By Gina Coplon-Newfield and Mary Lunetta
Electric vehicles (EVs) are cleaner, greener and more fun to drive. Different mileage ranges, prices and car types abound with about 30 plug-in electric sports cars, SUVs and sedans now available from Chevrolet, Nissan, BMW, Ford, Tesla and many other automakers. Shopping for an EV should be fun and easy. So, with so many terrific options available, why are EV sales still at only one percent of total monthly U.S. auto sales?
We launched Rev Up EVs, the first-ever multi-state study of the EV shopping experience, to find out. Based on surveys from Sierra Club volunteers who called or visited 308 different auto dealerships and stores across ten states to check out and test drive EVs, the study finds that there is tremendous room for improvement among both the dealerships and the automakers to provide customers with a better EV shopping experience.
The California Air Resources Board's Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) program requires automakers to sell increasing numbers of EVs between now and 2025. Because of the many environmental and economic benefits of electric vehicles, the ZEV standard is now followed by nine other states as well. With the standards currently up for review, many automakers are lobbying regulators to weaken zero emission vehicle regulations, saying they are doing everything they can to sell EVs.
But the numbers don't add up. A recent Union of Concerned Scientists and Consumers Union survey of randomly selected drivers found that 55 percent of survey respondents in Northeastern states and 65 percent in California are interested in EVs, and that 65 percent of surveyed California drivers wish there were more EV options. An earlier survey of driving habits showed that for more than 40 percent of Americans, switching to an electric vehicle would be practical right now. With such high interest, EV sales should be accelerating at a much faster pace.
By studying the EV shopping experience in each of the ZEV states, the Rev Up EVs study found that some automakers and auto dealers are doing a great job developing, marketing, and selling EVs to consumers by having several EVs on their lots, informed salespeople, and strong EV advertising. These best practices are not rocket science. But many other dealers and automakers are falling short.
The first step to selling any car is to actually have it available for purchase -- you can't sell a car that isn't there. But the Rev Up EVs project found that it's often difficult to find an auto dealership with even one electric vehicle on its lot. Auto dealerships in the nine other ZEV states were 2 ½ times more likely than those in California to find no EV on the dealership lot for customers to see, test-drive, and lease or buy.
Availability may be the first step to selling a car, but it's not the only area with room for improvement. Even at dealerships with at least one EV on the lot, about one third of the salespeople at surveyed dealerships failed to provide their customers with information on the tax credits and rebates that make EVs significantly more affordable and that are proven to increase electric vehicle sales.
To increase EV sales, we can't lower the bar for the auto industry. We need the industry to step up and put best practices to work to sell EVs and comply with the ZEV regulations. In fact, to achieve our climate, air quality, and EV sales goals, we need even stronger ZEV regulations. And it's possible. Automakers can increase inventory and multi-state distribution of EVs, as well as offer attractive deals to dealerships. Once they're on dealers' lots, EVs need to be charged, ready for test drives, and prominently displayed. Auto dealers and makers need to train their salespeople on the ins and outs of EVs so that salespeople can answer customer questions. Finally, automakers need to increase advertising of their EVs which, in turn, will encourage dealers to advertise more at the local level.
In less than a month, drivers across the country will take part in the largest celebration of electric vehicles, National Drive Electric Week, now in its sixth year. At upwards of 200 parades, ride and drives, charging station ribbon cuttings, city fleet displays and other community events, people across the country will showcase the many benefits of driving electric. In previous years, we've found these events to lead to more people heading to dealerships to buy or lease EVs. Will the industry be ready to welcome these customers?
Gina Coplon-Newfield is the director of the Sierra Club's Electric Vehicles Initiative. Mary Lunetta is the campaign representative for the Sierra Club's Electric Vehicles Initiative.
Though made in large part of plastic, glass, ceramics, gold and copper, they also contain critical resources. The gallium used for LEDs and the camera flash, the tantalum in capacitors and indium that powers the display were all pulled from the ground — at a price for nature and people.
"Mining raw materials is always problematic, both with regard to human rights and ecology," said Melanie Müller, raw materials expert of the German think tank SWP. "Their production process is pretty toxic."
The gallium and indium in many phones comes from China or South Korea, the tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo or Rwanda. All in, such materials comprise less than ten grams of a phone's weight. But these grams finance an international mining industry that causes radioactive earth dumps, poisoned groundwater and Indigenous population displacement.
Environmental Damage: 'Nature Has Been Overexploited'
The problem is that modern technologies don't work without what are known as critical raw materials. Collectively, solar panels, drones, 3D printers and smartphone contain as many as 30 of these different elements sourced from around the globe. A prime example is lithium from Chile, which is essential in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles.
"No one, not even within the industry, would deny that mining lithium causes enormous environmental damage," Müller explained, in reference to the artificial lakes companies create when flushing the metal out of underground brine reservoirs. "The process uses vast amounts of water, so you end up with these huge flooded areas where the lithium settles."
This means of extraction results in the destruction and contamination of the natural water system. Unique plants and animals lose access to groundwater and watering holes. There have also been reports of freshwater becoming salinated due to extensive acidic waste water during lithium mining.
But lithium is not the only raw material that causes damage. Securing just one ton of rare earth elements produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste, and has devastated large regions of China, said Günther Hilpert, head of the Asia Research Division of the German think tank SWP.
He says companies there have adopted a process of spraying acid over the mining areas in order to separate the rare earths from other ores, and that mined areas are often abandoned after excavation.
"They are no longer viable for agricultural use," Hilpert said. "Nature has been overexploited."
China is not the only country with low environmental mining standards and poor resource governance. In Madagascar, for example, a thriving illegal gem and metal mining sector has been linked to rainforest depletion and destruction of natural lemur habitats.
States like Madagascar, Rwanda and the DRC score poorly on the Environmental Performance Index that ranks 180 countries for their effort on factors including conservation, air quality, waste management and emissions. Environmentalists are therefore particularly concerned that these countries are mining highly toxic materials like beryllium, tantalum and cobalt.
But it is not only nature that suffers from the extraction of high-demand critical raw materials.
"It is a dirty, toxic, partly radioactive industry," Hilpert said. "China, for example, has never really cared about human rights when it comes to achieving production targets."
Dirty, Toxic, Radioactive: Working in the Mining Sector
One of the most extreme examples is Baotou, a Chinese city in Inner Mongolia, where rare earth mining poisoned surrounding farms and nearby villages, causing thousands of people to leave the area.
In 2012, The Guardian described a toxic lake created in conjunction with rare earth mining as "a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world."
Local residents reported health issues including aching legs, diabetes, osteoporosis and chest problems, The Guardian wrote.
South Africa has also been held up for turning a blind eye to the health impacts of mining.
"The platinum sector in South Africa has been criticized for performing very poorly on human rights — even within the raw materials sector," Müller said.
In 2012, security forces killed 34 miners who had been protesting poor working conditions and low wages at a mine owned by the British company Lonmin. What became known as the "Marikana massacre" triggered several spontaneous strikes across the country's mining sector.
Müller says miners can still face exposure to acid drainage — a frequent byproduct of platinum mining — that can cause chemical burns and severe lung damage. Though this can be prevented by a careful waste system.
Some progress was made in 2016 when the South African government announced plans to make mining companies pay $800 million (€679 million) for recycling acid mine water. But they didn't all comply. In 2020, activists sued Australian-owned mining company Mintails and the government to cover the cost of environmental cleanup.
Another massive issue around mining is water consumption. Since the extraction of critical raw materials is very water intensive, drought prone countries such as South Africa, have witnessed an increase in conflicts over supply.
For years, industry, government and the South African public debated – without a clear agreement – whether companies should get privileged access to water and how much the population may suffer from shortages.
Mining in Brazil: Replacing Nature, People, Land Rights
Beyond the direct health and environmental impact of mining toxic substances, quarrying critical raw materials destroys livelihoods, as developments in Brazil demonstrate.
"Brazil is the major worldwide niobium producer and reserves in [the state of] Minas Gerais would last more than 200 years [at the current rate of demand]," said Juliana Siqueira-Gay, environmental engineer and Ph.D. student at the University of São Paulo.
While the overall number of niobium mining requests is stagnating, the share of claims for Indigenous land has skyrocketed from 3 to 36 percent within one year. If granted, 23 percent of the Amazon forest and the homeland of 222 Indigenous groups could fall victim to deforestation in the name of mining, a study by Siqueira-Gay finds.
In early 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed a bill which would allow corporations to develop areas populated by Indigenous communities in the future. The law has not yet entered into force, but "this policy could have long-lasting negative effects on Brazil's socio-biodiversity," said Siqueira-Gay.
One example are the niobium reserves in Seis Lagos, in Brazil's northeast, which could be quarried to build electrolytic capacitors for smartphones.
"They overlap the Balaio Indigenous land and it would cause major impacts in Indigenous communities by clearing forests responsible for providing food, raw materials and regulating the local climate," Siqueira-Gay explained.
She says scientific good practice guidelines offer a blueprint for sustainable mining that adheres to human rights and protects forests. Quarries in South America — and especially Brazil — funded by multilaterial banks like the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group have to follow these guidelines, Siqueira-Gay said.
They force companies to develop sustainable water supply, minimize acid exposure and re-vegetate mined surfaces. "First, negative impacts must be avoided, then minimized and at last compensated — not the other way around."
Reposted with permission from DW.