Tuesday, September 16, 2014

The EV compromise

With National Drive Electric week nearly upon us, and with three years of EV ownership under my belt, I'm still thinking about the impact of my choices and actions. There is a fair amount of anti-EV sentiment making headlines, some of it politically driven, some of it remarkably level-headed, and asking smart questions about whether EVs are the answer. I come back again to my conviction that it is not what you have or buy, but behavioral choices that make the difference.

But let's be clear: driving an electric car is a compromise: if I were "green" beyond reproach, I would be living in a high-density urban area in a net zero building, within walking distance of my workplace. Cycling (and cycling distance from the workplace) is a close second to this. Omitting anachronistic modes of transport such as horse and buggy, and things like skateboarding, means that public transit comes next, and then ride and car sharing. Driving in a personal car is really at the far end of the sustainability spectrum; but it's not the car that needs to change, it's the way we arrange our cities and lives.

The biggest change is where we choose to live: when someone tells me they couldn't make an EV work because they commute so far from work, I have to wonder why they live so far away. Yes, homes closer in to urban or suburban employment centers are more expensive, but the cost of commuting over the years is even more so. And that "hidden" cost keeps many artificially poor.

Even a rough back-of-the-envelope calculation, with readily available numbers (the IRS mileage rate, the value of your time at minimum wage) gives staggering results: those miles and days really add up, and compounded over the spam of years that most people work, it's clear that the expensive house close to work is actually much cheaper in the long run. A typical 30-mile round trip commute? It adds up to well over $450,000 (double that if both spouses are commuting) over 20 years, and that's not even considering the impact in terms of extracting and burning fuel (over 100,000 tons of CO2, in case you were wondering), and the social and environmental impact of traffic congestion and new road construction when everyone starts thinking that a 30-mile commute is normal.

Now those numbers are based on commuting with a gas car. If I run the same commute with my EV numbers, I'm a bit better off: $130,000 over that same 20-year span. (I can't compute the CO2 emissions for everyone--the guy with his own solar panels is doing much better than the guy plugging into 100% coal-generated electricity.). But the social cost of my time and the impact of roadways remains.

For the record, I work at home, and Darling Husband takes his bike or walks to his office under 2 miles away: the car is for ferrying kids and running errands. My husband's bike commute is a clear example of choices playing out: $700 for the bike (it's a nice one, bought used), and about $50 each year for a tune-up. Over 20 years, it's paid for the whole house two times over. Even if he had to replace the whole bike every year, we're still way ahead, and he doesn't need to take time out of his day (and away from family) to go to the gym. Because in the end, it's not what you have, but what you do.

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