Recognizing that I'm probably going to get flamed for this long winded post, here goes:
As someone whose been in the automotive industry for decades, sometimes on the sales side but mostly on the service side, I tell every one of my customers who is considering an EV to STOP and go buy an internal combustion engine. I realize that I may come across as a dinosaur making this statement, but my reasons for making this statement come from years of watching the EV industry and closely following my trades magazines. I'll try to lay out my reasoning here:
1) The 6 month carbon payback is a lie, at least in North America. We have far too much electricity generated by coal and natural gas. As demand for electricity goes up, and it will increase thousands fold, not just doubling or tripling, older plants that have been shut down due to inefficiency will need to come online to "temporarily" while greener alternatives such as hydroelectric come online. Already this summer, some areas of California had to tell their residents to stop charging EVs or move their charging times as the grid wasn't able to support basic needs requirements.
2) Several recent tests show battery life reductions of 35% at the 7 yr mark. Of course this technology is always improving, but they're still showing life spans of 10 years. Then what do we do with the batteries? There is no recycling, yet, and nothing truly promising showing on the horizon. Our land fills will be full of these toxic batteries, and holding true to normal human behaviour, they will be there forever.
3) Two very reputable concerns currently show world wide shortages of Lithium and Cobalt by 2050, at TODAYS consumption levels. Imagine 10 years from now? This means other forms of electricity storage must be found, and quite frankly, there is again nothing on the near horizon.
4) Given that batteries 10 or 20 years from now will HAVE TO BE considerably different than they are right now, its doubtful that the new batteries will be backwards compatible in older EVs whose owners can no longer get the older technology batteries. And now we have more junk for the landfill. 20 year old ICE vehicles are still perfectly serviceable.
5) EV range is horrendous. It works for daily commutes, but what about family vacations? So now you need to buy an ICE to sit in a garage when you want to tow the boat to the lake or visit your summer cabin. Now you've just doubled down on your carbon footprint. And that rarely used vehicle sitting in your garage will deteriorate, even when its not being used.
6) EV doesn't work in cold climates. Three of my customers have the new Jeep Wrangler hybrid. This winter in the cold, they got 17 miles range out of their electrics before having to switch to the gas engine. 17 miles! And since the small gas engine "backup" is underpowered, they actually ended up spending more on gas this winter than I did with my Jeep Gladiator and the 3.6L gas engine, and MUCH more than my customer with his Gladiator diesel. So thats not overly green.
7) I've mentioned electrical infrastructure. So lets say that the genies who build the green energy producing plants, whether it be hydro, nuclear, solar or ????? (don't mention wind turbines, what a joke) are actually able to build enough plants to keep up to demand, who pays for this? The people using electricity of course. This infrastructure all costs money, and ALOT of it. Watch your electric bill go up 10x or more, and that won't just be in the electricity you use for charging your car, but in the power to your amps, your TVs, your ovens, etc etc.
I'm going to leave my reasoning and mutterings there for now, even though there are at least a dozen more reasons I could post. While I don't disagree we need to reduce our dependence on oil and oil based product, we need to find a better way. Hydrogen? Maybe. Electrical impulse through pavement? Maybe. I don't have that answer. What I do know is that EVs, in their current incarnation and any incarnation for the next decade are going to cause more issues than they resolve and leave their owners holding onto really expensive landfill refuse. Or perhaps we should stop villifying the poor old ICE engine and start pointing at the REAL causes of environmental pollution: Indian, Chinese, Korean and every other country whose manufacturing plants spews millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
