Essay Sample on Electric Vehicles: Good or Bad?

Have you ever thought that electric cars could actually be bad for the environment? Across the world, people are buying electric vehicles for a higher premium thinking that they may be helping the environment, but they are hurting the environment more than they think.To build an electric vehicle metals such as; copper, cobalt, aluminum, and magnesium must be mined out of the ground. After the mining process is complete, the raw materials must be refined. Refining the raw materials also produces more greenhouse gasses. The production of electric vehicles should be stopped because of the increase of electricity drawn from the power grid, deficiency of charging infrastructure, and lack of proper disposal of EV lithium ion batteries.

The first reason the production of electric cars should stop is because of the increase of power drawn from the power grid. The power draw increase due to the amount of electricity consumed by charging an electric vehicle. “...states urge their residents to buy electric vehicles — a crucial component of efforts to reduce carbon emissions — they also need to make sure the electric grid can handle it.”(Brown). There are specific times of the day where the electricity draw can double or even triple. The most common times for increases are when people get home from work. Studies by the U.S. Department of Energy state, “If many people buy electric vehicles and mostly try to charge right when they get home from work — as many currently do — the system could get overloaded or force utilities to deliver more electricity than they’re currently capable of producing.” (Brown). The shows that the production of electric cars should be stopped because of the increase of power drawn from the power grid.

Another example of why the protection of electirc cars should be stopped because of the increase of power drawn from the power grid is that if all on the road vehicles were converted to electric with the power gris current state it would fail. One major flaw in the idea that all road vehicles will become electric is large on road vehicles such as semis. Currently there is just over 5 million active duty semis. Each semi has an average diesel tank about 300 gallons. “One gallon of diesel can be converted to 40.7 kwh of electricity, so if electric semi wanted to compete with the current semi truck it would need to be able to store 12210 kwh of electricity in its battery…the current electric vehicle can hold 85 khw.”(Gibbs). If the power grid was asked to produce 12210 kw over 5 million times a day “the current output would have to increase by 4000%.”(“Electric Vehicles”). This is another reason that shows that the production of electric cars should be stopped because of the increase of power drawn from the power grid.