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Comment by taf2 | Hacker News Reader

I think it's great that they're falling on their faces... Hopefully it locks them into only 1 solution - all electric zero. Pumping gas sucks. Smelling gas sucks. Hearing gas burn sucks. Gas cars suck.

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That is a ridiculous solution. Batteries are far from clean, what do you propose we do for disposal of these batteries? What about the environmental and human cost to greatly increasing production of materials required? All electric isn't the utopia people make it out to be.

So because batteries are not perfectly clean means we should keep using gasoline which is worse?

Subjectively worse, we don't have enough battery powered cars to compare the timelines with gasoline powered. They contribute to more waste, regardless. Battery packs need replacing 5 - 10 years, are not easily recycled or disposed of and their manufacture and mining of materials still isn't a net positive in terms of pollution. There isn't a one size fits all solution. Going all electric trades one issue for another, cleaner air for more polluted rivers, cities around mines and factories and battery disposal and recycle sites. I personally have no problem with electric but I dislike hearing people tout it as the solution to all our vehicle woes. It isn't.

> We found that battery electric cars generate half the emissions of the average comparable gasoline car, even when pollution from battery manufacturing is accounted for.

https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/life...

Yes, EV's have higher energy and emissions numbers embedded in their manufacturing, but that gets more than offset by the much lower emissions of fuel. Breakeven is the first 6-18 months, depending on battery size and emissions makeup of your local grid. Even in "coal-powered car" country.

> EVs are powered by electricity, which is generally a cleaner energy source than gasoline. Battery electric cars make up for their higher manufacturing emissions within eighteen months of driving — shorter range models can offset the extra emissions within 6 months — and continue to outperform gasoline cars until the end of their lives.

As for waste, there is battery recycling, but the more interesting part is second-life storage use. Battery may not have the energy density required for transportation, but you can still use them fine as a cheap powerwall-like product. Cheap because the cost of the batteries was already paid for by the first owner of the car.

That's the answer... shift the emissions burden to power companies and battery disposal companies! But I'll feel good driving my "zero environmental impact" electric car around!

I think you meant this as snark, but I agree with it non-ironically. Shifting the emissions burden to centralized power plants makes later reductions simpler to achieve as power generation migrates to cleaner technologies. It's easier to determine how dirty the energy is when it's being generated at N places rather than 1e6(N) places. Emissions per watt decrease as new solar/wind capacity is added to the grid. You have full control over your energy source with an electric car (i.e. you can switch to solar now if you'd like and charge from that).

Actually yes, despite your tone. It's significantly easier to control emissions and implement emission control systems at the production side because economies of scale means that for the same cost of making $number of cars cleaner you can make 1 power plant significantly cleaner using far more expensive technologies and still be more cost efficient.

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