Quoted from Reality_Studio:Just look at air quality changes during the first covid lockdowns which effectively took all gas powered vehicles of all types off the roads. The air quality improvement in cities world wide was huge! There's some really dramatic differences in places like India where they don't have as strict tail pipe emission controls as we do here, but even in other cities world wide the difference was amazing. We had record high air quality in LA during that time as well.
I don't see your link but I'm not sure I would trust such an article written in "Motor City" who's lively hood depends on building gas engines. Regardless this also has been debunked quite a bit and it's been shown in many comparisons that an electric car is cheaper to own and operate than a gas car. I spreadsheet everything and I charted all costs and expenses of my last gas car a 2018 Camaro ZL1 and my 2019 Tesla Model 3 Performance both over three years. Not exactly an equal comparison as the Model 3 blows it away in basically every metric (performance, utility, fun, etc) but regardless it was around ~$8600 more over three years to operate the Camaro.
Now I know anytime I mention something like this someone will say "Yeah but my 1976 Trabant will be far cheaper" and sure it will be but that's not an equivalent comparison.
Loved it when William Jeanes named the Trabant the Best car in their Ten Best issue many years ago.