Following is in video description by @MoneyShift
The most common argument against electric cars is that once you factor in battery manufacturing and lithium mining, they aren’t actually cleaner. MIT tested that directly, and the answer is no longer ambiguous.
Researchers Marco Miotti and Jessika Trancik built a lifecycle model covering thousands of US zip codes, drilling down to individual driver behavior rather than comparing broad regions. They accounted for battery and vehicle manufacturing, fuel extraction and refining, regional electricity mix, local meteorological data, traffic density, trip length and duration, acceleration patterns, gas and electricity prices, and state fees. The study appears in Environmental Research Letters.
The concession first: building a battery is dirtier than building a comparable gas car, and an EV starts life with a larger manufacturing footprint. MIT states that plainly rather than working around it.
The findings: in most US locations, a battery electric vehicle reduces lifetime greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 60 percent compared to a similar gas vehicle, with larger reductions in urban areas. On cold weather, MIT found that in a climate like North Dakota, efficiency can drop as much as 50 percent on a particularly frigid night, but the effect on annual emissions benefits is minimal. Miotti’s own conclusion was that even in the most unfavorable conditions, EVs still reduce emissions substantially.
On cost, EVs are competitive with comparable combustion vehicles in lifetime ownership cost across most of the country, even without clean vehicle tax credits. Where electricity is relatively affordable, battery electrics tend to cost less outright. The study also found that individual driving behavior matters roughly as much as regional electricity mix, with the biggest reductions going to people who drive more, drive larger vehicles, and spend more time in traffic.
MIT also updated their public tool at carboncounter.com, where you can compare lifecycle emissions and ownership costs for nearly any car on the market.
None of this means you have to like electric cars. Dislike the steering feel. Dislike the brake feel. Want a manual. Those are real objections. The emissions one is finished.
Car news the way Doug DeMuro, Jason Cammisa and Chris Harris cover cars, every day
I’d also like to add that the manufacturing footprint can (and hopefully will be) reduced. So the difference will grow. Fossil cars will not get more efficient. Also fuck cars.
https://www.carboncounter.com/
For anyone who wanted to click the URL in the OP.
Batteries are a problem but it doesn’t take much napkin math to see that, on an individual level, homecharging an EV for 30-50 years is better than distributing and burning the energy-equivalent gasoline over the same period. It’s better if off-peak grid energy is used. Even more efficient if the grid power is generated partially with renewables. Or best of all, homecharge from a home battery system that recharges exclusively from home solar. It is the highest initial cost outlay and highest initial inputs of polluting materials, but then the resulting power approaches being “free” for the life of the system, and creates no further emissions in its generation process.
Uhhh that napkin math forgets to account that over 30-50 years you’ll need multiple batteries/cars. Hard enough keeping a 30 year old ICE going these days and usually those spring cheap failures (but many, since they’re more complex). An EV battery is tens of thousands even if the car is old and worth <10k, unless you go used with no warranty. All batteries fail eventually, even if they’re getting better these days.
It’s still more efficient than ICE, but at this point we need batteries that reliably last 20-30 years so the people who can’t afford to buy new can use the old ones without worrying about a huge ticking time bomb or doing cell replacements on a high voltage battery at home.
Why are you linking to YouTube instead of the study?
The study is linked, it just isn’t the first link
“EV’s” ? … no thanks …
As long as we have the problems of cars, this sounds like the least worse option.
Thanks for outlining it in the post OP. I never watch videos, but I read the text.
a fellow c/fuckcars enjoyer I see.
Ya I really wish more people used the body of video posts. I also prefer to read
It’s so neat that you cite the source when the video author does not lmao
lol at least he named them so I could find it myself.
Might be an unpopular statement on this community: But I was actually still on the fence if current EVs were a net benefit or not.
I’m also torn between waiting for newer makes/models to hit the Canadian market, and buying one now before they start putting AI in them.
Get a used EV, you’ll save a lot and can get an older model with less AI.
Definitely buy used. These things drop like rocks during the first year of ownership. I got 50% off MSRP for letting someone else own the car for the first 9000 miles.
I wish this was true where I live… It’s more like 30-40% drop for 4 years old car with 150k km (100k miles).
TLDR: Cars still bad. EVs less so, but still significant CO2 contributers (better in places with more renewable).
I’ve always been more about electric trains and busses than electric cars.
Especially when they are grid tied, so no big batteries
And bicycles (e- or otherwise, but kinda especially e- because they get more people doing it who wouldn’t have considered it before).
Same.
Isnt used still better than both? The work has already been done to make the car.
New cars are rolling spyware you can’t repair and will never own. I’ll be fixing old cars until its impossible.
You can buy an old EV
Sure but the range is abysmal
no
Misconception. Range dropoff is not dramatic and in fact is not terribly noticeable over the normal lifespan of the car.
Source: I have driven the same electric car for 10 years with negligible range loss. In south Florida, which is not a kind place to be for a battery.
No cuz electric cars are still more carbon intensive to build than combustion cars… driving the EV is what offsets it in the long run, meanwhile driving the combustion engine does the opposite. Especially given how older cars are less fuel efficient.
But by reusing I’m saving all the factory materials and labor to build another car. Reduce…reuse…
no. I’ve seen recent studies that showed that driving your existing petrol car or buying used is still environmentally worse than getting an electric car. Not to say that I’m buying electric - I can’t afford it.
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I won’t be searching for this to prove you wrong. you made the claim, so the burden of proof is on you.
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I can’t comment on repairability nor spyware, as I have no idea
Studies show that although EVs produce more carbon emissions when they are manufactured, they are responsible for much lower emissions when they are being driven compared with a petrol or diesel car. Overall, the whole-life emissions for an electric car are almost 90 per cent lower than for combustion engine vehicles.
“We found that in the vast majority of cases, and even for a brand new gas vehicle, you would be far better off scrapping the gas vehicle and switching to electric,” says Campbell. “It takes more energy to build an electric vehicle, but the savings from driving the vehicle swamp all the upfront costs.”
July 7, 2021 - Reuters analyzed data generated by an Argonne National Laboratory model to determine at what point a typical electric vehicle (EV) becomes cleaner than an equivalent gasoline car in terms of its lifetime carbon footprint.
Based on a series of assumptions, the data showed that a Tesla Model 3 in the United States, for example, would need to be driven for 13,500 miles (21,725 km) before it does less harm to the environment than a Toyota Corolla.
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