Starting in July 2010, Ontario will be offering from $4,000 to $10,000 in subsidies for the purchase of electric cars. The province is hoping the electric car will rejuvenate its slumping automobile manufacturing industry. Is this subsidy the way to go?

Electric cars are being hyped as the wave of the future. The first mass produced electric car is expected to be the Chevrolet Volt, which may be unveiled in 2011. The price tag on the Volt is expected to be about $40,000, so $10,000 towards electric cars will help out significantly. The question is whether the Volt will be road ready. As seen in the PBS show Frontline, the Volt failed to even get up a small hill in a test drive in 2008.

This is sad. For those who have seen the 2006 documentary Who Killed The Electric Car, the GM EV1 did work. By 1999 though, the EV1 was not only shelved, but all units were destroyed. Speculation was that oil companies, who were threatened by electric cars, were behind the EV1’s demise. Others think GM bailed out because of the stampede for SUVs.

                  

Critics of the Ontario electric car subsidy say that there is a conflict of interest. The Ontario government is an owner of GM. In addition it was also GM who killed the electric car ten years ago too. Now they are being hugely subsidized to make electric cars again. They were also subsidized by the US government to make the EV1. Will taxpayer money be wasted again? Probably.

Two-thirds of all oil consumed in North America is used for transportation. Automobiles are the second largest source of carbon emissions (number one is electricity) and consume 25% of oil. Therefore electric cars could put a significant dent in decreasing carbon emissions.

One barrier is that Ontario and Alberta rely primarily on coal to generate electricity. Substituting oil for coal could be even worse for the environment. There are ways around this barrier though.

Here in Alberta, Enmax is piloting mirco cogeneration units in its employees homes. Micro cogeneration units re-use waste heat and turn it into electricity which can be used to sell back to the electricity company or used to recharge an electric car. Electricity to run your car is expected to cost 10 to 15 cents a litre.

Before getting too excited, 20 years ago we were told that electric cars were coming any day now. Unfortunately the documentary Who Killed The Gasoline Car won't be coming out anytime soon.

Despite changing their names to energy companies, renewable energy is pretty well off the map for oil companies. Exxon is the largest oil company in the world and spends less than one tenth of one percent of its profits on renewable. In 2008, Exxon’s profits were US$45 billion. Despite the greenwashing advertisements, all the big oil companies are using most their profits to find more oil and gas in harder to reach places using more energy intense efforts.

                   

Oil companies would be the big loser if electric cars were the norm. Oil companies have a lot of resources to kill the electric car in North America and especially here in Alberta. Will the Alberta government offer a similar subsidy for electric cars? Not a chance.  

The electric car would make a significant dent in carbon emissions. We need to go further though. We need to question the love affair with the private vehicle. Enormous resources go into creating automobiles. To create one car, 400,000 litres of water are consumed. Add to this the energy to mine, harvest, create and transport the resources (steel, aluminum, rubber, plastic, petrochemicals, etc) that are used to make a car. Then think about the energy, resources, and emissions used to create roads and overpasses that fill our city. The electric car is still not reducing any of this.

We should be talking seriously about eliminating many of our roads and replacing them with food gardens, parks and public spaces along with increasing density. The roads that remain should be primarily used to transport goods and people by a public transit system that gets you around the city and even city to city quickly.

Unfortunately our minds have been brainwashed by private automobile advertisements that are seen over and over each commercial break over our lifetime. The sabotage of our trolley systems by the oil industry also occurred, a system replaced by a government built highway and road network.

The primary reason for the success of the private automobile is because the way our economic system is structured. Business makes more money selling 40 cars rather than 1 bus. This doesn’t make sense. We need an accounting system that can more accurately calculate the total cost of our decisions (financial, social, and environmental). Parsimony should be valued over waste.  

The electric car is the lesser of the many evils of our transportation system. It shouldn’t be the only option though.