will do, and do so without question, is to place an enormous amount of political POWER over our citizens in the hands of those administrating this ORDER.

Ever since the 2020 election, the Democrat Party has certainly demonstrated that increasing and expanding their POWER to be a primary goal. As significant evidence exists that that election  could have been stolen, what is that but POLITICAL FRAUD?