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Returning to school season has me reflecting on another summer gone by.

A particularly fond memory is of gathering at J.W. Smith for National Night Out. I have so much appreciation for the law enforcement officers and other public servants who give their time to engage with children and their families.

While enjoying the meal, I was reminded of how Karl Mork of the Boys and Girls Club saved the day during the same event in 2023. Electricity was needed to cook hot dogs and inflate bounce houses but, for some reason, the usual source was not providing power.

Without missing a beat, Karl parked his 2023 Ford F-150 Lightning and started running extension cords. His fully electric truck functions as a power supply with over half a dozen standard power outlets. I had heard of Texans using F-150 Lightning trucks to make it through the extended power outage following a cold spell in 2021 that wreaked havoc upon the power grid in Texas. Seeing the truck build resilience firsthand was a wholly different experience. This is the future.

As of July, my family has driven our plug-in hybrid electric minivan for a full year. The 38-mile all-electric range is more than enough for daily commuting, after which the internal combustion engine provides over 450 miles of range for longer trips.

Though we still pay for oil changes and other costs associated with keeping an internal combustion engine or 鈥淚CE鈥� in good working condition, we are thrilled to be averaging over 75 miles per gallon over our first 14 months. The efficiency gains of the onboard electric motor are paying off.

The physics of conventional ICE vehicles, however, is a sad story. Only 20% of the gasoline burned is converted into forward motion. When our van uses its combustion engine it wastes 80% of every gallon of gas. These losses are primarily in the form of heat generation. Paying Labor Day鈥檚 average of $3.18 per gallon, only $0.64 of each gallon is used to get us to our destination and $2.54 is lost to inefficiency.

Comparatively, the motor of an electric vehicle or 鈥淓V鈥� is approximately 90% efficient, so our van loses only about 10% of each kilowatt hour consumed when running on battery alone. When we charge the 16-kilowatt hour (kWh) battery, we pay around $0.08 per kWh to our electric utility provider.

Charging to the van鈥檚 full 38-mile range costs $1.28. If the van鈥檚 fuel efficiency were only 38 miles per gallon, this would still be the equivalent of paying $1.28 per gallon of gasoline, or less than half of today鈥檚 average of $3.18. The van鈥檚 range does drop during the winter months, but not enough to cut into the annual savings we are accruing.

If, like us, you opt for the cost savings associated with buying a used vehicle, the Inflation Reduction Act provides a used clean vehicle tax credit equaling 30% of the sale price, up to a maximum credit of $4,000. If you can buy a new EV, however, you could qualify for a tax credit of up to $7,500.

Some people balk at the federal government鈥檚 subsidization of highly efficient, non-emitting electric vehicles. I remind those individuals of how the federal government has subsidized the fossil fuel industry with taxpayer dollars for over a century.

According to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Budget, 鈥渇ossil fuel handouts hit a global high of $1 trillion in 2022 鈥� the same year Big Oil pulled in a record $4 trillion of income.鈥� I would much rather see the government provide tax credits to my neighbors for the purchase of EVs instead of helping those same multinational Big Oil corporations continue earning record profits while driving climate change.

If you would like to learn more about electric vehicles and even test drive currently available models, Beltrami Electric Cooperative, located at 4111 Technology Drive NW in Bemidji, will host an EV Car Show from 4 to 6 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 3.

If you attend, you will be able to inspect more than a dozen electric vehicles including an electric school bus, which has a range of over 100 miles, the Red Lake 歪歪漫画 District is using this school year.

Jordan Lutz is a member of the Citizens' Climate Lobby organization. For more information, visit