Electric Cars Bad for Eastern US

From Jammie Wearing Fools by way of Wombat-socho's "In The Mailbox: 07.07.15", Where Electric Vehicles Actually Cause More Pollution Than Gas Cars: If you think EVs are always greener, these county-level maps will take you by surprise.

The idea that gasoline cars might cause less environmental harm than electric vehicles seems impossibly backwards. But consider the following thought experiment before you dismiss it out of hand.

A view from the tailpipe gives EVs a clear edge: no emissions, no pollution, no problem. Shift the view to that of a smokestack, though, and we get a much different picture. The EV that caused no environmental damage on the road during the day still needs to be charged at night. This requires a great deal of electricity generated by a power plant somewhere, and if that power plant runs on coal, it’s not hard to imagine it spewing more emissions from a smokestack than a comparable gas car coughed up from a tailpipe.

So the truth of the matter hinges on perspective—and, it turns out, geography. That’s the sobering lesson from an incredibly sophisticated new working studyby a group of economists. Using a fine-grained, county-level measure of U.S. vehicle emissions traced to tailpipes and electricity grids, the researchers mapped where gas cars and EVs cause more respective pollution. In some places electrics do so much relative harm that instead of being subsidized, as is currently the case, they should actually be taxed.

“What we find is that the benefits are substantially different depending on where you are in the country,” study co-author Stephen Holland of the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, tells CityLab. “The real big take-home message is: location, location, location.”

Estimated damages for gas (left) and electric (right) cars by U.S. county; the damages range from roughly 1 to 5 cent(s) per mile on each side, green to red. (Holland et al, 2015, NBER)

Now for the practical part. Using local vehicle miles traveled figures, Holland and company determined how much an electric car was worth to each U.S. county. They did this by subtracting the damage done by a gas car from that of an electric over a lifetime of 150,000 miles. When the number was positive, the electric car was cleaner and therefore warranted a subsidy. When it was negative, the electric car was dirtier and instead should be taxed.

The map below shows the subsidy calculations by county: those in dark green merited subsidies of up to $5,000; those in dark red deserved a tax upwards of $5,300.

Owning an electric car on the East Coast is not about saving the environment; it's about feeling good; all the money in the world spent on feelin' good.