Nearly a year ago, I purchased my first EV. It has been an overwhelmingly great experience driving and charging it so far.
I have saved hundreds of dollars per month in gas while paying only a fraction of that for the kilowatts required to charge its battery. It is also a great feeling to avoid paying for fuel and keeping burnt fossil fuels from filling the sky.
Getting an EV has resulted in my taking a greater interest in the sources and prices of electricity in my home state, New York, knowing that I rely on this electricity to power my driving.
Fortunately, New York State has done an admirable job transitioning away from burning fossil fuels, a challenging endeavor since most of the population lives downstate in the densely populated NYC metro area, where energy production is scarce.
The state’s shift to renewable sources of electricity is well underway, with more and more electrical power coming from clean sources of electricity. So, when driving an electric car in New York, you eliminate the need to purchase gas, and with each passing year, less electricity comes from burning fuels since utltiies in New York are shifting to reneables.
Looking at how much money people typically spend on fuel, you learn that passenger cars are driven around 12,000 miles per year and average around 22 miles per gallon. So, people commonly purchase over 550 gallons of gas per year. (10.5 gallons per week).
550 gallons of gas costs around $2,500 and omits 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide. Each metric ton of carbon dioxide can fill up a 27-foot cube, nearly the size of the famous cube in front of the Apple Store on 5th Avenue in New York.
So, after a year, all the CO2 omitted from a single passenger internal combustion engine car fills up four Apple cubes. The CO2 would be trapped in the glass cubes, similar to how CO2 gets trapped in the atmosphere.
By shifting from gas-powered cars to electric-powered cars, less carbon dioxide is released into the climate since EVs do not omit CO2. With over 4 million registered vehicles in New York state, the benefits of replacing millions of exhaust pipes carrying cars with Electric Vehicles will be massive.
It's easier to control how much C02 is released into the climate when sourced from a few electrical power plants than from millions of cars across the state. The plants can better control how much CO2 is released than is possible when exhaust pipes are sending CO2 all over the state.
The growing adoption of Electrical Vehicles means that instead of having millions of cars blowing fumes into the air from their exhaust chimneys, the cars can run on electricity, keeping smoke from being blown into the sky.