There’s been a considerable amount of buzz surrounding plug-in electric vehicles on the interwebs lately, and there’s little guess as to why. While gas prices have dipped a bit in recent weeks, everyone knows they’re bound to continue their cumulonimbus climb soon enough. Electricity, on the other hand, is comparatively cheap. It’s readily available, and in contrast to other alternative fuels (hello hydrogen), there’s infrastructure’s already in place. We’re just as guilty of propagating EV excitement here at Autofiends as any other car blog, but something’s been nagging my Fiendish mind. While everyone touts EV’s as zero-emission vehicles, the truth is there is very little that’s green about electricity. At least the way we’re currently making it. Compounding the problem is the way we go about storing it. Turns out that ain’t exactly eco-friendly either. Make the jump for my four biggest gripes about electric cars.

#4 The False Trade Off

It’s no secret that the transportation landscape is going to drastically change in a few short years. Drivers and passengers alike are probably going to have to endure some pretty severe alterations in how they perceive mobility. And that seems to be one of the big lures of electric vehicles. To an extent, they resemble the cars we drive today. They seat plenty of people, are quieter than an internal combustion engine and can have decent power, depending on the model. The trade off is that your range is currently curtailed by lack-luster battery technology. So what are you really sacrificing here? Not much.

You lose the ability to hop in your car and head to Vegas, but honestly, who does that? [Ed Note: Um... ] What you supposedly gain is an environmentally friendly way to get to work and back that is otherwise similar to your current vehicle. That’s not necessarily true. While the cars themselves may not be the dirty old polluters their petrol cousins are, the energy has to come from somewhere. And in an EV’s case, that somewhere isn’t always pretty. We’ll get to that later.

#3 It’s Cheap Now

Electricity tends to weigh in at pennies on the kilowatt-hour. In fact, one manufacturer says that charging their EV overnight will only cost 10 percent of what it would to go the equivalent distance in a petrol car. While electricity an essential utility right now—heating our homes in the winter, cooling them in the summer, providing us with light, entertainment, the means by which we work — the demand remains pretty steady. Take a second to imagine the implication of just half of the 250 million vehicles on the road in the United States switching over to electric consumption. Without delving into a high school lesson on supply and demand, we’ll just say that when lots of people want a limited quantity of a product, that product gets mighty expensive. Fast. Remember Tickle Me Elmo? Think Toys ‘R Us mayhem on a national scale. That’s not even touching on whether or not our current energy infrastructure could handle the jump in load (answer: no, it can’t).

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