With the Super Bowl – or, more accurately, Super Bowl commercials – being an annual reflection of the zeitgeist, this year’s game was notable. No fewer than eight commercials for electric vehicles aired during the February broadcast, mixed among promotions for cryptocurrency, beer and potato chips.
The gist: Buckle up; electric vehicles are coming, an assertion supported this year by legislation in Olympia and Washington, D.C.
The Washington Legislature approved measures to phase out sales of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2030. The new law sets aside $25 million worth of incentives for people who purchase EVs, part of a goal to eliminate fossil fuel emissions in the state by 2040.
Nationally, the Inflation Reduction Act – a climate bill masquerading as an anti-inflation bill – extends tax credits for people who purchase electric vehicles. Tax credits have been added through 2032 for the purchase of an EV – up to $7,500 for a new electric vehicle and $4,000 for a used one.
The impetus is the increasingly obvious impact of climate change. The burning of fossil fuels creates carbon dioxide, which becomes trapped in the atmosphere and contributes to the warming of the planet. That, as we have seen, results in more frequent and intense floods, wildfires, hurricanes and other extreme weather events. Not to mention droughts that promise long-term negative impacts throughout the Western United States.
Interestingly, a newspaper article from 1912, under the headline “Coal Consumption Affecting Climate,” has made the rounds recently on social media. The impact of coal burned in furnaces “may be considerable in a few centuries,” warns the article, the authenticity of which has been confirmed by fact-checkers such as Snopes.com.
We can lament the global economy’s inattention to such warnings over the past 100-plus years. But instead we shall focus on necessary actions moving forward and a transition to electric vehicles.
That transition will be difficult. Research company Canalys reports that electric vehicles — including plug-in hybrids — accounted for 9 percent of global car sales in 2021. In the United States, EVs made up 4 percent of new-car sales, and in Washington an estimated 1.3 percent of vehicles on the road are electric.
That is understandable; gas-powered vehicles are inextricably linked with the American experience. The nation created the first widely produced cars and provided the first mass market for the vehicles. For more than a century, the roar of an engine and the vision of an open road have been conflated with the freedom and sense of adventure that are endemic to the United States.
While electric vehicles generate more of a whisper than a roar, advances in technology have given them a sense of adventure equal to a combustion engine. Car and Driver reported this year: “EVs are often quicker than gasoline cars, but they’re not always faster. This means that they can go from, say, 30 to 50 mph far more quickly but that their top speeds are often lower than gas cars.”
There also are obvious advantages to not filling up a gas tank — and to not producing carbon emissions.
Critics argue that it is not the place of government to influence the market by incentivizing the purchase of one vehicle over another. Until those critics complain about an estimated $20 billion in annual subsidies and tax breaks for U.S. oil companies, those arguments ring hollow.
Meanwhile, as auto marketing campaigns demonstrate, the age of electric vehicles is on the way.
