Talking trade-offs can be a buzzkill
The future of electric vehicles, renewable energy, and any other big idea.
What happens when electric cars run out of gas?
Anyone who’s lived on the east coast of the U.S. knows what a disaster I-95 can be. I grew up in the Northern Virginia suburbs, and it was common for people to only schedule meetings between 10am and 2pm, because you never knew what the interstate traffic would be like.
DC’s metro area is a notorious horror show of traffic. Overturned trucks, random acts of construction, crashes, or just too many people driving in the same direction at the same time.
Virginia got pummeled by a snowstorm a couple winters ago that made national news because long stretches of I-95 were shut down. Remember that bit of drama?
It was crazy. Thousands of people hemmed in with no way to get unstuck. Imagine having to clear out thousands of electric vehicles with dead batteries. How long would that take? How many charging hubs and tow trucks would you need?
More and more people, politicians, and high-powered organizations are promoting the banning of gas-powered cars. Switching over from gas-power to electric power is a big emphasis in Biden’s infrastructure bill.
Some benefits are obvious. Cleaner air, quieter streets to name a couple obvious ones.
But at what price? I don’t know the answer and neither do you. But we both know everything comes at a cost. If you want to be taken seriously when pushing a policy, you have to be able to acknowledge and articulate the trade-offs. Otherwise, you just sound absurd or out of touch when someone asks a legitimate question like “what about cars stuck on I-95?
EV charging infrastructure is one of those trade-off topics that transportation experts need to openly explore, not dismiss. Here's a chicken-and-egg question: If you support banning gas-powered cars at some point in the future, should it happen before or after the charging infrastructure is in place?
The current grid just can’t handle everyone swapping overnight. So if EVs are the future, do you mandate them even if you can’t charge or service them?
Another trade-off topic is converting mass transit fleets to EVs.
The reliability of electric buses is not a sure thing. From The Washington Post last August:
The bipartisan infrastructure law provided $5.5 billion for low- and no-emission buses over five years, with billions more available through other federal grant programs boosted by the law. The Biden administration has touted its success in getting money into the hands of transit agencies, which need the aid to replace aging diesel buses with electric models that cost about $1 million each.
A year ago, the Federal Transit Administration announced grants that it said would double the number of zero-emission buses on the road. But it will take time for that money to translate into passenger-ready buses. According to figures compiled by industry publication Metro, deliveries of electric buses slumped 20 percent last year as transit agencies navigated fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
Christof Spieler, director of planning at consulting firm Huitt-Zollars, has urged transit agencies to be cautious as they make the transition, pointing to the complexities of building charging infrastructure and designing routes suitable for battery-powered buses.
Like so many urbanism issues, the uncomfortable trade-offs conversations are missing. Instead, camps form:
pro-EV, and we’ll mandate it
pro-EV, as long as it’s not a Tesla
pro-EV, as long as it’s not mandated
anti-EV, just because
Every action, policy, or decision comes with its own set of consequences, some beneficial and others detrimental. And depending on your personal or corporate point of view, you might define “beneficial” and “detrimental” consequences differently than your neighbor.
If you’re like me, you’ll want to remind yourself to be quick to listen and slow to speak. As my dad used to jokingly say, “I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.”
Great questions. As an early adopter of EVs, I’ve learned a few things the hard way but would definitely never go back. I never ran out of charge, thankfully. In the mid-Atlantic there
Is a pretty robust public charging infrastructure. My issue currently is that my Chevy Bolt AC charging outlet no longer works and getting service is proving to be quite a challenge. In general, the Bolt is super reliable and has few maintenance needs (tore rotation, that’s it). But when something goes wrong, the dealer service and supply chain for parts leaves much to be desired.