Who wants to buy a dozen doughnuts and throw 9 of them in the trash before they leave the store? That is about what you’re doing when buying gasoline for your car. Americans spend $179 on gasoline each month on average. That adds up to $2,148 a year. What makes this even worse, according to the Department of Energy, is that only 12-21% of the energy you paid $2000 for is used to move your car. The rest is lost in waste heat from the engine and out the exhaust (that’s why you have a radiator, muffler, and tailpipe). Think of that next time you are filling up at $3.70 per gallon. You are only getting 60 cents in benefits and throwing away $3.10 on every gallon.

Battery electric cars, on the other hand, convert 60% of the energy you pull from the grid to charge the battery into useful motion. That’s 3-4 times more efficient than a gasoline car. Electric cars average 3 miles per kWh and need 33 kWh to travel 100 miles. In WNY, electricity costs around 18 cents/kWh. It will cost $5.94 if you charge at home. The average fuel economy for a gasoline car is now close to 25 MPG, which means it will take 4 gallons and cost you $14.80. Who wants to pay almost $9 more to travel the same distance? We can ‘drill baby drill’ till the cows come home, but that’s only going to make the oil companies richer, not you.

The next time you are standing in the cold pumping gas, ask yourself why you are paying 3 times more for the energy needed to move your car? Also, ask yourself why you are paying $800 more per year, on average, for tune-ups, exhaust systems, oil changes, radiator flushing and all the other maintenance items required to manage all of that wasted energy you are paying a premium for? Electric vehicles need none of that; rotating the tires, checking the brake pads, and changing the cabin filter is about all you do. Oh, and filling up the washer fluid.

Ask yourself how competitive the US auto industry will be in the global market if we keep making old-fashioned gasoline cars when the biggest two markets (China and the EU) are buying electrics? 1 in 3 cars sold in China and 1 in 4 cars sold in Europe have a plug, while only 1 in 10 sold in the US have one. In 2023, global EV sales increased by 35% from 2022 to almost 14 million, which is six times higher than in 2018. In the first quarter of 2024, sales of EVs increased by 25% and now account for 18% of all passenger car sales. S&P Global predicts that 41 million BEV passenger cars will be produced in 2030, which is about 42% of the total global production of 97 million cars. In case you haven’t noticed, it now costs just about the same to buy an EV or a gasoline car.

If US auto manufacturers want a share of the 41 million EVs sold just 4 model years from now, they had better start investing. The good news is that over the past 4 years, investments in electric vehicle and battery manufacturing in the United States have skyrocketed to $312 billion. Ask yourself if the next administration will keep up that momentum and look forward to a future that is electric or look backward toward an oil-dominated past. Then ask yourself what you would rather be spending $179 per month on?

Tom Meara is a Jamestown resident.