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Comment by loeg | Hacker News Reader

I agree with the rest, but I'm pretty skeptical of this claim:

> Switching our road transport to electric will probably save more children, and the adults they will become, from a lifetime of lung problems and premature death from pollution than better pedestrian safety features ever will.

Do you (or anyone) have order-of-magnitude estimates for either/both of these figures? I mean, electrification in general is great, but the F150 cannot take credit for all of it. I am interested in reduced pollution deaths/QALYs that can be attributed to F150 electrification specifically -- that's the topic of this article and thread.

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Here are some stats on fossil fuel deaths in general

https://youtu.be/Jzfpyo-q-RM?t=355

On average in the US, the CO2 output required to power an electric vehicle is 1/3 of an ICE vehicle. So theoretically this would translate to less deaths as bb123 suggests, but hard to compare to direct pedestrian deaths. (Yes there are some logical gaps as ICE C02 output is a very low percentage of total fossil fuel output).

Remember the emissions to manufacture the vehicle... they're higher for EVs. Lifecycle emissions for EVs therefore aren't much lower than ICE.

The lifetime emissions for EVs are massively lower than ICE's, unless the EV gets totalled in its first year of operation.

They are maybe 40-50% lower. Does this move the needle for climate change? No. And it’s not just lifetime car emissions. It’s the car dependent life that cars require

Source: https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1129478_lifetime-carbon...

It's only 50% lower because most electricity grids emit a lot of carbon. Once the grid switches to 100% carbon-free, the number becomes a lot lower. And most of the embodied carbon in the car comes from industrial electricity or transport, so as the grid & transport goes green the embodied carbon goes down, eventually to zero.

Electricity only accounts for about 25% of greenhouse gas emissions, but it also enables industry (20%) and transportation (15%) to decarbonize too, by allowing them to replace their fuel with electricity.

A 50% reduction is already massive, but electrification of both vehicles and the industrial processes creating the vehicle will eventually let that number go to zero which should be our goal.

if you're adding those, you need to add the emissions when actually processing crude oil into gasoline.

Hang out at a bus station or a school during kid pickup time, you'll feel like you're in a coal refinery. I can't imagine that's good for your lungs.

Here's half of the equation: https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearl... https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/child...

Edit: Here's relevant data to the other side: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/10/vehicle-... https://www.cdc.gov/asthma/asthma_stats/asthma_underlying_de...

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