The ICCT estimated an expense of $28 billion to achieve this expansion in ten years.

As of 2024, the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) projects that the United States public charging infrastructure would need to expand from approximately 216,000 chargers in 2020 to 2.4 million by 2030 to accommodate an estimated twenty-six million EVs.

The biggest obstacle to broader consumer adoption of EVs and PHEVs remains the lack of infrastructure to support them—specifically, public charging stations.

As of November 2023, EVs sold in the United States had reached a median range of 270 miles (435 kilometers) and a maximum range of 516 miles (830 kilometers) on a single charge. In contrast, gasoline-powered vehicles have a median range of about 400 miles (644 kilometers).

operators of EVs and PHEVs can face range anxiety, the fear that the vehicle will run out of power before the driver reaches the destination or a charging station.

Consumers of EVs and HEVs are also drawn to the vehicles' reduced noise pollution compared to their gas-powered counterparts. However, EVs and HEVs are so quiet that Congress passed legislation to make them louder.

The DOE's Alternative Fuels Data Center (AFDC) reports that gasoline-powered vehicles produce an average of 11,435 pounds (5,187 kilograms) of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually. In comparison, EVs produce just 3,932 pounds (1,784 kilograms) in well-to-wheel emissions.

Direct emissions are the gases a vehicle actually emits, while well-to-wheel emissions are the emissions involved in producing the fuel itself.

EVs of all varieties burn less gasoline than conventional vehicles, reducing carbon emissions.

one popular misconception stands out: Michael Schiffer has called it the “better battery bugaboo,” the idea that the electric vehicle failed entirely on account of the limited range of its batteries.

Later that year, the California Air Resources Board passed regulations requiring that a fraction of all vehicles sold in the state must be Zero Emissions Vehicles (ZEVs).

However, internal combustion had a 75-year head start, and expectations of range and performance had coevolved with suburbanization. Despite an infusion of government research funds, the electric vehicle proved incapable of displacing the established internal combustion standard.

The unique attributes of the electric car—quiet, reliable, economical, and capable of frequent starts and stops—could not be matched.

Until the end of World War I, electric vehicles continued to prosper, but always in niche markets or as parts of larger vehicle fleets. Where fire danger limited the operation of combustion engines, electric stevedores replaced horses on docks and train platforms. Electric materials handling vehicles were used inside factories and storehouses where delicate merchandise could not be exposed to dirty exhaust fumes

Rapid advances in materials and machining of gasoline engines enabled higher compression and resulted in dramatic increases in both power-to-weight ratio and reliability. The universal electric automobile had failed, and mass motorization via internal combustion had begun.

Following the electrification of lighting and street railways, many observers expected electricity to soon make it “off the rails,” whereas few saw the internal combustion engine as capable of powering a transportation revolution.

Finally, electric technology suffered from unmet expectations, while internal combustion managed to greatly exceed its initial promise.

Regardless of the absolute range and the technical challenge of charging batteries in remote locations, symbolically the electric car was always “tethered to a wire.” The presence of electric service was evidence of civilization and therefore the very thing that early automobilists sought to escape.

exurban touring required infrastructure that favored internal combustion automobiles

Although many wealthy families also “stabled” an electric automobile along with their other cars and horses and used it for local transport, the electric vehicle was too practical and domesticated to satisfy these deeper symbolic needs.

In specific places and times and for select applications, the electric vehicle excelled, but it has never managed to live up to its lofty expectations.

Since its development in the 1890s, the electric automobile has always been the car of tomorrow. Many of the earliest motor vehicles employed electric technology, and thousands of electric vehicles provided satisfactory transport service in the U.S. and Europe over the course of the twentieth century.

“[R]aw materials needed for batteries are extracted at a high human and environmental toll. This includes, for example, child labour, health and safety hazards in informal work, poverty and pollution,” the World Economic Forum’s Global Battery Alliance notes. “A recycling challenge looms over the eleven million tonnes of spent lithium-ion batteries forecast to be discarded by 2030, with few systems in place to enable reuse and recycling in a circular economy for batteries.”

Today’s vehicles emit very little pollution, Lesser concluded, about 1% of what they did in the 1960s.

Jonathan Lesser of the Manhattan Institute, for example, has published research showing that electric vehicles are worse for the environment than modern gas-powered vehicles. Using the Energy Information Administration’s long-term forecasts for the number of electric vehicles through 2050, Lesser estimated how much electricity these vehicles would require. He then broke down the effects on three key pollutants that are regulated in the US Clean Air Act: sulfur dioxide (SO2), oxides of nitrogen (NOX), and carbon dioxide (CO2).

research suggests electric vehicles may have environmental costs that actually exceed those of internal combustion engines when the full cycle of production is included.

It’s important to remember that CO2 emissions are not just about what comes out of vehicles, but also what goes into vehicles. Electric vehicles might not emit emissions through exhaust pipes like gas-powered cars, but they expend tremendous amounts of CO2 during their production and charging cycles, and require numerous elements—such as lithium, cobalt, and manganese—that must be mined from the earth.

“Restrictive government mandates isn’t how we’re going to lead the next hundred years, yet that’s what EPA and California are trying to do,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said after the bill’s passage.

processing of EV materials and parts, including lithi-um-ion batteries.

EVs. They also pointed out that China controls the majority of the mining and

Supporters of the bill also pointed to the higher price and lower performance of electric vehicles (EVs) and the lack of EV charging infrastructure as additional reasons to avoid mandating a transition to EVs.

“There is nothing more quintessentially American than the freedom of the open road, and I’m grateful to my colleagues for supporting this important legislation protecting the freedom of all Americans to drive the ve-hicles of their choice,” Rep. John Joyce (R-Pa.), who co-sponsored the legislation, said in a statement.

“Americans should be able to make choices — and vehicle purchases — that work best for themselves and their families,” Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio) said in a state-ment following the bill’s passage.

Cleaner fuels produce fewer emissions when they’re burned.

Fuel-efficient vehicles use less gas to travel the same distance as their less efficient counterparts. When we burn less fuel, we generate fewer emissions. When emissions go down, the pace of global warming slows.

Global warming endangers our health, jeopardizes our national security, and threatens other basic human needs.

In total, the US transportation sector—which includes cars, trucks, planes, trains, ships, and freight—produces nearly thirty percent of all US global warming emissions, more than almost any other sector.

Our personal vehicles are a major cause of global warming. Collectively, cars and trucks account for nearly one-fifth of all US emissions, emitting around 24 pounds of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases for every gallon of gas. About five pounds comes from the extraction, production, and delivery of the fuel, while the great bulk of heat-trapping emissions—more than 19 pounds per gallon—comes right out of a car’s tailpipe.

“Americans should be able to make choices — and vehicle purchases — that work best for themselves and their families,” Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio) said in a state-ment following the bill’s passage.