Electric Cars: Automotive Craze?

Electric cars are the new automotive craze. Being able to go hundreds of miles on a single charge for a full charge that cost less than three dollars, in a car that produces no greenhouse gases (Carroll). Not burning harmful fossil fuels and receiving a tax break should be reason enough to trade in the dirty dinosaur powered machine in for a clean electric car. Yet electric cars are still not a better option compared to regular fossil fueled cars. Due to electric cars being impractical, the process of generating electricity for the cars, and the repercussion of the batteries and cost of the cars all add up to make electric cars as harmful as fossil fueled cars.

Electric cars work by using battery powered motors to turn the wheels. Cars like

Once the demand for petroleum go down the war for fossil fuels might die out. The problem with that is what batteries in electric cars are made of, lithium. Lithium is not as scarce as petroleum but if all cars need them the supply would go down and some of the only places to extract large amounts of lithium are China and Afghanistan (Braun, World). This leaves electric cars in the same position as fossil fueled cars, where they rely on a non renewable material that is required for them to work, but to get that material there may be war, like there is for petroleum. There is also another problem with lithium, it is hard to dispose of. Due to the toxic chemicals within the lithium batteries disposing of the batteries is expensive and difficult. Electric car manufacturers have proposed the idea of reusing and recharging the batteries but this would cut down the profit from the companies on selling brand new batteries

This sounds good on paper, but in real world going 0-60 in less than five seconds has little use. The problem with the quick acceleration at low speeds is that at high speeds, such as freeway speeds, that acceleration is not there. At higher speeds due to electric cars only having one gear, top speed and acceleration is impacted. Being able to quickly move out of the way of a distracted driver could be life saving and being able to do that at both high and low speeds is a necessity. Electric cars are improving the speed of innovations in the safety and technology of cars. They push manufactures to compete to create the best electric car and some of the technology from the electric cars transfers to fossil fueled cars. Electric cars also provide tax breaks for the owners. Except in most cases the cost of the electric car to a similarly equipped fossil fueled car, the tax break does not pay the price difference at first. But in the long run the cost for recharging the electric car and a few years of the tax break may make the car cheaper than most fossil fueled