Things don’t look good for electric cars these days -- but did they ever? Tesla experienced a series of recalls, even before the recent crash in Florida that put the company’s autopilot system in the spotlight. Apparently, watching a Harry Potter movie and letting your car drive isn’t exactly a safe practice.

But the real problem with electric cars is actually the problem they’re marketed to solve: pollution. While the left insists that electric cars are the only way to protect the environment, they’re actually damaging the oil industry while shifting money to liberal interests.

Meanwhile, electric cars have proven to be a greater source of pollution than traditional vehicles.

Charges against Car Charging

One reason why the polluting effects of electric cars are obfuscated is because their proponents point to charging stations as a sustainable alternative to gasoline. What these electric car cheerleaders don’t explain, however, is where the electricity for charging these cars comes from. When the answer is coal, environmentalists no longer have a leg to stand on when they advocate for electric vehicles.

Sourcing energy from coal results in nearly four times the number of pollution deaths than gas due to the soot and smog involved in burning coal. While it’s nice that liberals can separate themselves from this source of pollution, since they don’t see it firsthand when driving electric vehicles, its naïve and hypocritical to proclaim they’re taking care of the environment with these cars.

Furthermore, though the Obama administration rewards drivers of electric cars, the left is really playing both sides of the fence. Though many of these car charging systems rely on coal, Obama’s administration froze all coal mining on federal land earlier this year. Couple that with his Clean Power Plan and thousands of mining jobs, as well as a significant source of U.S. energy, have been decimated with a flick of Obama’s pen.

Production Pollutants

It’s not just charging electric cars that make them an enemy of the earth. These vehicles still come from traditional manufacturing facilities and are actually responsible for a greater per-vehicle quantity of emissions than traditional vehicles. Before they’ve even set tires to pavement, electric cars have already done more damage than their combustion engine counterparts, with the batteries in electric cars playing a big role in this.

Producing the batteries for electric cars means a lot of mining and environmental damage that you won’t hear admitted by electric vehicle proponents. And when those batteries die, do you think they’ll just disappear into thin air, leaving no impact behind? Of course not. Improper disposal of batteries can create lasting damage in the areas where they’re dumped.

Weight Repercussions

Among car owners, electric vehicles are often praised for needing less maintenance than their traditional counterparts, with owners and mechanics citing various fluid changes and part replacements in this figure. This argument, however, is blatantly false. The tires and brakes on electric vehicles in particular are prone to excess wear, more breakdown, and higher emissions than combustion engine vehicles. This is largely due to the fact that electric vehicles are heavier, putting more strain on tires and belts.

The reality is that in order to propel a non-combustion vehicle, there are a lot of heavy pieces needed, while improvements in the combustion engine in recent years have made traditional vehicles much more efficient than in the past. The breakdown in tires and other car parts also produces a variety of non-exhaust emissions that no one seems willing to admit are a result of choosing electric vehicles.

Exporting Their Pollutants

While liberals in major cities snap up electric vehicles -- which do perform better in cities than in rural areas, though still at a high cost -- they’re also exporting the polluting aspects of their choices to less wealthy areas, forgetting about the little guy who’s affected by their choices. Most of the coal used to fuel these vehicles comes from places where you won’t see many electric vehicles, such as West Virginia. These “environmental externalities” shift out of view, but they don’t go away.

Even if over 40 percent of U.S. drivers shifted to electric vehicles, studies have revealed that this would be an unrealistic approach to reducing pollution and improving air quality. Charging these vehicles would result in higher emissions and greater pollution, and that doesn’t even account for the waste involved in transitioning hundreds of thousands of combustion engine cars off the roads.

Where would all of these vehicles -- many of which now get excellent mileage -- go if they were replaced? Would they just be dumped? Manufacturing would also need to speed up to meet demand, causing massive quantities of emissions as electric vehicle plants enter high production mode. The costs, both fiscally and socially, would be astronomical.

It’s time to put an end to the specious argument for electric vehicles when the bulk of the evidence indicates that they aren’t holding up any part of the environmental savior promise. The reality is that electric vehicles are a pet project of the left with no real advantages for society, carrying with them only greater pollution and individual harm.

Keep your combustion engine vehicle. When everyone else catches on, you’ll know you were on the right side all along.