Please Enjoy This Moralizing Rant About Electric Cars

4 min readJul 27, 2021

Let me just start out by soft-pedaling my point: You’re a bad person. We all are. Sinners, born into a vat of acid slowly eating at our existence until we’re just an intrepid vapor hoping one day to reform in the void.

So, why NOT make the choice to buy an electric car?

Electric cars are better for the environment. They just are. Yes, yes, yes. I know, manufacturing electric cars produces more CO2 than manufacturing a gas powered car. But, if you’re buying new, you’re making the choice to bring a baby car into the world that is going to last more than just a few thousand miles (unless you wreck it, you monster! How could you even think about treating your newborn car that way? Maybe you’re not a fit car parent. Here’s a bus pass). The fact is, after an electric car gets produced, it’s annual/weekly/secondly emissions are always going to be less than a gas-powered car. They’ll last longer. And the average lifespan of a car is over 200,000 miles now. So the graph of CO2 produced over time will eventually be less than a gas powered car. Usually, that happens within the first two years of ownership. Check out this, this, this, and this if you don’t believe me or feel free to do the math yourself. You don’t need to know the exact CO2 output to know that it will be generally better. I use 100% renewables for my electricity so there are literally almost no more carbon emissions from the car but if you use public charging, you can rest assured you’ll still feel morally superior.

You can also get tax credits for not being evil. Here’s a list since sentences suck and it’s half Oregon-specific because that’s where I live:

$2,500 Oregon’s Clean Vehicle Rebate Program (you can get an additional $2,500 off if you earn under about $77,000 in the Portland metro area)
$7,500 Federal Tax Incentive

So, you’ll probably get $10,000 off MSRP (or buy used, you’re out of excuses). For example, on my Bolt, where the MSRP is 36,500, the actual cost came out near $23,500 after an $8,000 incentive through Chevrolet (in lieu of the expired federal tax credit) and the $5,000 Charge Ahead Rebate. If anyone reading this is a moderate or low-income Oregonian, you can anticipate about $12,500 off any new electric car purchase.

Of course, you can be greener through public transit, biodiesel, biking. This is just one of those ways and if you’re driving an electric car, you really shouldn’t forget to feel bad about lithium mines and CO2 from the power grid. You’re just less bad. If you can do better, then you must do better. And being green is our generation’s anti-fun campaign. Every generation has one. And if it means that we get to continue feeling miserable on a less barren planet, then… whatever I guess. Here’s a list of cars for you to consider. The starting price listed subtracts the incentives available to you in advance (if you qualify for the charge ahead lower-income rebate you can add that in too). I included whether it was union made so you have an additional something to feel bad about if you’re torturing workers on the way to your sweet ride. I only made a list of the cheapest cool ones. So…