We are not ones to buy new cars very often. With a couple of exceptions, we have been happy to purchase used vehicles for most of our lives. Currently we have a car and a pickup. Both are 2011 models and both are relatively low mileage for us. We tend to run our vehicles in to the 200,000 to 300,000 mile range. This may not, however, be the best strategy for us in terms of finances and the future. There are a lot of factors in the decisions we will make in years to come.

One factor is that we will come to a point sometime in the future when we don’t need two vehicles. It is difficult, however, to determine when that time will be. It will be dependent upon age and ability. But it will also be dependent upon our decisions regarding housing. Right now we live in a place that requires driving for most basic errands. I can get a few groceries from the small grocers in our village with my bicycle, but for the trips to stock up the pantry we need to drive some distance to a full grocery store. Doctors, pharmacy, and a host of other services require drives of more than ten miles.

Another factor that is a challenge for us to weigh accurately is cost of operation. We know that the price of fuel will continue to rise. Living close to Canada gives us a clear understanding of how prices here are lower than most of the rest of the world. And despite what some people claim or fantasize about, the price of fuel will not come down and stay down for long. Were we to purchase an electric vehicle, we could charge it at home most of the time and with our solar panels, we produce a lot more electricity than we consume. Charging a vehicle at home would be essentially free for us.

But we would have to save a LOT of money to offset the cost of an electric vehicle. They are expensive. Besides we aren’t really new car kinds of people. We usually shop for used vehicles and there are not very many used electric cars on the market.

Then there is the problem of range. While an electric vehicle would work well for our local driving, it might be difficult to plan long trips in an electric vehicle. There are some places in rural locations where we like to go where charging stations are few and far between. We would love to explore more of British Columbia and the Yukon and there are some long stretches of road up there with no chargers.

Charging infrastructure is improving rapidly. This month the City of Mount Vernon here in Washington will cut the ribbon on its new Library Commons. The parking structure attached to the new library has as many charging stations as there are gas pumps in the entire town. And the structure has been planned with capacity to expand charging facilities in the future. There are more and more places to charge electric vehicles, including additional fast chargers being built all the time.

An electric vehicle has its appeal, but it is not a perfect solution to every transportation need. Fortunately for us, we don’t need to replace either of our vehicles right now, so we have time to think and consider our options.

There are mixed reports about how quickly electric vehicles will replace fossil fuel vehicles. I was interested to read the Norway now has more electric vehicles on the roads than vehicles powered by fossil fuel. There are 754,303 all electric vehicles registered in Norway compared with 753,905 vehicles that run on fossil fuel. Those figures are for private vehicles and do not include commercial vehicles such as transport trucks. Norway is on track to become the first nation on earth to end the sale of new gas and diesel cars by 2025 - just a year from now. Currently nine out of every ten personal cars sold in Norway are electric vehicles.

Of course, Norway is a small country. It doesn’t have the vast distances of unpopulated areas that Canada and the American West have. And cities in Norway have significant charging infrastructure. Many places offer free parking to electric vehicles. Every Norwegian town and city has plenty of free charging stations. There are 2.000 of them in Oslo alone. More interesting to me, however, is that Norway has been able to manage the transition to electric vehicles with tax breaks and government incentives. Those tax breaks and government incentives have been funded by oil and gas. Norway is one of the world’s largest exporters of oil.

Using the sale of oil to finance the transition to electric vehicles has obvious positive effects on air quality in Norway, but its impact on global climate change is a bit more questionable. I suppose one could argue that they are selling fuel that would be consumed whether or not they sold it as other countries are still very dependent upon oil as an energy source. From a purely environmental point of view, however, the best use of oil and gas is to leave them in the earth. The process of extracting and burning the fuels contributes to global warming and lowered air quality worldwide. Exporting pollution is a far cry from ending pollution.

The current climate crisis is the result of many complex factors and decisions. The solutions will come from multiple sources. There is no “one size fits all” solution to the climate crisis. If it were easy to solve, we would have already done so. Electric vehicles can be part of the solution, especially in places where renewable sources of electricity are common. The transition away from fossil fuels will demand certain sacrifices, and we aren’t very practiced at making sacrifices. And none of us can see the future clearly.

So we will continue to ponder and consider. It seems to me that the decision about what to drive is more critical than ever before in our experience. We’ve got a lot of homework to do before we come to a conclusion.