Electric Cars and Their Effects on Smog Pollution in Los Angeles

The question of whether or not electric vehicles significantly reduce smog pollution more than they serve threats to the environment still stands in many urban areas today, one specifically being Los Angeles. Los Angeles is known for its city lines, businesses, people, and overall ecstatic ambiance. With a city as large as this one, all types of pollution are bound to be present. Smog pollution in particular is a big issue in Los Angeles due to all types of transportation that is found in the city, whether it be coming from the overuse of cars, motorcycles, buses, or all three. This issue has led people to come up with different ways to help reduce and prevent smog. One of these ways is by purchasing and using electric vehicles more often. Doing so is said to produce fewer emissions overall than gas-powered vehicles, but there are actually red flags that not enough people realize and acknowledge. For instance, according to BikeHike, “electric cars are the ones generating more carbon emissions” because electric cars actually store energy in big batteries that tend to have high environmental costs (BikeHike). This means overall that although they serve benefits towards reducing the amount of smog, they still have negative effects as well that make them bad for the environment. This leads us to the previously asked question of whether or not they do a greater good than bad to the environment, which to that thought my answer would be I think that they do more harm than good. Although they do genuinely help cut down the percentage of total carbon emissions, they still seem to contribute a good amount of negative factors to the environment, like how they are known to emit more greenhouse gases than traditional vehicles do. According to the Swedish Environment Institute (SEI), “the moment an electric car is manufactured, up to 17.5 tons of carbon dioxide is emitted by the making of the average electric car battery” (SEI). The more carbon emissions, the more smog we get back in return. Looking at this, we can see how purchasing and using electric vehicles more does not necessarily solve the problem of smog pollution in Los Angeles, or at least it does not just simply help it without negatively impacting the environment as a whole. This is one of the reasons why smog pollution has not entirely cleared up by now as electric cars have been around for a while now and seem to have not entirely worked as intended to. Knowing this, I think that what needs to change is we need to start relying less on technology to do all of the work for us and take matters into our own hands by partaking in more natural solutions to reduce smog pollution in Los Angeles, such as walking more and driving less. When you really think about it, there are some places that you can easily walk to in a short amount of time where driving there is completely unnecessary, especially in big cities like Los Angeles. We need to start being more productive and spend those ten extra minutes walking to the grocery store instead of getting there only a few minutes early when using transportation.