The Case For Electric Cars

You Need To Get Out And Around To Understand

Over the past several months, I have been driving all over the country. Me and my Ram pickup. Probably the only one with a Chicago Booth sticker on it but I digress.

You get to see a lot of stuff and run into a lot of people when you drive as much as I have. I have been across the country from Las Vegas to almost Canada three times since Jun 12. In the past two days, I drove to California and back.

You also get to think about a lot of stuff.

When I was driving to California, I could see the pollution haze in the air against the sky and mountains. That got me thinking about electric vehicles.

There are a lot of negatives to electric cars. I won’t dwell on them. It’s easy to make fun of electric cars and this is especially true in a state that has a crappy power grid, to begin with. At the same time, new cutting-edge technology takes time to develop and we are in that position with electric cars. They will only get better and if the government quits subsidizing them, cheaper.

However, I thought of it in terms of centralization vs decentralization. To be clear, I generally favor decentralized solutions because that empowers individual choice. Empowering individual choice is a core tenet of free markets, and I am a free markets guy.

One strong case for electric cars is this. You can centralize the pollution created when you generate the power to charge electric cars. That makes it easier to treat and clean.

Another strong case is in urban or suburban areas where your trips are generally short, electric cars don’t pollute the air so we should have cleaner air. Obviously, in rural areas, electric cars will continue to be a challenge for quite some time. Electric pickups are probably a bad idea but propane or natty gas over-the-road haulers are not.

What practical cases can you make for electric cars?