Owning a car is like a rite of passage into adulthood.
It's something teenagers drool over, and it's easy to see why. Cars are expensive, powerful, and dangerously fast- like games accessible through a Play Croco casino login. Mastering the skill of driving makes one feel powerful.
Cars have been popular since their inception in the early twentieth century and have evolved in numerous ways. In fact, modern cars are probably more closely related to cell phones nowadays than they are to the early versions of cars. There are a number of reasons how and why this has happened, and they irk me to no end.
The Old Car
Okay, perhaps it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that the old cars are that different from newer cars. Ultimately, they serve the same purpose, with a similar thought process behind the mechanisms. By feeding the car some form of energy, the car can convert that energy into kinetic energy (IE: Movement).
This is done through an ingenious process of motors, engines, gears, transmissions, and wheels- which isn't even including all the other nifty features that streamlines the whole experience, like turn signals, headlights, air-bags, radio, and everything else that puts one's mind at ease when they step inside one of these high-velocity metal contraptions.
Up until very recently, the most common kind of fuel was gasoline (petrol, for you Brits). Oil is dug from the ground, refined at a processing plant, delivered to a gas station, and then pumped into your car. The car then ignites the fuel, which pushes a piston within the engine, and generates the physical power required to move. I have greatly oversimplified the entire process here, but I think you get the picture.
There are some drawbacks. The process is noisy and smelly. Oil is predominantly bought from Middle-East dictatorships like Saudi Arabia (Europe's oil, at least). Many Left-wing politicians are also in favor of banning fracking for Natural Gas, and Joe Biden canceled the Keystone Pipeline - costing God-knows how many jobs and billions in revenue from cheap gas exporting. Suffice it to say, it's not a great time for owning a gas guzzler.
On top of that, there are environmentalists that are concerned about pollution. Cars are a very obvious and direct source of pollution, and there are concerns that car exhaust is contributing to greenhouse gases that are making the Earth warmer. This has been the primary drive for newer, cleaner, electric cars.
The New Car
The modern automobile has just about every bell and whistle you can imagine. They have touch screen interfaces, can make phone calls, guide you via GPS, play music over Bluetooth, and can even respond to voice commands so that you don't ever have to remove your hands from the wheel.
The most important difference between these electric cars and the traditional, gas-powered vehicle is the fuel source (obviously). Electric cars are essentially plugged into an outlet, which charges their batteries, and the car uses that battery in place of gasoline (as opposed to traditional cars, which only use batteries for things like the starter, the lights, the radio, and whatnot).
By using batteries instead of gasoline, electric cars gain several advantages. They're less smelly, they have almost no exhaust, and they're almost completely silent. In fact, companies like Tesla have to purposefully add noise in order to warn pedestrians that a car is approaching. It also gives the driver some haptic feedback to give a more intuitive feel for how the vehicle drives.
This is a concept that Video Games rely on heavily and can be the difference between one game feeling amazing to play and then another feeling... completely unsatisfying. Look up "video game juice" if you're curious to learn more.
However, as a new technology, electric cars have several distinct disadvantages.
First, batteries simply can not hold the same amount of energy as fuel can. In fact, gasoline has one hundred times the energy density of lithium-ion batteries (the most common kind of battery at the moment, used in cars, cell phones, and laptops). This greatly limits how far a battery-powered car can take you, with the furthest ranges still coming up to less than three hundred miles on a full charge.
Car manufacturers have to walk a fine balance between adding more batteries and limiting the weight so that the batteries don't make the extra charge useless. Clever designs can mitigate this somewhat, but, unfortunately, lithium-ion batteries just aren't cutting it at the moment.
Second, there simply aren't car charging ports available in most parts of the world. Sure, companies like Tesla are going out of their way to set them up, but it's still a far cry away from global accessibility. There's also the problem that not every brand of electric car is compatible with every charging station.
Some brands use proprietary charging equipment and won't allow vehicles from competing brands to charge up from their stations. There is also the nuisance of charge times, which can be really slow for an electric vehicle compared to the quick and easy process of filling up a tank of gas.
And third, electric vehicles don't even solve the problem they're ostensibly designed to fix.
The Big Misconception
The reason for the big push for electric vehicles is because of the concerns many have for the environment. There's this perception that electric cars are better for the environment than gasoline vehicles, and the fact of the matter is, it's just not true.
Promoting electric cars to solve global warming is like getting someone to stop bleeding out by applying leeches. You'll stop him from bleeding out... by draining him somewhere else.
We can translate this metaphor perfectly to electric cars. While the cars themselves emit very little emissions, those emissions have simply been pushed to somewhere else in the car's life cycle. With more and more electric cars on the road, means that there's an ever-increasing draw of power on the power grid. This means generating more power to meet the demand, which means burning more fuel at the power plant. So instead of burning the fuel in the car, that fuel is getting burnt at a plant instead. Overall, the same amount of fuel is being burnt.
Except, that's still not exactly true. It's actually even worse. You see, although we can presume that electric cars and gas guzzlers share, let's say, 99% of their parts, there is one crucial difference: The batteries. Electric cars require a ton of batteries, which are made from Rare Earth Elements, such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, and graphite. These metals have to be mined out of the ground, which in and of itself is a very environmentally unfriendly process.
In other words, not only are electric cars not better for the environment than regular cars, they are actually significantly worse.
So...
I am not opposed to electric cars. I'm someone who prefers the quiet suburb to the noisy city, so I can wholly get behind quieter vehicles. On top of that, companies like Tesla and Google are working on self-driving electric vehicles. They already have an amazing track record, and once they reach the point where they can be legally let onto the road, it's going to be a game-changer.
One of the most common causes of death in the west are car accidents. According to the WHO, about 1.3 million people die every year from road traffic accidents. Car crashes are also almost entirely caused by human error (getting hit by lightning is a freak accident. Driving under the influence is dangerous. Texting while driving kills).
Cars that can drive themselves are going to be revolutionary. Millions of lives are going to be saved by them. Drunk people at bars can have their own cars bring them home safely. Texting while driving will no longer be a concern for anyone. Taxis, trucks, and buses will no longer require drivers.
...which leads to the downside of self-driving cars. Truck driving is one of the best jobs for high school dropouts, and there are concerns that self-driving vehicles will literally automate their job away. Andrew Yang, who ran for president in 2020, said on the Daily Wire's Sunday Special that he would ban self-driving cars for that reason alone. Personally, however, I think that the sheer number of lives that are going to be saved by this technology are going to make the (admittedly painful) transition ultimately worth it.
And if you're concerned about the environment, is there really nothing to be done? Actually, there is something. We can further mitigate the impact of electric cars by getting over our fear of truly efficient and clean power generation, like Nuclear power, which is the only clean fuel source that can really beat coal and oil. If you're still not satisfied, then the least environmentally harmful thing you can do is buy a second-hand gas car. Yup. A second-hand gasoline vehicle is ultimately better for the environment than an entirely zero-emissions electric vehicle.
Sorry, Elon.
