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Comment by throwaway22032 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway22032

This isn't limited to EV's.

I drive a 20 year old car, my local government is pushing for me to buy a newer one "cos emissions". Which is ridiculous - I drive it infrequently enough that the cost of just making the body of a new car and nothing else would outweigh the savings.

The endgame seems to basically be that I move out of the city, which would be a massive own goal emissions/energy wise because it's far more costly for me to bop around on my own land miles away from services than it is for me to use my car once or twice a week whilst taking public transport most of the time. Perfect is the enemy of the good.

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This isn't limited to cars either, but rather many "green" purchases in general. I remember one of my professors in an environmental studies course talking about people replacing all the CFL bulbs in their home with LED ones when they came out, citing energy efficiency reasons. However, if you look at the manufacturing process of the LED bulbs and the disposal of the CFLs, the resulting environmental cost is greater than the power savings attributed to the LEDs (embodied energy/emissions). Obviously Marketing will downplay this impact as they want people to buy the new bulbs and feel good about helping the planet.

The same goes for buying items made of recycled materials, a more power-efficient computer, and so forth. That's great - if you actually need the new item. If you are getting the replacement solely for environmental reasons you have to consider the impact of producing the new item and disposing of the old one before making that call.

Most CFL bulbs for the home were total garbage. The colors were limited and the light was harsh. CFLs in the E26 bulb format ran too hot and the bulb electronic ballasts either smoked out or occasionally caught on fire. My country, France, banned incandescent bulbs early on. The CFL replacements were poor. The LED replacements that followed were significantly better.

> LED bulbs and the disposal of the CFLs, the resulting environmental cost is greater than the power savings

The CFD manufacture and disposal cost are sunken costs - you shouldn't include those in most calculations.

Counter-intuitively for high use situations, the longer the CFD has left to live the more obvious it is to change it sooner to save $ and the environment.

Assuming ① cost in dollars is proportional to environmental cost (edit: for both electricity and LED bulb), ② electricity costs $0.10 per kWh, ③ LED bulbs live as long as CFD bulbs, ④ LED bulb uses 7W whereas CFD uses 14W for the same lumen output, then if CFD has 5000 hours left, you can save $3.50 of electricity. If cost of LED is reasonably less than $3.50, it is obvious it makes sense to replace CFD with LED.

If the bulb would never need to be replaced (examples: very low usage; you are moving out soon; or house is going to be demolished before bulb is replaced) then it may make sense to leave a CFD in place.

The price of the LED is an investment with a payback period, so if you can't afford it or you have better returns for that investment elsewhere then you shouldn't replace the CFD.

If your electricity comes from your own renewables, then the calculation is different again. Although note that in most countries nearly 100% of your reduced electricity usage will result in a nearly 100% reduction in non-renewables like gas or coal (even if your country is say 80% renewables). Marginal generation and usage matters.

If you can find a better source than your professor, I would be interested.

> The CFD manufacture and disposal cost are sunken costs

Yes but the manufacture and disposal of the LED aren't yet. The calculation you want is whether running the inefficient CFL ends up being better than the energy used in the whole supply chain of manufacturing and shipping the LED bulb.

Switching means spending led_rate + 2 supply_chain costs while keeping your old bulbs means cfl_rate + 1 supply_chain. I'd put money that the latter being better for the environment.

Edit: To the person who downvoted me but didn't reply do tell how literally throwing away a 10W CFL and replacing it with a 6W LED is better for the environment than just using the CFL until it breaks and then buying an LED.

When environmental savings due to using less electricity exceed the environmental cost of a new bulb, it is better to use a new bulb (with caveats). I carefully explained that literally.

I didn't downvote you (can't downvote replies). I generally downvote people who comment about downvotes (even edits), since it is against HN guidelines. If you get downvotes, the value is in wondering to yourself: why. Not that the person who originally downvoted you is unlikely to reread your comment.

I deserve downvotes for this comment for mentioning downvoting, and perhaps because I went off-topic.

Edit: also IMHO worrying excessively about karma makes for unhealthy conversations.

This isn't about you specifically. They want old cars to get scrapped so the average emissions goes down even further even quicker. They won't want your car to end up in the hands of someone who will drive it A LOT. Each EV sold is one less ICE sold. The goal is a market of lower emission used cars.

Except my car only has about another 5-10T of CO2 in it before everything fails anyway. This makes no sense, the current set of EV's aren't built to last much longer than ICE cars do.

They will definitely outlast ICE vehicles - except for the battery. We need a better story on that.

When people say electric car will outlast ICE what do they mean exactly? I'm driving 10 y.o. Honda and with my usage I think rubber and plastic trims will fall apart and the body would rust much sooner than its engine or gearbox will fail. All the parts like upholstery, suspension wear as much on electric as on ICE I would think. No one replaces those parts, does it mean you'll be driving your electric car till your sit falls through the rusted floor but the engine still runs smooth?

In the rust belt I find that doubtful, bodies and suspension will rot out before a properly maintained ICE fails. That might be different in dry areas though.

> I drive it infrequently enough that the cost of just making the body of a new car and nothing else would outweigh the savings.

Even trashing your working ICE car to buy an EV is a net negative if your car is still running fine. Unless you drive a _lot_, the least polluting car you can get is the one you already have. And that's not even talking about the energy sources used to produce the energy to charge the EV....

What we're witnessing is the last creation of capitalism, aka "green capitalism", but it's still about mindlessly consuming, you just get to feel good about it regardless of the reality.

> For example, a typical medium sized family car will create around 24 tonnes of CO2 during its life cycle, while an electric vehicle (EV) will produce around 18 tonnes over its life. For a battery EV, 46% of its total carbon footprint is generated at the factory, before it has travelled a single mile.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

Right.

My car has 100g/km CO2 emissions. I'd need to drive 10000km or 6500mi to emit a ton of carbon.

But that's like, loads. I use the car for occasional 10-20 mile drives to DIY stores or whatever. I'd need to do that every day for a year to even get close to 1t.

For a new car we're talking 10x that, at minimum.

That's why tax should be done for fuel.

In the UK it is, we pay something like $8-9 per US gallon.

$7.60/US gallon, assuming £1.539/L (price this afternoon for ordinary petrol at the petrol station I usually go to).

You are correct, but to go further, tax and import tariff should be added for any carbon energy source or the products made with those sources. If you tax the source, then that raises carbon energy generation prices, which raise the usage of carbon energy, which raises the price of the things that use that energy. Then you can truly see the costs of things that are made with that energy. Maybe then we'll have more competitive nuclear power or whatever else we can come up with that doesn't use carbon fuel sources. The hard part is ensuring the tax or tariff is bulletproof without loopholes and stuff. Good luck with that.

> Even trashing your working ICE car to buy an EV is a net negative

Is anyone really advocating for 'trashing' working vehicles? I thought we proved how dumb that was back in '08...

It's been my experience that the a car's last small fraction life, much like a person's, are much worse than the preceding by a huge margin.

Seals fail, emissions management devices wear out, fluids start to leak, it's terrible. Constant repairs with uncertain outcome. It's worse for cars.

There's always a scenario where an old car is a perfectly fine alternative, but there are lots of situations where the older car is less safe and emits substantially more than a newer alternative.

"Cash 4 Clunkers" was a disgrace, but mobility and ease of access to transportation are a public good and a utility that should be easily available to all, not just those people who can afford a newer car or people who've got a low mileage volvo 240 in the garage for when they want to go camping.

That last point is a large part of what made C4C such a disgrace. Working cars being destroyed as part of that program rather than being sold into the used market (as would have otherwise happened) served to harm the lower purchase price end of the overall car market (combined new and used).

> Even trashing your working ICE car to buy an EV is a net negative

For CO2 absolutely, but for local air quality it makes sense for us all to run out and buy EVs as quickly as possible.

At least in London, air pollution has been a major concern for some time now.

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