Measuring the benefits of an electric vehicle

Before this summer, climate change had always seemed a rather abstract concept. I knew it was happening and I knew we had to do something about it, but it appeared to be a gradual process that would take decades to play out.

Then large parts of the world started burning. And other places were suffering from catastrophic flooding. As I read about these disasters, the algorithms decided to show me even more related stuff, like the graphs of sea and land temperatures and the climate records being broken on a daily basis and the future started to look increasingly dark.

I went in search of positive climate news and the increasing use of EVs along with the increasing use of renewables to generate electricity gave me some hope for the future. This post gave me the idea of automating the calculation of the equivalent MPG of an EV. I liked this comparison since we are all familiar with the MPG for a fossil fuel car. So here you can calculate the equivalent MPG in terms of emissions and also cost.

Plugging in some numbers for the UK suggested owning an EV is a good thing for the environment and for your pocket. Even for the dirtiest countries (I'm looking at you Poland), running an EV is probably equivalent to running a fossil fuel car and will only get better as we transition to cleaner sources of energy. Of course, not using a car for journeys is an even better option