Hollywood: Road trips with e-cars?

It is no secret that Hollywood and road trips go hand in hand. Often the US film industry lets us accompany the main characters of the stories "coast to coast" and travel the vast interior. Roaring combustion engines and smoking exhausts just seem to be part of it - but does it really have to be that way? What if the film characters had used electric cars on their adventures? 

This is precisely the question that the price comparison and switching platform Uswitch asked itself. As part of a study, it looked at iconic road trips in 10 films and TV shows and analysed the routes. With this, Uswitch wanted to calculate how many kilograms of CO2 the trips probably emitted, as well as how these emissions could have been reduced by switching to e-cars. For this purpose, not only the distances travelled and driving times were examined, but also the refuelling times, the density of EV charging stations and the costs.  

In the top 3, with the greatest potential for savings, Toy Story 4 (2019) finds its place first. The cowboy character Woody and fork Forky could have avoided the emission of 611 kilograms of CO2 if they had driven an e-car on their journey from Boston to San Francisco. The two friends could have saved around 220 euros in travel costs, about a third less (29.63%). The road trip from the video game adaptation Need for Speed (2014) follows in second place. According to Uswitch, a saving of 571.87 kg of CO2 emissions would have been possible when crossing the USA. In the process, they would also have halved the costs. In contrast to the 380.64 euros spent on petrol refuelling, about 169.39 euros would have been enough for the charging stops. In third place is Borat (2006), with his satirical road trip as a Kazakh reporter. The distance from New York City to Los Angeles, if driven with a petrol car, would cause CO2 emissions of about 549.62 kg. An electric car, on the other hand, would not only have saved Borat money, but would also have allowed him to get to the West Coast in a more environmentally friendly way.  

But how did Uswitch arrive at this astonishing result? First, the emissions of travel routes for petrol-driven vehicles were calculated. To do this, the EV experts compiled all the information and mapped the routes using the OpenRouteServices (ORS) API in Python. The CO2 emissions of each trip were then calculated using European Environment Agency data (122.3 g/km CO2 for a new passenger car), while fuel costs were calculated using EIA and EPA data. A similar process was then used to calculate possible routes for the electric car via an OpenChargeMap, determining how much CO2, as well as money, could have been saved. Considering the different ranges of different electric vehicles, the best-selling electric vehicle of 2020 was used as a benchmark, namely the Tesla Model 3 Long Range.  

A curious study of the British platform. A study, however, that shows how our mobility behaviour, even in imaginary worlds, can affect the environment. Conscious decisions, even when travelling, should be on our radar in the future.