Friday Reads – 12 February 2021

1. RE: Study reveals electric vehicles are driven less than gas cars

   To be honest; I’m surprised that this is a surprise to anyone really.
   It’s pretty obvious to me that the people most likely to buy an EV are those for whom range limitations are less of a problem, while those who use their vehicles to cover large distances every single day are far less likely to use an EV.

2. @Lee Smith
   Yes, but relatively few people actually drive long distances every day. The average driver does only about 24 miles a day. These days an EV can usually manage well over 150 miles on a single charge and many can do more than 200. It really is a very tiny fraction of drivers who exceed more than 150 miles a day routinely. A better argument might be that those who are early adopters of EVs tend to be more concerned about the environment and, almost by definition, will drive less in any case.

3. @QUINLET
   An even better argument is that early adopters of E.V.s prefer that the pollution attached their activities pollutes environments not adjacent to their own.

   N.B. E.V.s still pollute in the following ways,
   1. Tyre to road interface derived pollution.
   2. Extraction of manufacturing of the materials to build said E.V.s
   3. Production of the electricity and power stations to supply said E.V.s
   4. Disposal after useful life of said E.V.s

4. @Quinlet
   I agree with Lee. The mere fact of a lower range, and high inconvenience in refuelling, and – importantly – relatively low sales of EVs, is likely to result in a strong selection process where those who choose it have a quite different distribution of desired journey lengths from the average driver. That distribution must have a lower average journey length.

   Then there is the issue that many people have access to a second car, and leave the EV at home when they are going on a longer journey. For many people, the small number of longer journeys they make add up to a material proportion of their total annual mileage. There are many distributions like this. A small number of heavy rainfall events add up to a material proportion of total rainfall in many places, for example.

   Virtue signalling is clearly a factor in early sales. But practicality will remain a strong constraint.

   Local air quality is a substantial reason for city authorities to want people to drive EVs, rather than the carbon effect. Plainly there is still particulate and noise pollution from tyres, brakes and so forth. When we were still burning a lot of coal for our electricity, total carbon emissions were not even lower, for a car of the same load-bearing ability. But that time is now well past. Batteries are apparently hard to recycle, but we can be confident that they will soon be routinely recycled. Addressing carbon emissions in the supply chain will probably take longer, but it is on the policy agenda.

5. The EV article is poorly written and the headline misleading. The comments follow the logic.
   We accept that a Tesla is more of a normal use car with equivalent power consumption.
   The comments also suggest that other more esoteric EVs belong to the green brigade early adopters with behaviour modification through carbon awareness.
   I posit that they are more likely to have solar panels and efficient consumption. Their lower utility bills do NOT correlate to EV usage.

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