David Stevenson's letter to the editor in the Dec. 9 Gazette had more misinformation than information. I just checked some of his info on the internet.
Stevenson said "EVs ... [are] less than 1% of new car sales." My search on the string "USA EV sales percent of cars" returned, in the first link, that figure as 6.1%. It was on the cleantechnica.com website. Other links said it was 18% in California. In European and many other countries, sales figures are much higher. At the higher end, EV sales percent are: 86%, Norway; 72%, Iceland; 43%, Sweden; 35%, Denmark; 10%-20% for many other EU countries. Communist Vietnam has just delivered the first shipment of stylish EVs to this country under the brand name VinFast, and at competitive prices. They have a website.
Stevenson's argument against EVs is based on the fact that, at present, most energy going into materials and assembly is still coming from fossil fuels. This fact will change completely in a decade or two. A very massive amount of industrial and commercial transitioning has already started to get to renewables for both mining and manufacturing. Giant battery EV dump trucks, 18-wheeler trucks (Tesla, Volvo), buses, ships, aircraft are already on the road, in the water or in the air. Hydrogen fuel cell electric trains are running now in Germany. Many factories are already transitioning to electricity from renewables. Toyota has had a hydrogen car, the Mirai, on the road for several years now, mostly in California. One battery truck vehicle was manufactured entirely with green electricity (zero emissions). I have 600 to 800 PDF files downloaded off the internet in the last few years on all of this.
Down the road, within some decades, all of our electrical and motional energy needs could clearly come, ultimately, from renewable and nonemitting sources. A few countries and a few U.S. states already have near 100% of their daytime electricity demand from renewable generation. And, from what I have seen, there is great interest in renewables in almost all of the commercial world except the fossil industries (gas, coal, oil).
What is missing from Stevenson's letter to the editor but massively important? Not a single sentence about climate change. How many people are fully aware of – or remember about – the 2021-22 record droughts, rainfalls, storms, wildfires, temperatures, as well as high tide and storm surge floodings, and sea-level rise? These things are already here, right now, not decades away. And, don't forget that greater drought started to cause crop yields to decrease in some places around the world. California lost a million acres to drought this year and one article said wildfires in that state caused more CO2 release than all fossil fuel combustions in that state.
What is Stevenson's problem? It's in his last couple of paragraphs. He doesn't like government mandates. You need mandates because some corporate executives are too lazy and selfish to get with the program, and save the planet.
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