The Utah Foundation just published a report titled, “Driving toward a cleaner future.” Among its findings were that electric vehicles have a market share in Utah of only 1.6%. That’s still higher than the median for all states, but the market share is creeping upward at an agonizingly slow pace.
The normal response to this would be a shrug. The marketplace should decide whether to shift to alternative fuels, right? With the United States now among the top energy producing nations of the world, and with gas relatively cheap — today’s $2.63 a gallon is the equivalent of 33 cents in 1965 dollars — what’s the big deal?
That may be a good answer for people who live somewhere that doesn’t suffer regularly from the type of inversion-induced smog that often chokes the air along the Wasatch Front. This may have been a mild fall so far, but Utah’s northern valleys already have seen several hazy days. Utahns tend to list air quality among their top concerns.
So it’s valuable to look at a couple of parts of this report. One concerns the reasons why people don’t buy electric cars.
The report says top concerns are that the cars would run out of power too quickly and that it’s too hard to find a place to recharge. Add to that the purchase price, which averages about $5,400 more than nonelectric cars.
The second part worth noting concerns who does the most polluting. The report found that “large fleet vehicles account for one-third to one-half of Utah’s vehicle emissions, even though they account for only 3% of the vehicle miles traveled.”
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