A swift scan online shows 457 electric vehicle charging stations in Kansas. Most of them are in larger cities, where most of the state’s 4,000 electric vehicles are registered.
We’re now part of an EV campaign to change us from gas guzzlers to watt-burners. It follows a U.N. Climate Change Conference agreement last fall to phase out fossil fuels and achieve net zero emissions by 2050.
Oil barons have doubts, given the plan’s speedy deadlines and its implication that the internal combustion engine is already a relic. Oil and gas, they say, will remain crucial, stabilizing the system as it changes over the long term.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that 33 million light duty vehicles will be on the road by 2030 and that America will need 28 million charging ports to keep them going. Most of them will be at homes, with a million (public) fast-chargers near home and work.
*
In Kansas, six new locations were announced in January for electric fast-charging stations in places with scarce EV service. They are Emporia, Garden City, Cherokee, Fredonia, Belleville and Pratt. This $5.8 million state-federal project is part of a $7.5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula program.
NEVI, as it is known, is an offspring of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The program (80 percent federal) envisions Kansas at mid-point in a coast-to-coast interstate vehicle charging grid. The state seeks $39.5 million in NEVI funding (matched with $10 million from Topeka) through the next five years.
Although the sticker price on electric vehicles has come down recently, $40,000 to $50,000-plus is a lot to pay for a small sedan. Finding places to charge one is a challenge. EV mechanic-technicians are rare in these parts and service is scarce, its cost elusive.
In time, motorists along the Interstate may find plenty of charging stations, but for the people who live in distant towns not much is seen of the rush to put America in electric cars.
*
Farm machines and implements, great guzzlers of gasoline and diesel fuel, seem to be out of the immediate discussion. Think of the batteries needed for an E-tractor, combine or wheat truck, where to recharge them and how to keep them running at harvest or planting time. If it takes half an hour to charge a light sedan to 80 percent, what’s required for the equipment in a milo harvest?
The love affair with EVs confronts reality. To achieve real change, the national grid must be renovated and fortified at tremendous cost to supply greater demands for electricity. It is one thing to embrace achievement, but quite another to manage its care and feeding. If we want something new and different to last, we must have a way to make it old and familiar.
Advancement comes at a price in spite of our best intentions; consider the environmental cost to produce electric vehicles and ditch their waste. The chief components in EV batteries come from cobalt, lithium and nickel, mined with brutal impact on the surroundings.
It recalls our rush to nuclear power, leaving aged reactors and piles of deadly waste simmering in vats and deep graves across America. Our craving for electric vehicles may lead to a similar spinoff. When the batteries wear out in ten years or so, what then ‒ dumping a la nuclear waste?
We have learned the price for using oil and coddling nuclear. The lesson now percolates for electric vehicles.
