The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Gas Cars Vs. Electric Cars

Introduction

Is there ever a time that business should have precedent over the environment? Businesses of different types have been around since man’s beginning, and they have proven to be beneficial and profitable and at other times harmful and unfavorable. In the movie Hoot, a group of kids do their best to stop a potentially beneficial business from destroying a home of endangered owls. The movie is showing that the business should have to submit to and protect the environment in every situation where harm is possible. Although profit needs to be taken into consideration, a business's affect on the environment and its surroundings has to be respectful and not detrimental in the long-run. For example, as more and more trees are used to make paper, less carbon is absorbed by them and the global temperatures increase. This is called global warming, which is essentially the fact that temperatures are rising due to an increase in the amount of carbon that is released into the air. The continued burning of fossil fuels increases the likelihood that temperatures will rise. The fact that gas cars operate on fossil fuels is a reality that most people see as eventually leading to a significant increase in global temperatures. The gas car business has a negative impact on the environment and has future consequences that are destructive and deadly to the long-term life of humans on Earth. Because of this fact, there are questions about the sustainability of transportation for the massive requirement that people need in order to complete their daily tasks and activities. Transportation has become such a necessity in the daily lives of the people of today’s world that is has to succeed. Driving a gas car is so popular that it is virtually impossible for most people to be successful and accomplish if they do not have any dependable and strong means of transport to get them through their day. Just as equally as important, the transportation business must also be regulated on whether it should stay or get replaced based on its affects of the natural environment. The Earth is crucial for the profit of every single business and thus must be preserved for their prosperity. This fact has led many environmentalists, like the kids in Hoot, to fight for the planet, its inhabitants, and what they believe is right. People have argued over the continued usage of gas cars because of their emissions that contribute to global warming.

Business

Although gas cars can have bad effects on the environment, they do contribute greatly to the success of many businesses. According to Marinelli, “Automobile scholars continue to be astounded by America’s seemingly insatiable appetite for cars” (1989, para.4). The fact that people are constantly wanting new cars is a great sign for car manufacturers and dealerships. Both benefit greatly from consumer purchases of cars and on the actual maintenance for the vehicles themselves. This fact also gives an incentive to car manufacturers to design and build better looking and better performing vehicles for the market. This leads to an increase in the demand for cars that have surpassed previous designs and gotten better technological advancements. All of these new perks of new cars combined with satisfactory marketing increase the profit that car manufacturers and dealerships are able to make, thus helping the economy.

Because gas cars have been around for such a long time, there are plenty of different designs for them out in the market available for many consumers. Many people choose a car based on different things that include: size, color, shape, etc.. According to Coughlin, “It [automobile industry] is a lifestyle defined by fashion, speed, mobility, comfort, and, above all, individual choice” (2004, para.4). Because it is a life changing decision, people will spend lots of time searching through the large quantity of available styles of cars to find one that best suits them. If the seats are uncomfortable in a certain way, or the car doesn’t look too nice on the inside or outside, or if it just doesn’t feel right when driving it, the buyer will certainly not hesitate to search for a better car. This contributes to the motivation for car manufacturers to design better feeling, better looking, and better performing vehicles.

Although purchasing a gas car is convenient in looks and performance, there are other pros and cons with them. The traditional gas car does come in a wide variety of choices. The large diversity of gas cars gives it a vast consumer choice. This benefits the consumers and directly gives incentive for car manufacturers to create better looking cars. As well as having a variety of different looks, the cheap purchase price, short refueling times, and long range that gas cars have make them a big preference for consumers to pick. According to Autotrader, the newest cars that are for sale today at relatively cheap prices range from $12,815 to $15,070 (2015). This is a generally affordable price to the average consumer. This gives purchasing power to the consumer which leads to them wanting a certain type of car. Because of this reason, shopper will likely turn towards a more affordable gas car.

Gas cars have many advantages when it comes to affordability, style, and performance. These advantages give consumers a basis on why gas cars are better than some other alternatives. This rationale directly results in the desire for car companies to produce cars that surpass previous models in order to obtain profit. While there are many beneficial and obvious choices of choosing a gas car, there are environmentally ill cons of owning and using a gas car.

Environment

Commonly well known, gas cars emit carbon into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels which power them. Considering that the majority of people own and use a car, there are oodles of tons of carbon that are being burned each and every day. According to Khan, “Global temperatures have been on the rise, largely because of the human-driven increase in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide” (2017, para.3). This ‘human-driven’ increase refers to the burning of gasoline to power gas cars. The carbon that is emitted negatively affects the environment by increasing temperatures throughout the world. These increasing temperatures have terrible impact on the creatures of the Earth. According to Thompson, “A new report released by the United Nations this week found that climate change can worsen health and safety for workers in outdoor professions and cause billions of dollars worth of lost productivity” (2016, para.1). Because of this reason, workers of the world are being put in harms’ way daily. As well as that, businesses can also be deprived of money that could have otherwise been made. The operation of gas cars has a noxious result on the planet. With the majority of people buying gasoline to continuously run a car, the need for obtaining oil is becoming more and more prevalent. More and more people extracting oil can cause damage to the environment in different ways.

The oil industry is spreading to the oceans in order to meet the demand, which is disastrous for the environment. According to Fears, “Expansion plans come despite fears that the offshore oil industry is poorly regulated and that the planet needs to decrease fossil fuels to combat climate change” (2018, para. 4). The fact that there are ‘fears’ about the ‘poorly regulated’ industry produces a feeling in the public that extracting the oil from the Earth is unhealthy and unsafe. The extraction of oil from the planet can result in catastrophic incidents that are dangerous and hazardous to the environment, an oil spill. Oil spills result in two major disasters, one that harms the business, and one that harms the environment. The business loses out on potential profit from the oil, which in turn harms that business if it exported or if it needed it domestically. The other unhealthy affect is the damage it causes to oceans and marine life. In order to locate the oil and gas, companies use seismic testing to determine where to drill. According to Fears, seismic testing hurts the marine life in the area, including large mammals like whales and dolphins (2018, An act of God section, para. 16). This has a negative impact because it can lead to lessened population numbers for certain species which also enforces an overall modification on the entire ecosystem. Because of seismic testing and oil extraction, there could be conflicting and unwanted outcomes that adversely promote public discussion against the operations performed by oil companies.

In order to combat climate change, it is generally well known that an alteration or replacement is necessary. Gas cars negatively affect the environment in the harmful consequences they bring about. The extraction process for obtaining oil is destructive, unhealthy, and unsafe for aquatic life nearby. Using fossil fuels to continuously power gas cars is detrimental to the future life of the planet. Although there are many pros of buying and using a gas car, there are adverse issues with operating them. The fact that they emit carbon into the atmosphere, contribute to global warming, and can indirectly lead to unfavorable outcomes with oil companies and disastrous repercussions that can wound oceanic creatures leads to gas cars having an overall unacceptable, dangerous, and hazardous influence on their surroundings. Because of this troublesome reality, environmentalists see that using gas cars is toxic and that some different transportation system is needed to correct and improve the world.

Opinion

Gas cars can be helpful to consumers in the fact that they are cheap, but the reality is that they emit carbon into the atmosphere, which contributes to global warming. Although they are cheaper, gas cars are not environmentally friendly. Because of this con, electric cars are better in the sense that they are much better for the environment, and they are an alternative source of transportation that is renewable. Because electric cars run on electricity, there is no need to pay high prices in order to fuel up a gas car. According to Healey, “The government created a stir this week when it said that the power to run an electric vehicle costs only about one-third as much as the cost of gasoline to power a similar vehicle for the same distance” (2013, para. 1). As well as being much cheaper to operate, electric vehicles offer benefits like being able to charge at home. This means that the trip to going to stereotypically disgusting gas stations is no longer needed. With the convenience of at-home charging, owners of electric cars can plug in whenever they want. They can plug in before going to bed, and it would be ready for them in the morning. Because of their lack of an engine and all the other major components that make a gas car run, They also lessen the noise when driving. This means that a trip to the store can be peaceful and quiet or a music party with no interruption from the loud car engine. Electric vehicles offer many benefits that outweigh the benefits of gas cars. Although gas cars have many desirable pros, the notable con of environmental harm is much more serious and significant that make electric cars preferable, positive, and dependable.

Gas cars pollute and contaminate our atmosphere; this makes them highly dangerous and one of the biggest threats to life on Earth. Because of this, questions have been brought up to discuss this problem. Electric cars could be the answer the world has been looking for. Being well known for being zero-emission vehicles, their absence of tailpipe emissions is better for the environment (Kliesch, 2011, para.3). As a result of this, I see electric cars as being the best fix for global warming. Although they are a major investment at first, the payoff is significantly better overall because of all the money saved on gas. The national average price per gallon of gasoline in the United States is a little more than two and a half dollars (“AAA Gas Prices”, n.d.). On the other hand, electric cars are more efficient, and their low fuel costs allow them to travel great distances with less money than a gas car. The average distance able to be traveled on $1 by an electric car is nearly four times further than with a traditional gas car (2019, Pro: Electric cars reduce emissions section, para. 2). This means that the long-term reward of using an electric car far surpasses the benefits available from a gas car.

Gas cars do offer major benefits that include: shorter refueling times, cheaper purchase price, longer range, and plenty of consumer choice options. Even though this is all favorable and helpful to the customers, the continued burning of fossil fuels contribute to global warming. This adverse effect that gas cars have on the environment is unfavorable and unhealthy. Because of this, an alternative source of transportation is necessary in order to guarantee the success of mankind’s future. All of the environmentally friendly benefits that come with these cars combined with their renewability makes them the leading solution to this world-wide issue. In my opinion, the gas car business should still continue to run, but over the long-run, should be replaced with electric cars.

Conclusion

So the question still remains, is there ever a time that business should have precedent over the environment? The gas car business does have various benefits to consumers worldwide. All of its individual advantages over electric cars that include: different styles, shorter refueling times, longer range, and cheaper prices makes it a popular choice for shoppers. While this helps this business and car manufacturers, there is still one major flaw, its effect on the environment. The fossil fuels that have been burning to make thousands of gas cars run has taken its toll on the atmosphere. The carbon emitted has transformed the problem of global warming to a worldwide crisis. The Earth is diminishing and a transition is needed for the sustainability of the human race. The electric car poses as the solution to this issue. The reliability and effectiveness of electric cars are a suitable replacement for the current transportation system on ground. Modern technology has given people the power to alter their harmful habits and help to move forward into a future that is more magnificent, superior, and acceptable for the planet.