Jae C. Hong/AP Photo
An electric vehicle is plugged into a charger in Los Angeles, August 25, 2022.
The other day, Peter Coy, a writer whom I usually admire, had a column in The New York Times that seemed peculiar. His story, titled “A Climate Hawk’s Issues With Electric Vehicles,” was counterintuitive: Electric vehicles are actually more harmful to the environment than hybrid cars.
So I read the column again, and did a little digging. I think Coy got the story wrong; and worse, was taken in by a storyline that is part of a well-organized campaign by carmakers, oil companies, climate deniers, and right-wing Republicans looking to block the Biden administration’s agenda of accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels.
Here’s the supposed story. Coy begins, “[T]here’s a good argument to be made that the government, and automakers, are leaning too hard into all-electric and neglecting the virtues of hybrid technology.” But if you drill down and look harder, there really is no such valid argument.
According to the story, if you count the environmental cost of batteries, and compare how people actually drive hybrids versus EVs, hybrids win. Coy relies extensively on analysis and data provided by Toyota, adding the disclaimer that Toyota, which has invested heavily in hybrids, is far from disinterested.
Coy quotes Toyota, “The overall carbon reduction of … 90 hybrids over their lifetimes is 37 times as much as a single battery electric vehicle,” and adds, “That’s a stunning statistic if true.”
But is it? As evidence that the statistic is valid, Coy quotes Ashley Nunes, a senior staffer of the Breakthrough Institute: “Toyota’s claim is accurate. We’ve crunched the numbers on this,” says Nunes.
That should raise some suspicion. The Breakthrough Institute is identified only as “a think tank.” But as most people who follow climate issues know, Breakthrough was co-founded by Michael Shellenberger, an abrasive contrarian who has long downplayed the worst scenarios for climate change, manipulated data, and attacked mainstream environmental groups as being responsible for lack of progress on the problem.
One of his essays with the other Breakthrough co-founder Ted Nordhaus, later expanded into a book, was titled “The Death of Environmentalism.” Since leaving the think tank in 2015, Shellenberger has become a right-wing talking head. His latest book, using data acrobatics to blame homelessness on liberals, titled San Fransicko, was skewered in these pages by Peter Dreier.
But lest this seem guilt by association, let’s take a deeper look at the real story. The argument is that since electric vehicles use dramatically more key minerals like lithium in their production, thanks to their bigger batteries and heavier weight, if we instead distribute those minerals around to hybrid cars, and assume that every one of them will replace a traditional gas car, emissions will be reduced on net.
Given the assumptions, that is a plausible claim. But what it does not tell us is whether an individual hybrid car creates more greenhouse gas emissions than an individual EV. The answer is yes, by quite a lot (aside from a handful of regions with mostly coal-powered electricity). This is no surprise given that hybrids can get as little as 15 miles per gallon.
It’s true that behemoth American EVs tend to consume a lot of resources. But one could equally well turn that fact around and argue for regulations on vehicle size and weight, so drivers are pushed to buy, say, a Chevy Bolt rather than a 9,000-pound Hummer EV.
If you want to research this for yourself, have a look at the EPA’s excellent, thoroughly documented and regularly updated page “Electric Vehicle Myths.” There is a whole section devoted to refuting the contention that EVs are worse for the climate because of the costs and environmental toll of battery manufacturing.
Toyota made a big bet about a decade ago that EVs would be some decades off and they could get a lot more profit out of their existing factories. This turned out to be a major mistake, as first Tesla and now Kia, Hyundai, and BYD have gotten a head start on what will clearly be the car industry of the future. Now, the company is reduced to slippery data tricks to try to convince people to buy their Priuses. It is disappointing to see a journalist as good as Coy unintentionally doing their bidding.
