this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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That's actually an important consideration. I think there might be a failure to understand the overall environmental impact of forcing all cars to electric.
80% of power stations in the USA use fossil fuels to generate power. However power plants are much more efficient than IC engines. Powerplants can be as much as 50% efficient and an electric car can be as much as 80% efficient. End to end efficiency is around 40%, but considering 20% of power stations don't burn fuel let's make that 50% efficient.
So around half of the fuel consumed to power an electric car goes to waste. An IC powered car is around 20% efficient so 80% of the fuel consumed goes to waste. An electric car wastes less, but it's not an enormous amount, a waste of 50% versus 80%.
Then there's the environmental impact of producing and disposing of batteries. An electric car battery contains around a thousand pounds of materials and is industrially intensive to produce. I don't know the numbers as far as how much pollution is created in making batteries and how much environmental impact there is in materials, but were talking about a huge number of cars in the USA, around 300 million which equates to around 300 billion pounds of batteries. That's definitely going to leave a mark.
There's some other considerations like electric cars consume tires faster because they're heavier. Also an amount of pollution is created to refine gasoline which is not required for power plants that use coal or natural gas.
At this point I don't think there's a huge advantage in electric over gasoline in terms of environment impact. However gas will always present the problems it does at the level it does. As power generation relies less on fossil fuels and as battery tech improves the benefits could be dramatic. So it's more a matter of poising ourselves for future tech rather than an immediate fix.
Even if you are charging with 100% coal power, an EV breaks even around 85k miles. With renewable energy, it is less than half that.
Used batteries are starting to be recycled into energy storage for the grid. A battery at 80% (after like 300k miles BTW) is still absolutely amazing for energy density compared to our other methods of storage.
Tires do wear out faster but pretty much nothing else does. There are very few other parts to replace compared to an ICE. Their maintenance cost is a fraction of an ICE. No real oil changes. No belts breaking. No spark plug replacements. Very little brake replacement. The entire life cycle of an EV uses significantly less CO2 than a comparable ICE.
That's not true unless you drive a lot. An EV will have at created at least double the CO2 than an ICE vehicle has with 0 miles on it. You have to drive something like 30,000KM a year to break even which I don't even come close to.
No. An EV using only electricity from a coal plant breaks even at 150k km TOTAL (that estimate is on the very high end). Every km after that is a net positive for the EV.
For someone in Norway which gets all of its energy from hydro power? That is closer to 14k km total.
It does not matter if you drive that amount in one year or twenty.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/when-do-electric-vehicles-become-cleaner-than-gasoline-cars-2021-06-29/
150,000 KM is a lot of driving just to break even. For me, that's like 7-8 years worth. Norway is unique as it's small and directly above volcanos. Places like Russia, China, Canada, USA are large countries where energy is more scarce. I'm happy for Norway and I'm certain EV's are the future but people need to understand that they're not a lot better than ICE vehicles today. They're slightly better but can and likely will get better whereas ICE vehicles don't have the same room for improvement.
That is 150,000 km to break even if your ONLY source of power comes from coal, the dirtiest and most CO2 intense energy source. If you took a look at my link, for the US which is not particularly great when it comes to green energy, they break even at 22,000 km. They are SIGNIFICANTLY better than ICE vehicles over the lifespan of a vehicle which is around 360,000 km for your average ICE vehicle and 480,000 km for an EV. So even assuming coal as the energy source, 330,000 km of the EV vehicle's lifespan will be much better CO2 wise than an ICE vehicle. A country like Canada which sources a good chunk of energy from hydro but also uses a decent amount of oil and gas, it is probably under 20,000 km to break even. It does not take that long to go 20,000 miles even for a very occasional driver. There simply is no comparison between ICE and EVs when it comes CO2 emissions, even in the worst case scenario for EVs. If you want to reduce your CO2 emissions, ditch your fossil fuel vehicle.