That Electric Car’s Not as Green as You Think | Hacker News Reader

That Electric Car’s Not as Green as You Think

bloomberg.com

15 pointsAmbolia20 comments

WSJ has an article a while back comparing emissions from electric vs gas vehicles over the life of the car [0]. It's graphic-heavy so you'll get something out of it even you just scroll.

I don't know what I should be getting out of this article. Cars require energy and materials to make? I think I knew that. I wish this article made bolder claims about EVs not being green instead of implying and hand-waving. Because than maybe I could refute it.

Electric cars are better for the environment, given any reasonable parameters of the average driver, and that's something people should know.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/graphics/are-electric-cars-really-better... https://archive.md/DbtZs

I thought the point of the bloomberg article was that car emissions are only half the story? More c02 is made in the manufacturing of the car than is made in emissions during the life of the car. And EVs are worse here due to the high carbon cost of the batteries. So if all you care about is net carbon, then it is better to stick with your current car, whatever that may be.

Now personally I dont like exhaust emissions from ICE cars. People living near busy roads have more health problems and a shorter life expectancy. However, my choice would be to get rid of private cars alltogether, not shift the pollution to another region. When I am king, I will start by enforcing a 1 car per household limit, except those with special needs. And eventually replace all private cars with EV public transport and bikes.

>More c02 is made in the manufacturing of the car than is made in emissions during the life of the car.

Everything I've seen says that isn't the case, that by about 50,000 miles you are in the black compared to an ICE.

I tend to agree with your second point though. If you are really serious about your environmental impact then bikes are the way to go.

"Everything I've seen says that isn't the case, that by about 50,000 miles you are in the black compared to an ICE."

Yes, perhaps, but that is comparing a new EV to a new ICE. I am talking about keeping your old ICE running vs buying a new EV. That is where the major problem is, and it is a big problem because EVs, and Tesla particularly are marketed as the new must-have gadget.

Edit: And people are upgrading earlier than they normally would, due to the hyped and unsubstantiated green credentials of EVs.

Maybe don't immediately trash your perfectly operational ICE car, but if you're ever considering buying a new car, that's probably the moment to switch to EV.

You don't trash perfectly operational cars, you sell them. The people who buy them are themselves replacing older, more worn out cars, which they in turn sell for a lower price. Thus it ripples down the line, with the net effect being an increase in supply in the used car market and therefore a reduction in price, which encourages people driving the very oldest, most worn out cars to scrap them and get something better. Those cars are probably not "perfectly operational", but falling to pieces, in constant need of spares and repair, and very likely less efficient. The running cost, and therefore almost certainly the environmental impact, of an old banger is higher than that of a new cars - and for the people driving them, the capital expense of a better car is likely a significant barrier, even though they'd save money in the longer term. So it's not clear that having the richest people upgrade to electric isn't a net positive all the same.

tl;dr rich people upgrading to electric is like a privatized "cash for clunkers" scheme.

Engineering Explained covered this is a recent video. tldr while it obviously depends on how much you drive, you need a pretty efficient ICE car for sticking to lower carbon overall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2IKCdnzl5k

I wonder where plugin hybrids would fit in to those calculations. I can't help feeling that we are squandering our limited battery supply by only using them in full blown EV's.

> I thought the point of the bloomberg article was that car emissions are only half the story?

I got that, but the issue is Bloomberg doesn't give any actual details or any way to quantify what the non-emission damage is. I highly doubt it's worse than the environmental cost of gas cars, but I can't refute hot air.

Like, walking to work probably has a higher environmental cost than you think. It wears on your sneakers which have to be replaced. That requires harming rubber trees and sneaker production actually has a sizable carbon output. You also breathe more exhaling greenhouse gasses. You have eat more for the energy, and food production is pretty bad for the environment.

But I'm just spewing hot air. I don't have the numbers to truly compare which is worse. I'm asking you to consider something that's probably not true, walking is worse than driving for the environment (even if I never say that), without providing any point of comparison or any hook for you to refute me.

Even if the battery and the car’s components are not environment friendly, it must be better to have the emissions centrally than to have them at each individual car. It’s obviously much harder to control omissions from a single car (not considering blanket ban of cars) than from a factory. It’s also far easier to regulate and control a factory than controlling what people actually does.

What you want to look at is CO2 emitted per km/mile, and electric cars are usually quite a bit better: https://www.carboncounter.com/#!/explore . Obviously there's a lot of challenges: having a grid that can sustain fast charging on peak times for holidays is really non trivial for examples.

And obviously, less cars and less car mileages is better, just like no matter what the insulation it's better that people live in smaller places.

What you actually want to look at is a full cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessment. In this regard, an electric car is about an order of magnitude better than an ICE car, but it's also much much worse than no car at all.

That’s a low quality article. A chart about one part of the overall effect of a car, a random jab at Apple, some exaggeration (doom! Shadowy private hands!) then wrap things up with a “need more info.” Oh brother.

https://archive.md/XrdOm

Paywalled, so cannot read the article but as this is an "opinion piece" I suspect it's more gaslighting. The fact remains that while EV's are not 100% perfect in every conceivable way, they do improve upon ICE vehicles in virtually every way. Major issues regarding supply chain of batteries are improving with new battery technology like cobalt-free LFP chemistry. The battery recycling and "second life" battery industry is gradually maturing and technologies like Smart Charging and V2G promise to have a major impact helping to modernize the electrical grid as well as improve the conditions for more renewable energy by matching charging times to variable availability of green energy.

Reader mode on the article reveals the content. Your answer is on point though. WSJ a few months published a piece saying that electric cars have to run 20k miles before they take over ICE vehicles in emissions(less that is). This piece is just scaremongering though. It keeps on repeating in several ways that making electric vehicles is energy intensive

Which is also kind of funny, considering I know people who’ve bought electric cars new and used- they’ve all surpassed 20k miles at a year and a half- two years. Most gas powered cars go well beyond 20k miles, and that would easily and dramatically increase their emissions.

Yeah, not to mention electric cars are going to be made with even less energy like cold pressing the entire chassis from a sheet of metal, higher density batteries and recycling older batteries, where as gas cars have been the same in terms of mpg.

>Paywalled, so cannot read the article

It should work in Incognito mode.

Electric cars are good in another way also:

- they force building nuclear power plants to sustain the grid

* china said will build 150 new nuclear power plants ( west will copy just as they copied the lockdown policy :))

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