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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

>>Electric vehicules are usually better than thermal ones, but they're still a big carbon emitter

My argument here is always that even if all electricity was produced from coal power plants(it isn't) surely it's much better to have one big carbon emitter far outside of the city, than thousands of smaller carbon emitters in the middle of the city. Yes, it is just externalising the emissions, but I think it's important to improve the air quality where people actually live, no?

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Sure, but it's even more important to make a dent in how severe the incoming climate apocalypse will be.

(I'm not against electric vehicles, I'm for aiming most subsidies towards mass transit and cycling infrastructure & most externalities taxation at carbon emitters).

If you have a large single source you can go to work on carbon reduction and carbon capture schemes that make more sense at scale.

You are correct in a harm reduction and progress sense. Unfortunately harm reduction and general progress were something we could have spent the 200X's or 201X's doing. The remaining carbon budget does not afford for such marginal optimization anymore. We need to reduce total vehicle-miles-traveled by something like 50 maybe even 80%, while making those remaining miles EV/ZEV driven with 90 to 99% less co2 per mile.

So yes, even powered by a coal plant, EVs are better than cars. But no longer better-enough for that to be ok on its own. It is more important to figure out ways to de-car lifestyles than it is to foster EV adoption. They're both important, just de-car'ing is more.

That would make sense if all things are equal, but there are efficiency issues here. Having to take the extra step to convert the fossil fuels into electricity first (plus the later battery storage) means the same fossil fuels don't deliver as much power to the vehicles. That said, it's probably a wise move to move to electricity powered vehicles anyway because of the slow shift to reusables.

That's not the argument I'm making. I'm saying that it's better to have a pollution-spewing plant outside of the city than drive thousands(millions?) Of vehicles right next to the areas where people walk and live and work and eat. A taxi driver idling their shitty diesel outside of my window at 2am wouldn't be an issue if their vehicle was electric. A major throughway next to a kindergarten wouldn't be an issue if those vehicles were electric. At least not due to pollution, there are still other problems regardless of the fuel used.

Note, internal combustion engines are only about 20% efficient. Coal plants are ~37% efficient, natural gas plants are 55-60%, the grid is maybe 90% efficient, and an EV is about 60% efficient. So 20-32% efficiency.

I've glossed over many factors to be sure, but the point is while a lot is lost powering an EV, internal combustion engines are just as bad or worse.

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