Electric Cars Won’t Save the Planet

by Greg Ganske

June 2, 2023

Little boys love to play with their toy cars and grown men love their real ones. Ask a guy about his first car and his eyes get misty. My first was a 1949 Hudson that held the entire high school golf team, then came a 1960 TR-3 with no heater, followed by a “Just Married” MGB-GT, a midlife red ‘89 Vette, and now a retired guy’s 2015 Stingray for rallies. I even used a 1958 DeSoto (the year my opponent had first gone to Congress) to show how long my opponent  had been in elected office while I promoted term limits. Campaign Magazine called this best 1994 campaign gimmick.

Greg Ganske’s internal combustion campaign car, 1994

The American love affair with the automobile is possible because of the development of the gasoline driven internal combustion engine (ICE). The ICE is a machine that converts the chemical energy in hydrocarbon fuel into the mechanical energy of a rotating drive shaft. In the spark-ignition engine, octane and oxygen combine in an exothermic reaction to produce the energy to propel the car. This reaction makes carbon dioxide and water. And therein lies the problem with fossil fuel cars and the push for electric vehicles (EVs) in concern about increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide as a cause of global warming.

The Biden Administration wants to do away with the ICE automobile with its beautifully refined mechanisms of block, cylinders, pistons, rings, connecting rods, crankshaft, stroke, cycles and exhaust systems that 100 years of mechanical innovation have givens us. Instead we are being sold on huge batteries to power EVs ((with fake exhaust sounds) and the $trillions it will take to convert our auto fleets and refueling stations.

Our lives and the economy are dependent on energy but it’s as if the Biden administration wants to destroy both. Every day we see new rules and regulations being proposed from banning gas stoves to light bulbs to dishwashers that don’t clean and now draconian clean air rules for automobiles and trucks.

The Environmental Protection Agency just proposed stricter emissions standards starting in 2027 that would require auto makers to boost sales of electric vehicles which accounted for just 5.8% of sales in 2022 to above 50% in 2030 and 67% in 2032. Just this last week the EPA proposed a rule that amounts to a death sentence for fossil fuel power plants by requiring carbon capture and green hydrogen technologies that aren’t cost effective or feasible. Forcing fossil-fuel plants, which provide more than 60 % of our electricity compared to 19% for wind and solar, to shut down will further endanger grid reliability. The Supreme Court blocked the Obama Clean Power Plan last summer which outlawed coal. We can only hope the Supreme Court will declare the Biden EPA plan unconstitutional, too.

The Biden administration’s war on internal combustion automobiles and jihad against natural gas electric plants won’t work. As a former member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee let me count a few of the ways that forcing taxpayers to subsidize EVs and making manufacturers abandon the ICE is poor policy.

The electricity to charge an electric vehicle has to come from somewhere. EVs switch auto pollution to increased demand from power plants. The more EVs, the more electricity we need from power plants and the more pollution we get from power plants. Driving an EV in China where coal is by far the largest power plant fuel only increases demand from fossil fuel power plants. China is currently bringing two coal powered electric plants per week into production. If our government pays us to use less fossil fuel in the form of subsidies, it lowers the price of fossil fuels world wide which means that we are paying people in other countries to use more. Our policy is subsidizing the Chinese.

The effect of mandating EVs in the U.S. will result in negligible decrease in global CO2 emissions. The U.S. has only 12% of the world’s automobile fleet. Globally personal cars are a majority of gas driven vehicles but commercial vehicles account for most of the emissions as personal vehicles aren’t in use much of the time. A recent Wall Street Journal article estimated the Biden plan for swapping out a gasoline engine for a battery for the U.S. with 12% of the world’s fleet would eliminate only 0.18% of lifetime vehicle emissions.

It takes a lot of energy and natural resources to make an EV. Besides the energy it takes to dig lithium’s enormous pits, digging a ton of lithium requires 500,000 liters of water with contaminated wastewater runoff. Massive mining operations in South American threaten their environment if not ours. In addition, each battery requires a mile of copper wiring which requires increased copper mining.

Manufacturing the average EV battery weighing 1,200 pounds produces 70% more carbon dioxide than building an internal combustion engine gasoline powered car. EV trucks will have batteries that weigh 5,000 pounds and reduce the amount of cargo that is limited by law to 80,000 pounds per truck. This will then require more electricity consuming trips. Battery packs make EVs 33% heavier than ICE vehicles and increase the risk of injury and death from collisions with heavier vehicles.

The batteries have unique problems that ICEs don’t. “Thermal runaway” of batteries can cause intense and unpredictable battery fires. A Norwegian ferry does not allow EVs on board because of the fire hazard. EV fires are very difficult to put out and use 40 times more water to douse an EV than a burning ICE engine. Unless homeowners install dedicated circuits, the charging station may represent increased fire risk. The cost of home-charging materials and installation adds $thousands to the cost of using Evs.

EV batteries may last 10-20 years but hotter climates and faster charging can overheat the battery and reduce life expectancy. A replacement battery can range from $5,000 to $20,000. If the battery is damaged or no longer functional where does it go? Much of the materials in an EV battery can’t be economically recyled. Will landfills fill up with lithium batteries potentially contaminating our water supplies?

EV ranges are short; actual ranges are shorter than advertised by 12.5%. Travel ranges are shorter in the summer when using air conditioning but also in the winter when cold batteries are less efficient. Could you be stranded in a snowstorm? If you tow a trailer, expect up to 70% less range.

America’s electric grid already faces shortfalls with blackouts when demand peaks in summer or winter. Increased demand from EVs will strain our grid unless there is massive spending to increase capacity. America lacks charging infrastructure, especially in rural areas. In June 2022 there were almost 1.5 million registered EVs and about 130,000 charging stations. Using a Level 2 charger it takes 7-10 hours to fully charge. Faster charging stations will be necessary but decrease the life of the battery.

The International Energy Agency calculates that throughout the life of an EV it will emit less CO2 emissions that an ICE vehicle but the break even point for switching to an electric car can range from 5 to 15 years. Drivers usually switch cars every 8 years. Your EV vehicle will need to last longer to make it pay. . .if the battery lasts that long.

EVs are more expensive. The average price for an ICE vehicle is $48,000, the average price for an EV is over $65,000. Increasing subsidies only mean that middle class taxpayers are subsidizing EVs for the wealthy. Finally, by pushing EVs the Biden administration leaves U.S. transportation at the mercy of China which controls 75% the supply chains of critical materials needed for EV battery manufacturing. You can bet the Biden Administration and the NIMBY (not in my back yard) phenomena will limit lithium mining in the U.S.

Instead of misguided energy dictates, the Biden Administration should focus on increasing carbon dioxide free nuclear power for the electric grid. But that is a topic for another day. Americans who love their ICE cars are not buying the EV hype. Less than twenty per cent say it’s likely they will buy an electric vehicle. The Biden Administration should think twice about forcing us to abandon our internal combustion “Lizzie” for EV “Sparky.”

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Greg GanskeGreg Ganske, MD, is a retired plastic surgeon who cared for facial and hand trauma victims, cancer patients, children with birth defects, and burn patients. He represented Iowa in Congress from 1995-2003 and was a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee with jurisdiction over the EPA and the Department of Energy.

Comments 44

  1. I understand that the city of Chicago is an EV desert! BLM Brandon will speak truth to power on that grievance.

    Me? Here in the Free State of Indiana, I purchased 2014 Chevy Caprice PPV that goes from 0 -60 in four seconds. That’s the America I love!

    1. I’d like to hear a reputable Lefty (they’re out there folks) reply to this and then form an opinion. I must say the good Doctor seems to have this covered though.

  2. One of my neighbors tried to drive his brand new Tesla to Myrtle Beach for vacation. The “projected” miles were twice the actual miles he was able to go and he got stuck in Nowhere, South Carolina trying to find a charging station.
    On the plus side, he sure did give those good ol’ boys a chuckle (and over 300 bucks for the tow).

    As a general rule, I find that anything the democrats are for, I’m against…and I’m right.

    2. We have charging stations at some shopping centers. But SC is very large and very rural. Electric golf carts don’t last on hilly terrains here.

      1. “But SC is very large and very rural.”

        ..and very beautiful.

        I am going to retire to one of your sea islands some day. Not sure which one, but it will NOT be that one south of Port Royal.

        Semper Fidelis!

  3. You make a most compelling case. It is thoughtful, rational, and exceedingly sensible.

    Hence, it falls on deaf ears – hostile to fact and reason. The “green energy” crowd only cares about feeling good because they are fighting against autotrophic global warming which doesn’t exist.

  4. EV coercion by the left is based on speculative and the flawwd science of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). No one knows what temperatures will be like in fifty or a hundred years, They don’t even know that it will be deleterious if temperatures keep rising at the very slow rate they have in the past 40 years. After all, CO2 feeds plant life on earth and that includes agriculture.

    AGW was conceived to give the international left the power to seize worldwide control of the mining, extraction, processing, conveyance and consumption of fossil fuels It allowed them to reward their allies and contributors in the alternative energy industries with huge financial, social and political privileges. No one knows what caused the slight warming we’ve seen and no one knows how to measure accurately what portion of it was caused by human emissions. Time to reconsider our ill-conceived investments of hundreds of trillions of dollars in what could be the greatest scientific hoax ever perpetrated against humankind.

    1. “AGW was conceived to give the international left the power to seize worldwide control of the mining, extraction, processing, conveyance and consumption of fossil fuels”

      Another term for it is “control of the means of production.”

      Now where have I heard that phrase before?

  5. Very well described why this can and will be a folly.

    btw…these vehicles are NOT electric, they are battery. If they were truly electric, we’d have wires in the sky and trolley poles extending from the trunk. I only wish people would learn to use proper terms (eg virtual means “pretend” or “fake” not online substitute) for all the nonsensical crap going on today !

    1. Huh? Are saying battery-powered direct current is not electricity? That would be news to Edison. Even Tesla (the man, not the car company) understood his alternating current to be a competing form of electrical power.

  6. It’s been fascinating to watch the left promote electric vehicles as if they provide an alternative to vehicles with environmental consequences. As Dr. Ganske and others easily point out, that promotion is hype.

    EVs are not a productive environmental choice any more than they’re a productive economic choice, even when you drive one down the road singing “If I Had a Hammer.”

    The EV delusion is being shoved down America’s collective throat by the same people who claim to “believe in science.” In fact they believe in ideological magic.

  7. ICE Engine technology and advanced vehicle emissions controls have eliminated much of the pollution vehicles used to emit. However, particulate emission from tire wear, which is made up mainly of Hydrocarbon compounds, continues unabated.

    The amount of tire wear particulates emitted by vehicles is directly proportional to their mass. Ergo heavier automobiles like electric cars, which are half a ton heavier than their fossil fuel counterparts, emit more particulate pollution.

  8. Thank you Dr Ganske, well written. I purchased an all electric car in 2013. The estimated range of this car was 86 miles. Round trip to work, 60 miles. All was well until Chicago winter. Some days arrived home with only 7 miles left on the battery, very stressful. I believe if a person lives in a city and has a limited commute these EV cars could be an “option”. Mandatory conversion from ICE to EV is just stupid.

  9. Agree 100%. I was raised with a dad who was a car guy. We went to the Auto Show together every year. He’s in his 80s and has a written list of every car he’s ever owned and their years. His love of cars was passed to me and then our daughter. I don’t want an EV even if they were affordable.

    There is a whole discussion to be had regarding the toll on developing nations’ resources, use of child labor to get those resources, and the reliance we will have on China for the production of lithium batteries. But, alas, that is for another day.

  10. great column by Greg Ganske. the hostility toward this common sense on twitter–the liberal fever swamp–is clear.
    How we give up cars, how we give up stoves, air conditioning. how we give up liberty

    1. Goes further than this. Why do we have ethanol? It’s a terrible fuel and does nothing to “save the planet” but saves the planters. Yesterday I was driving along and I saw a US Postal Service truck delivering mail. Why isn’t it already electric if we have to save the planet-and given this article why isn’t that postal carrier delivering the mail on a bike? Or walking? Especially given the emergency.

  11. I have to call “Shenanigans” on Mr. Ganske.

    His TR3 had a “heater”, in the sense that there was something that, with a combination of opening the hood (The owner’s manuals refers to it as the “bonnet”), turning a small bronze faucet on the engine and arranging a series of flaps … was vaguely warm under the dashboard. Just enough to warm the drivers right ankle slightly and the passengers left calf.

    Back then most cars came with an “Owners Manual” that showed you how to adjust the valves and carburetors and nary a single warning that “radiators can be hot” from their corporate lawyers.

    I still have my TR3, (bought from Calumet Auto Wreckers for $175 in June of ’67). Now it’s relegated to warm weather fun weekend trips, show events and the occasional Hill Climb competition with my 12 year old grandson as “co-driver”. That and as a conversation starter at every gas fill up.

    Perhaps my great grandchildren will have fond memories of their road trips and adventures in the second hand Chevy Volt or Used Tesla they drove … until it needed new batteries at 4 times the value of the vehicle.

    Or their children rummaging through old barns and garages for a “Classic” first generation Prius to lovingly restore to it’s original “glory”.

    But I doubt it.

    1. TR3 stories…
      I got a TR3B in the winter of 67/68 while stationed in Detroit. Not exactly the best car for a Michigan winter, but I really wanted it and had more money than brains. My future wife had a 67 Impala SS, so we used her car on winter dates and mine the rest of the year.
      I remember that it had roll of tools in a leather pouch that looked as though you could disassemble the entire vehicle.
      We sold it not too long after the wedding but have often wished we could have hung on to it – or that Impala.
      Thanks for bringing back the memories.

  13. I agree with the article and with every comment so far.

    Jump on YouTube and search, ‘One of her last known broadcasts, NBC News Digest with Jessica Savitch’ (10/18/1983) for a wonderful trip into the past and present hysterical fear mongering.

  14. Excellent article from someone who has been on the inside of policy making. I own a Hybrid, my second. SUV. Suits my purposes well. If all I ever did was commute 30 miles each way (which I do) I’d still plug in at work, just in case. There are no charging stations I’m aware of on my route. (I can go three distinct ways). I’ll be driving to Chicago and back in a few weeks. 8-9 hours depending on pit stops. I’d be doing an overnight near a charging station with an EV. Agree on the rubber particulate and fire issues. And what happens with the runoff from those fires. It is highly contaminated. My thought — follow the money. Just like global warming someone is making a lot of money. An EV is a trolley bus in the city (remember those? ) not a storage battery which “EV’s” are. Agree to about nuclear. Nothing is perfect.

  15. “America lacks charging infrastructure, especially in rural areas.”

    Rural areas? How are you going to set up charging stations for a block’s worth of brownstones, where each apartment has 2 cars in the family? You’d have to upgrade every transformer in the city.

  16. Well said Greg! The socialist dems continue with the great con game called climate change, in order to wrest control of every facet of our lives, from our gas stoves, to dishwashers, light bulbs, toilets, and autos. Do the math – EV’s don’t compute. Our power grid cannot support their thirst for more energy, and will result in more blackouts or brownouts. But then, the dems will see this as a success. If we can’t drive more than 300 miles without recharging, we’ll have to stay closer to home, thus relinquishing our freedoms to travel across the country. And this is the agenda – control of our lives! We’ll be forced to be subservient to a socialist government, that continues to be ineffective, inefficient, and out of control. In just a few short years, EV’s will be relegated to the scrap heap of history, as more fuel efficient means of travel reach the market, like the hydrogen fuel cell, or clean gasoline on the horizon. But then, we’ll have a worse ecological disaster in the making as we seek to “recylcle” all those lithium batteris somewhere, somehow. I’ll stick with my ICE for the foreseeable future.

  17. I purchased my first used Nissan Leaf (2011) in 2013. This was the first model year for that car. The range was about 80 miles, and I used it for commuting, with a charger at home and at work. We did have the battery replaced while it was still under warranty. My husband still drives it to work. We purchased a second Leaf (2014) in 2016, and I drive it to work every day from NW Indiana to Lombard. (note: NW Indiana rocks!) The cars save a lot of money in fuel (electricity is still cheaper than gas). Plus, there’s no regular maintenance (oil changes, etc.). Our 2011 Leaf has well over 100k miles and has never had brakes replaced because of engine braking (it’s about time to have them checked). Our 2014 Leaf is even better at engine braking. We do have a 2005 Tundra for our longer trips, which we keep in tip-top shape. I drive the Leaf to work in winter, and yes, I bundle up and sometimes don’t use the heat for part of the drive (the car is warmed up when I start out, and about 1/2 way I turn on the heat).

    My husband and I are a far cry from being overly environmentally concerned (they’ve been talk doom for my entire lifetime (almost 60 years). Our decision to drive EV was financial, as the cars have been fairly cheap to maintain. We’ll keep Tundra around as long as possible. We think that that the Feds are wrong to force EVs on everyone. The smart thing is to buy a new gas vehicle now and maintain it so it will last 20 years. Hopefully there will be a change of the nation’s leadership in 2024, but how much difference will that make as conversion to EV is a world-wide push. I think EVs should be a choice, not a requirement.

  18. Just bought a new ICE car for all the reasons discussed – most of my miles are longer highway trips. If I only drove short trips in the city, I’d probably go EV.

    The country needs to align to a *realistic, multi-decade* energy transition plan to cleaner and renewable energy. Not a bunch of F.U.D. about eliminating most fossil fuels asap to “energize the base” but would only result in societal chaos.

  19. Nice article on just one aspect of the hysteria – having EV’s shoved down your throat. But, as someone who spent more than 30 years in the electric and gas utility industry, I’m more concerned about the drive to put all fossil fuel generating capacity out of business that Dr. Ganske briefly alluded to. When we had that brief cold snap around Christmas, many areas from Michigan to Pennsylvania were given notices to curtail their electric use over the holiday. Luckily, nothing major came of it, but the fact that we came close should strike fear into us all. It’s been a while since we’ve had an extreme hot or cold spell centered over the Midwest, but there is no doubt that day will come. Much of our coal generating capacity has already been eliminated, and now natural gas generation, which is most effective at providing super quick surges of power, when needed, is being targeted as well. Shear madness.

  20. EVERY word of this article is true. Here’s one he missed: since EVs pay no motor fuel taxes, where does the money come from to pave the roads they drive on? License plate fees will have to go up to $1,000 per year to cover the shortfall.

    1. You’re absolutely correct. Don’t forget there has to be a profit in “electrification” for someone. How about an “energy” tax on installing charging equipment in your garage? About four thousand per car per year sounds about right. But here’s the fun part, in Chicago where people will shoot you for taking their dibs street parking in the winter you can only imagine whats gonna happen when someone attaches your power cord TO THEIR CAR! Hilarity will ensue I assure you!

  21. Well written article! I’m about as right-wing as a person can get without being arrested. I also bought a 2018 Tesla Model 3 new. I didn’t buy it to “save the planet” – I bought it because it’s faster than hell and handles like it’s on rails. I charge in my garage when needed. I get a report that lists what my cost to charge has been for the past month compared to what the equivalent gasoline cost would have been based on miles driven. Last report I was paying the equivalent of $1,59/gal. In addition, my maintenance costs for this car (with about 30,000 miles) has been exactly $0. I agree that our energy grid is not prepared for the forced increase in EV sales, but the problem is not with the vehicles, it’s with the government’s over-stepping regulations.

  22. With 8 BILLION and counting, at what point does the earth just get tired? More worried about meeting the population demands of food, water, housing all of which need fossil fuels for survival. To me that’s more of a worry than the ICE vs. Battery war.

  23. Sooooo many questions…no answers yet. If all of the gasoline powered vehicles are banned or forced into extinction in say the next 20 years or so, what are these a epecting to do with them? Are people just supposed to use them as their new lawn ornament? And what about all of the gas stoves, lawn ornament #2? Then add to that all of the batteries. How are people going to heat their homes? What about weather events such as floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, forest fires? These things usually knock out electric power, just ask the folks in the path of Hurricane Ian how that worked for them.

    However, the most important question I have is if all of this banning of the use of fossil fuels comes to pass here in the US, what then will this accomplish if other countries do not follow. There are countries that produce many, many times the polution that we in the US are accused of doing, yet they do not appear to be willing to go along with the US standards and mandates. So the next question is just how does our Congress plan to keep their poluted air from reaching this country? Pretty sure even they do not have enough hot air to inflate a protective bubble over the entire country.

  24. Whatever the range estimate, who would think they are going to drive down to the last mile. My guess is that when the car says it has less than 100 miles left, the driver is going to be stopping at the next charging station. So, when a car is advertised with a range of 400 miles, from a practical standpoint it’s really something like 300-350 miles.

  25. I also believe it would be such a waste to walk away completely from ICE and the expertise of those designers/engineers and it’s technology advancements. Keep an eye on the military to get a true sense of the better, more reliable technology. I bet they will move much slower to accept EV vehicle technology in a large scale as a replacement for ICE in their vehicles.

  26. The woke Biden DOJ is also moving to military EVs! Think about recharging on the battlefield!
    I appreciate all the thoughtful replies this piece has elicited. Thank you, Greg Ganske

  28. Elon Musk has said that the transitioning away from fossil fuels should be a 50 year process. Otherwise, civilization could collapse. So the EPA proposes a 10 year process.

    He invested in Tesla more because oil is a finite resource, less for environmental reasons.

  30. Funny Joe still keeps his Vette (stored next Secret US Documents). Just like John Kerry, doesn’t practice what he preaching to the public.

  31. Just got around to reading this excellent article. One correction however; the process of the ICE described in the second paragraph produces carbon monoxide and water, not carbon dioxide.

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