Electric cars are great on paper; if electricity is powered by solar and wind, and mining and maintenance can be done reasonably, it is an environmental win.
Yet despite $4 trillion in subsidies for solar and wind, 80 percent of electricity is still from conventional energy, and that means if electric cars don't have good range, they are worse for the environment than conventional automobiles. The electricity is generated from regular sources, then sent over transmission lines inefficiently, then often converted to 110 volts with losses, then stored in a battery that decreases in efficiency quickly.
Which is the case. A new technical paper from the Society of Automotive Engineers shows that most electric cars "fall short of both their electric consumption and range label values", which means taxpayers forced to subsidize them for wealthy people are being cheated, and consumers are being cheated. The environment is being cheated. Conventional cars overwhelmingly meet or exceed EPA fuel-economy and range estimates by an average of 4 percent while electric cars were nearly 13 percent below.
We're in a world where plant juice can be called milk but when it comes to something as important as economy and range standards, government needs to enforce truth in labeling a lot better than they do for vegan bacon.
Citation: Pannone, G. and VanderWerp, D., "Comparison of On-Road Highway Fuel Economy and All-Electric Range to Label Values: Are the Current Label Procedures Appropriate for Battery Electric Vehicles?," SAE Technical Paper 2023-01-0349, 2023, https://doi.org/10.4271/2023-01-0349.
