Oil industry is 'peddling misinformation' about electric vehicles
When technological innovation threatens to upend the status quo, the status quo fights back. Every time. I try to keep that in mind when observing oil industry-backed efforts to discredit electric vehicles (EVs) and dismantle progress on transportation electrification by peddling misinformation through industry-funded studies (for example https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/may/21/yes-evs-are-green-and-global-warming-is-raising-sea-levels).
To give you a sense of the absurdity of these efforts, imagine Bell Communication publishing a report suggesting cell phones are less convenient than landlines. Or Blockbusters paying for an analysis showing Netflix makes watching movies more difficult.
The vast majority of research institutions and environmental public interest groups support accelerated EV adoption because the science is clear that EVs are much cleaner than conventional vehicles.
Consider this: electric vehicles don’t have tailpipes. They run on electricity, and across the country, our electricity sources are getting cleaner. Even factoring in emissions from electricity used to power EVs today and pollution from battery manufacturing, electric vehicles are already significantly to vastly lower in emissions than conventional vehicles, depending on how the electricity is produced in different regions of the country.
And yes I still the odd commenters quoting from oil industry-funded research trying to make the case for oil being cleaner to use. The only case to be made maybe is one around a lack of range/slow recharging but this does largely depend on your own use case, and a lot of funding is going into improving that. Hence why many say from around 2023 or so there won't be any case really for using a gasoline car, not even based on cheaper purchase price.
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Oil industry ‘peddling misinformation’ about electric vehicles Electric vehicles are a superior product. That’s why they will replace the internal combustion engine, says Christine Todd Whitman. |