Rich neighborhoods have more electric cars than poorer ones, but a study from UCLA says electric cars help clean the air everywhere.
But here’s the catch: roads going through poorer areas still have a lot of pollution from regular cars.
The study says places with more electric cars see 40% more pollution reduction in poorer areas. Sounds good, right? But here’s the thing – that 40% is a lot of cleaning for a small mess.
Unequal pollution
Poor neighborhoods still have way more pollution than others because there are just more cars around them. It’s not just electric cars helping, but all kinds of cars, and there are just more of them in poorer areas.
“Because EVs travel all over, the benefits from reduced tailpipe emissions get shared across communities,” the researchers explain. “That’s encouraging, but there’s still a gap in who gets clean air, and it’s a big gap.”
The study suggests making it easier for poorer families to buy clean cars by offering them more monetary incentives. These incentives would apply to different types of clean cars, like electric or hydrogen-powered ones. The researchers also say the government must make big trucks that deliver things switch to cleaner options. That’s because these large trucks pollute more than smaller vehicles.
Pollution disadvantage
“Drivers in disadvantaged communities and lower-income communities don’t own as many zero-emission vehicles as those in more affluent areas, and they live near transit arteries full of vehicles that still produce massive amounts of pollution,” the researchers explain. “To make a transition equitable and healthy, we need to encourage EV adoption across the board, we need to clean up the heavy fleet, we need to address brake and tire wear particles, and we need to include disadvantaged communities in discussions about the transition.”
The researchers discovered that people in nonwhite and less wealthy areas owned fewer electric vehicles (EVs) compared to wealthier and predominantly white neighborhoods. Qiao Yu, the lead author and a graduate student focusing on transitioning to a carbon-free future, highlighted this inequality.
To illustrate, in 2020, nearly half of the people in Los Angeles County lived in less advantaged neighborhoods, but they only owned 18% of the county’s EVs. In contrast, about a quarter of the population, identified as white, owned 45% of the EVs. Among the Hispanic population, who made up 48% of the county, only 26% of EVs were owned by them.
“We want to know why EV ownership is so much lower in disadvantaged communities, and find ways to change that,” the researchers conclude. “We’re talking to community-based organizations to ask, what are your barriers to adopting EVs? Do you have access to charging stations? Do you know the pros and cons of EVs? Do you know about rebates? We want to make sure they’re involved in deciding what policies would help them.”
