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Comment by ymslavov | Hacker News Reader

Yes, your assumption is correct, we actually account for the means of electricity production, as well as the car production process emissions related to building a single electric vehicle. It's a great idea to be able to switch those overhead emission calculations if you wanted to, we'll get on that!

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It's great you're taking these "external" variables into account. To bandwagon on the environmental costs of car production, it would be cool to see motorcycles added to the lineup. A lot of motorcycles are lax on emissions control so it would be very interesting to see how they compare to hybrids and electrics.

We've actually considered adding it to the list, but as the information we found was either very scarce, unverifiable or unofficial, so we had to make the choice to leave it out for the time being. It's on our task list though, that's for the good idea!

> as the car production process emissions related to building a single electric vehicle

Do you likewise take in to account the production process emissions for non-electric vehicles?

I find it a bit scary that I should apparently keep with my diesel rather than look at electric. Should I really?

it really depends on how much you drive and how co2 intensive the power you use is (which depends not only on your locale but also the time when you charge your car typically). However one thing in the overhead costs which is often ignored is that a used car battery which might not be suited for a car anymore because of 20-30% capacity loss after a few years can be reused in stationary battery systems, so over the full lifetime of the battery the overhead costs in most calculations are overexaggerated.

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