Electric Cars are Better for the Economy

Introduction

This essay was written by me, Brandon Nolet, in the context that I am no expert when it comes to the economy and I think electric cars will be better for the economy in a few ways.

Environment

This one here, I feel is pretty obvious for anyone who’s paid attention to electric cars in the past. By going with electric cars, you’re eliminating a portion of the fossil fuels you would have emitted if using a gas-powered car. Your fossil-fuel-footprint isn’t entirely erased as there’s quite a bit of oil used in the production of lithium-ion batteries, but it’s safe to say that there’s a significant lowering of the amount with electric cars.

By extension, less fossil-fuel emissions means that those in the local area are going to inhale less of those pesky CO2 emissions. With collectively less CO2 emissions in a city, that means that on average the citizens of that city should be healthier. This means less sick days being taken by employees, this means less of a burden on healthcare (in Canada that’s a taxpayer’s expense), this means more time spending time outside and going to events (spending money as well).

If I know one thing about economies (which I probably don’t) it’s that moving money around more often within the local economy is indicative of a strong economy. With people being more productive they can produce more goods, making more money, spending more money, and generally increasing the quality of life year-over-year.

Electricity

This one is a little less obvious.

When you put gas in your car, some of the oil (or most of it in certain places) used to make that gas is imported from another country. That means that money is leaving the local economy leaving businesses in a local economy who have spent money paying their employees to find other ways to make money. That’s a simplified view, but it’ll do for the purpose of this essay. Obviously a net loss in an economy is a bad thing as the supply and demand becomes unequal. In this case the demand is for money, and the supply is lowered.

With electric cars, in a place where renewable energy is used or where the energy is derived from a fully-local supply chain(such as coal mining…save for the oil used in that operation), the money that would be spent on energy is not sent outside the local economy (depending on how local you’re going). With electric cars and a hydroelectric dam, the money circulates in a fashion that presents no leakage.

Conclusion

Buy an electric car. Just kidding. Just know that electric cars are potentially better for a country’s given economy, provided the car is designed, manufactured, and distributed locally.