A U.S. transportation system running entirely on all-electric vehicles would save every American household an average of $1,000 a year by 2050 and bring two million new jobs to the economy, according to the 2035 Report 2.0, a study by the University of California at Berkeley.
The conversion also would prevent 150,000 premature deaths attributable to poor air quality and avoid $1.3 trillion in health care charges and environmentally-related clean-up and similar costs over the next 30 years.
Targeted government policies could convert the U.S. vehicle fleet from fossil fuels to batteries by 2035, the study said.
“The uptake of electric cars and trucks is already exceeding market projections,” energy engineer Amol Phadke at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory said in comments quoted by Business Insider.
Targeted government policies could make rapid conversion practical “and the necessary charging infrastructure can be built cost-effectively without straining electricity grids,” he noted.
Within ten years, U.S. carmakers could be selling electric cars only, with 80 percent of new trucks sold also running on electrons by then, reducing harmful emissions by 35 percent nationwide, according to the report.
Electric trucks already are cheaper to own and operate than diesel versions, calculated against the total per-mile cost to buy and operate the vehicles, the study said.
By 2026, electric cars’ total costs will fall below those of gas buggies, it forecast.
The study factored in needed public charging stations, the electricity demand those vehicles would create, and the total cost of the national conversion.
Federal, state, and local policy initiatives needed to make the transition possible were detailed in Accelerating Clean, Electrified Transportation by 2035: Policy Priorities, a separate analysis by Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan policy research firm in San Francisco.
Policy targets include stronger emissions standards, financial incentives, and labor standards that would foster domestic manufacturing, the firm reported.
TREND FORECAST: While the media and governments continue to focus on electric vehicles, they ignore the downsides, which we have long been reporting on. Among them, the technology of EVs is not, and has not, being mastered. The problem of recharging batteries, an 1800’s invention, will limit their mass-market acceptability.
