Where in the country you drive an electric vehicle matters a lot for the environment, a point made repeatedly — both by economists (here and here) and by engineers (here and here).
You know what else matters a lot? How much you drive. This gets very little attention, but has major implications for the environmental impact of EVs.
After all, it isn’t the manufacturing of EVs that gives them their environmental edge. If anything, the copper, aluminum, and lithium required to build batteries actually make EVs somewhat more resource intensive.
Instead, the prospect for EVs as a climate change solution hinges on their ability to reduce gasoline consumption. But how much gasoline is actually saved depends, crucially, on how many miles the EV is driven and on how many miles the driver would have otherwise driven in a gasoline vehicle.
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