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Comment by wongarsu | Hacker News Reader

They already did good for the planet (as well as humanity).

Any time somebody already planned to replace their car and chooses electric over ICE is a win for the planet. It's also a health improvement for humans living in urban environments.

Tesla might not be selling that many cars, but they are the major reason why established brands like Volkswagen feel pressure to "catch up" and massively invest in new EV lineups. Once those companies have caught up in terms of technology and lineup they will massively outsell anything Tesla is capable of, helping reduce our impact on the climate and our health.

Of course public transport would be even better, but don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good

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> Tesla might not be selling that many cars, but they are the major reason why established brands like Volkswagen feel pressure to "catch up" and massively invest in new EV lineups.

No. While Tesla is a factor, the major reason for the EV investment is new legislation and regulations being introduced in the EU, China, and the US.

Germany, for example, is talking about banning new ICE car sales by 2030: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-emissions-germany-i...

Paris is talking about banning ICE cars from the city by 2030 and even banning diesel cars by 2024 (not very fair on diesel owners): http://fortune.com/2017/10/12/paris-combustion-engine-ban/

As part of Volkswagen's settlement agreement for the emissions scandal, VW is required to build an EV supercharger network in the US (Electrify America). VW's attitude is that since they need to build it they may as well make use of it: https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1116375_electrify-ameri...

I think Volkswagen will be the biggest producer of EVs within the next 3 years.

Toyota might overhaul them in the long run purely because Toyota is the world's biggest car company. But Toyota seems to be behind in their EV program. It'll be interesting to see how much ground (if any) Toyota will have lost to Volkswagen 10 years from now.

If no car makers were producing EVs in volume, banning ICE sales would be infeasible. No politician would enforce such a ban if it amounted to a new car ban - and car makers would know as much, and could call the politicians' bluff by refusing to build EVs.

Indeed, according to [1] in the 1990s a Californian attempt to push ICE makers to produce EVs and "an alliance of the major automakers litigated [...] permitting the companies to produce super-low-emissions vehicles, natural gas vehicles, and hybrid cars in place of pure electrics." So demonstrably, ICE makers fight back when politicians try to force them to make EVs.

It is only because we have the Volt and the Leaf and the Kona the E-pace and the i3 and the e-golf and the Tesla that an ICE ban is on the table.

It's hard to say if we'd have that many EV options on the market without Tesla, or if the Toyota Prius would still be the pinnacle of EV technology.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1

> banning ICE sales would be infeasible.

It's feasible because batteries got better. If it had turned out that batteries couldn't be made better for some reason then the push would have been for hydrogen fuel cell cars in particular rather than electric vehicles in general. Hyundai makes a good hydrogen fuel cell car:

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/reviews/2019-hyundai-nexo-prev...

> car makers would know as much, and could call the politicians' bluff by refusing to build EVs

That would fail and the car makers would have been fined. Volkswagen's outcomes after the emissions test cheating is the practical demonstration of this. They were required to meet a standard which they failed to meet and so there have been fines, jail time, and the company has consequently changed course.

> Any time somebody already planned to replace their car and chooses electric over ICE is a win for the planet.

This is sadly not really true, especially in China, the biggest electric vehicle market, where most of the electricity is coal-generated. You end up with a car requiring more energy (e.g. more fossil fuels) to produce AND to run.

The situation is not very pretty in the USA yet either, but if you are hopeful in the next decade that the USA will decarbonate their electricity, then maybe you will get a positive return on GHG emissions over your car lifetime.

Electric cars as a means to reduce GHG emissions todaly only make real sense in specific countries with a low-emissions electricity profile, such as France and northern Europe (Sweden etc).

Not having the byproduct waste of energy production pumped into populated areas is a _massive_ gain(regardless of whether there is overall increase in usage of GHG).

Waste from coal powered electricity isn't emitted by every consumer in populated areas. It's emitted in a plant which

a) generally has more advanced particular matter capture technology &

b) to reduce emission further, only the place emitting the emissions needs to be upgraded(not the vehicle of every end consumer of that energy) &

c) is more readily replaceable by a cleaner source with minimal disruption.

But electricity has the advantage of being easy to convert to. Cars last on average 20 years. If all your cars are electric but your electricity is dirty, you can legislate that electricity needs to be cleaner, affecting only a few players, rather than having to convince millions of car owner.

Look at what happened in France when the government changed its mind on which carburant is cleaner and tried to force millions of consumer via taxes.

Also, keep in mind that China is trying to get cleaner electricity as shown by the giant damns they are building.

Even in the US, it really depends where you live.

In Northern California, you are looking at 0 to 30% of electricity coming from fossil fuels, of which is almost entirely natural gas. An EV in NorCal is almost certainly polluting a lot less than an ICE car.

>Any time somebody already planned to replace their car

I highly doubt that the process of replacing a car does not result in a huge negative impact on the planet that has to be "paid off" over time through the gains of switching to an electric car.

Basically, don't you start in the negatives when replacing a car with an electric one?

Cars are replaced anyways, and for climate and environment the effects over one year matter a lot less than the effects over a decade.

Do you really think people buying a Tesla today will still drive the same car in 10 years?

Do you think that if they'd bought a BMW, the answer would be different?

People who regularly change their cars regularly change their cars ...

Yes. That's exactly my point. The argument "people are saving the planet by just changing to electric" is not quite correct.

The point is, that the people who're buying an electric car are reducing their impact.

Yes, they still have an impact, but it's less than the impact they'd have had if they bought an equivalent petrol/diesel vehicle.

I see. That makes sense. Thanks.

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