South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
‘Wrong people are buying’ EVs in US
Those owning over 1 may be lessening emissions benefits
Keller Strother got a Tesla Roadster in 2011. His garage now includes two more Teslas and a vintage Porsche 911 that recently had its gas-burning guts swapped out for a battery and electric motors.
In a warming world, where roughly one-quarter of Americans are keen to buy an electric vehicle, Strother has four of them.
“The technology is so viable and it’s such a better solution,” he said. “And I’ve always been a little obsessed with having the right tool for a job.”
EV adoption is ramping up in the U.S. But what the fever line doesn’t show is that a large share of battery-powered cars are being bought by households that own at least one EV. The EV early adopter has given way to the superuser or, some might say, the hoarder.
And these double-dippers may unwittingly be shrinking the climate benefits their cars can offer.
“A, the wrong people are buying these cars,” said Ashley Nunes, a Harvard economist studying this dynamic. “And B, the way those people are using these cars makes it very difficult for them to deliver an emissions advantage.”
In a recent Bloomberg survey of EV drivers, 14% of respondents said they owned more than one battery-powered vehicle, and 6% of those surveyed had three or more. That doubling-down dynamic is clear in sales data, too. Some 26% of EV buyers in the second quarter either traded their used electric car for a new one or simply added another to their garage, according to Edmunds. Another 9% of recent EV buyers were already driving a hybrid. Scientists, politicians and auto executives have championed electric cars to replace gas-burning vehicles, but much of the time that’s not what’s happening — at least not yet.
The repetitive buying is a validation of the technology, a clear pattern that, when
familiar with both options and given the choice, many prefer to drive electric. It also suggests that the typical reservations among the EV-curious — namely range anxiety and charging confusion — fade quickly with use.
But it presents a problematic paradox: An EV is only a decarbonizer to the extent that it offsets both gas-powered driving and the emissions needed to make it, a process that leaves a far larger carbon footprint than that for a gas-powered car. The only way for the machine to cover its carbon, so to speak, is in miles. But, critically, in two-, three- or four-EV households, each successive car tends to be driven less. If a vehicle is going to be sitting idle in a garage, a gas-burning version is arguably a cleaner option than an EV, because of all the carbon that goes into
making the latter.
Strother, 62, and his wife puts about 15,000 miles a year on their fleet; after more than a decade, his Roadster has only 11,000 miles on the odometer.
“I haven’t commuted since 2000,” Strother said. “I occasionally drive more than 30 miles in a stint, but not often.”
The couple charges their vehicles from home solar panels.
Lucas Davis, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, found that in multivehicle households, an EV tends to be the secondary or tertiary car. Some two-thirds of households with an EV also had a gas-powered car that was driven more often. What’s more, that vehicle is more often than not a relatively inefficient one — namely a large truck or SUV.
“That’s bad,” Davis said. “If EVs are going to be an environmental solution, it hinges on them being widely adopted beyond what’s a niche product for rich people.”
Most Americans now can’t afford one new EV. Production is likely to lag demand for years as carmakers rush to build battery plants and assembly lines. In part because supply is so scarce, the average sticker price for an EV in October was almost $59,000, according to Edmunds.
Many Americans able to pay those prices don’t need to sell their current car to make the switch. And they often just keep both: U.S. households with an EV have an average of 2.7 vehicles, compared with 2.1 vehicles for the country overall.
Another recent study found a household that replaces its secondary gas vehicle with an EV typically needs to own the car for more than 10 years before it offsets the emissions associated with production.
“This is where the typical narrative gets problematic,” Nunes said. “I don’t know anyone driving a 10-year-old EV. Do you?”