3 challenges for electric vehicles this decade

Electric vehicle sales jumped from 3 million in 2020 to 6.6 million in 2021. Then, 10 million were sold in 2022. Sales are skyrocketing. Demand has never been stronger.  

On one level, that’s good news: we’ll need not millions, but billions, of hybrid and electric vehicles if we’re to actually have any hope of achieving net zero by 2050. And electric vehicles are not just better for the environment. Despite an occasionally eye-watering up-front cost, these cars can also work out cheaper than traditional internal combustion engine vehicles in the long-term.  

There’s no problem with the technology. The very first cars invented were electric, the first vehicle to go faster than 100km/h on land was electric, and, speaking historically, our love of big, dirty, internal combustion engines has been mostly driven by cheap oil—not any particular problem with electric. [Link to timeline/timeline article.] 

It’s not such a surprise to find that six auto manufacturers and 30 countries have now pledged to simply stop selling gas and diesel passenger cars by 2040, and plenty of them have made bold plans centring electric and hybrid vehicle designs that operate on a shorter timeline than even that.  

These pledges are a bold and confident step in the right direction for a reduction of emissions. But they aren’t without their own challenges. Like most challenges, these aren’t insurmountable—but they need addressing, and they need addressing soon.  

Where the rubber hits the road, EVs begin to catch up with their ICE cousins.

The Union of Concerned Scientists USA reports that, to match the global warming emissions of an average EV, a petrol vehicle would need to achieve a fuel efficiency of 91 miles to the gallon—which translates to just under 39 kilometres per each litre of fuel.

Like with ICE cars, certain kinds of driving and certain terrains change how efficient a vehicle is, but they determined that, on average in the USA, an EV will break even on that emissions-intensive battery in 22 months of driving.

It also depends—maybe obviously—on how dirty your grid is.

When we talk about well-to-wheels analysis of ICE vehicles, we’re referring to the whole supply chain for petrol, which is famously inefficient—80% of the energy is usually lost in the process of extraction, refinement, evaporation, and so on.

The same kind of consideration has to go into assessing whether the energy source by which you charge your EV is sustainable. In 2019, researchers from the University of Queensland wrote that depending on in which part of the country you recharged it, your EV’s emissions could vary from between 20% lower than a petrol vehicle to 88% lower.  And they also discovered that a disproportionate (compared to the general population) number of EV drivers used solar power as part of their recharging—which is certainly more sustainable than drawing from the grid.

On environmental impact, an EV will beat out an internal combustion engine vehicle.

But that’s measured across its lifetime. Remember, on average, that car doesn’t “break even” compared to an ICE vehicle until years after you start driving it. To really compound the benefits of your electric vehicle, you would need to keep driving it for years more.

If we seek a more sustainable automotive culture, we’re probably going to need to develop an appetite for the battered old electric vehicle—just as we have for the shiny new one.