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The electric car is widely seen as a simple, clean solution to climate change. In reality, it’s inefficient, relies on massive subsidies and leaves behind a trail of pollution and death that is seldom acknowledged.

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Climate activists and politicians constantly remind us that electric cars are cleaner, cheaper and better. Canada and many other countries have promised to prohibit the sale of new gas and diesel cars within a decade. But if electric cars are really so good, why would we need to ban the alternatives?

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And why has Canada needed to subsidize each electric car with a minimum $5,000 from the federal government and more from provincial governments? Many people are not sold on the idea of an electric car because they worry about having to carefully plan out where and when to recharge. They don’t want to wait a long time while re-charging. And they don’t want to pay a premium for an electric car whose used-car value declines much faster. For people not privileged to own their own house, recharging can be a real challenge. It’s therefore not surprising that surveys show only 15 per cent of Canadians and 11 per cent of Americans want to buy an electric car.

The main environmental selling point of electric cars is that they don’t pollute. But although it’s true their engines don’t produce CO₂ while driving, they do emit carbon in other ways. Manufacturing them generates emissions — especially producing the batteries, which requires lots of energy, mostly achieved with coal in China. As a result, even an electric car recharged with clean power in B.C. will, over its life, emit about one-third what an equivalent gasoline car does. When recharged in Alberta, it will emit almost three-quarters.

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In some parts of the world — India is an example — so much of electricity comes from coal that electric cars end up emitting more CO₂ than gasoline cars. Across the world, on average, the International Energy Agency estimates that an electric car using the global average mix of power sources over its life will emit nearly half as much CO₂ as a gasoline-driven car, saving about 22 tonnes of CO₂.

But using an electric car to cut emissions is incredibly ineffective. On America’s longest-established carbon trading system, you could buy 22 tonnes of carbon emission cuts for about $660 (US$460). Yet, Ottawa is subsidizing every electric car to the tune of $5,000 — nearly 10 times as much — which increases even more if provincial subsidies are included. And since about half of those electric vehicles would have been bought anyway, Canada likely has spent nearly 20 times too much cutting CO₂ with electric.

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Another problem: all these estimates assume electric cars are driven as far as gasoline cars. But they’re not. In the U.S., nine-in-10 households with an electric car also have one, two or more non-electric cars, including in most cases an SUV, truck or minivan. And the electric car is usually driven less than half as much as the other vehicles, which means the CO₂ emission reduction is much smaller. Subsidized electric cars are typically a “second” car for rich people to show off their environmental credentials.

Because of their enormous batteries electric cars are also 320–440 kilograms heavier than equivalent gasoline cars, which means they wear down roads faster, costing societies more. They also cause more air pollution by shredding more particulates from extra brake use and tire and road wear. No one denies that internal combustion cars pollute, but electric cars pollute more in total, both from tire and road wear and from forcing more power stations online, often the most polluting ones. A recent study found that in two-thirds of U.S. states, electric cars cause more of the most dangerous particulate air pollution than gasoline-powered cars do.

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Heavy electric cars are also more dangerous when involved in accidents, as they more often kill people in the car they hit. A study in Nature shows that in total, heavier electric cars will cause so many more deaths that the toll could outweigh the total climate benefits from reduced CO₂ emissions.

Many pundits suggest electric car sales will dominate gasoline cars within a few decades, but the reality is starkly different. A 2023 estimate from the Biden administration shows that even in 2050, more than two-thirds of all cars globally will still be powered by gas or diesel.

Electric vehicles will only take over when innovation has made them better and cheaper for real. For now, electric cars run, not mostly on electricity, but on bad policy and subsidies, costing hundreds of billions of dollars, blocking consumers from choosing the cars they want, and achieving virtually nothing for climate change.

Bjorn Lomborg is a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. This is the sixth of 10 articles running here Tuesdays, based on a forthcoming series to be published by the Fraser Institute.

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