The journey towards sustainability is like wading through treacle. As Al Gore, António Guterres and Fatih Birol keep loudly reminding us, the world has both the money and the technology needed to drastically reduce global emissions and meet climate change mitigation goals. It could be a simple stroll were it not for the treacle. The latter is a complex substance, made up of a multitude of nefarious ingredients, which include big chunky ones like continued fossil fuel expansion and the overt funding of oil-friendly political parties. However, the treacle also includes many smaller ingredients that together greatly contribute to its stickiness. One of these is the persistent, insiduous trickle-feed of disinformation about green technologies, which slows down their adoption through the spread of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).
Electric vehicles (EVs) are a perfect case in point. Both mainstream and social media feed the public with a steady diet of anti-EV myths, most of which are quite easy to debunk. Let us get one thing out of the way first: fewer cars (EV or otherwise) and more public transport constitute the more sustainable long-term solution. EVs are nevertheless a good step away from the transport sector’s fossil fuel dependency. So why did Volvo announce this week that it was rowing back on its previously stated ambition to exclusively produce EVs by 2030? Part of the reason may relate to the company’s Chinese manufacturing base and Western governments’ attempts to use tariffs to counter that country’s growing dominance of the EV market. However, Volvo’s greenrinsing (shifting climate targets when they are likely to be missed) may also have been influenced by the aforementioned FUD affecting market confidence.
Based on media headlines and social posts that the Laundromat has seen over the past year, EVs are guilty of the following: higher lifecycle emissions than internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, environmental destruction related to battery raw materials, spontaneous combustion, road destruction due to heavier weight, longer financial and environmental break-even points, short battery lives, and very limited autonomy. They are also regularly accused of being a dodgy investment because of supposedly declining sales and typically higher purchase prices. How about these declining global EV sales? It would seem that some headline writers are quite lazy journalists. EV sales are going up. The rate of growth may be slowing as the market matures, and there seems to be a pattern in annual sales, as evident in the International Energy Agency (IEA) table below. Year-on-year sales are persistently higher, but there is a drop-off after year-end, which is typically when these misleading headlines and social media posts pop up, presumably because the long-term trend is being ignored – perhaps deliberately.
IEA (2024), Quarterly electric car sales by region, 2021-2024
Source: IEA, Paris, Licence: CC BY 4.0
Autobesity is not an EV problem
This week Bjørn Lomborg, President of the Copenhagen Consensus Center think-tank weighed in on social media with allegations of yet another EV crime: “Why, oh why, would we want to switch to electric cars, which are much heavier, i.e. kill more?” he asks, citing research in the Economist on the relationship between vehicle weight and road deaths. Heavier cars are safer for the occupants but deadlier for pedestrians and the occupants of other smaller vehicles. However, while EVs are typically heavier than the exact equivalent ICE models, passenger cars have been getting heavier and larger across the board. Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs) is the fastest growing category of cars in terms of sales. This has led to the phenomenon known as autobesity, wherein cars are getting heavier and often too large to fit into regulation parking spaces. This is categorically not an EV-specific problem. The fairly ubiquitous ICE Range Rover weighs around 2,500 kg. Volvo’s EX30 battery-electric SUV weighs a comparatively svelte 1,765 kg. Lomborg is right that autobesity is contributing to deadlier roads, but this is a broader auto industry problem that he is selectively using to argue against EVs.
The Laundromat would readily agree that massive electric SUVs make little environmental sense, and there are efforts underway to make EVs generally lighter. The ICE sector should do the same. Many of the other negative EV myths are easily debunked or are on the right path. Electricity grids are increasingly based on renewable energy. EV battery life has been found to have been underestimated and they can even be incorporated into electricity grids as an additional storage resource. EV break-even points have also been typically miscalculated. EV range anxiety can be alleviated by the fact that last year just 1.4% of EV breakdown calls in the UK were due to a lack of charge. The UK’s Automobile Association predicts that by the end of 2024 the annual figure will have fallen to 1%, which is the same as the proportion of callouts to ICE cars that have run out of diesel or petrol.
The purpose of this article is not to extoll the virtues of EVs. Clearly, green-powered public transport and better cycling or walking infrastructure are far preferable to constantly growing private car ownership. Nevertheless, EV misinformation is symptomatic of the never-ending trickle-feed of anti-green propaganda aimed at disseminating the FUD that makes the ‘treacle’ more glutinous and stickier. The World Economic Forum (WEF)-sponsored Global Risks Perception Survey (GRPS) this year highlighted ‘Misinformation and Disinformation’ as the number one risk faced by the world over the next two years. While no green panacea, EVs are clearly better for the climate than ICE vehicles in most respects. Consumers and markets deserve clear, unbiased information to make effective decisions. Unfortunately, the fossil industry lobby has seemingly boundless resources to dedicate to the spread of fear, uncertainty, and doubt about EVs, heat pumps, wind turbines, or any other new technologies that might threaten the supremacy of oil, gas, and petrochemicals.
