For people who live in cities the transition to electric vehicles cannot happen soon enough in my opinion.
EVs will have a huge impact on our local air quality and health. Air pollution is tied to asthma, bronchitis, dementia, lung cancer, migraines and reduces life expectancy for city dwelling Canadians by 6 months. For the worst cities in the world, air pollution reduces life span by 2.5 years.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I am willing to be pay extra for an extra 6 months of life expectancy and breathing quality.
And although the upfront cost of EVs right now is still high, medium term I see EVs saving us money
-Electric vehicles will increase grid demand, but they will improve grid utilization (cars charge overnight during low use periods). Higher utilization means cheaper fixed costs per MWh.
-Healthcare costs related to air pollution will decrease ($5.5 billion in Canadian healthcare costs are tied to air pollution)
-Sick days and lost economic opportunity due to air pollution will decrease
-Between economy of scale and competition, the upfront consumer cost of electric vehicles is dropping to the point that consumers will save money over the lifetime of their vehicles. We're almost at that level now.
Truthfully, I’m not even fully on board with EVs. My ideal for Canada would be a nuclear electricity – hydrogen fuel car economy. Regardless, I want combustion vehicles off city streets.
Future generations will look back and us wonder “Those people knew that combustion pollution is literally killing them, they had the technology, they had the money, they would have saved money in the medium term, and a subset of them still fought tooth and nail against it”.
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