ElonJet Wrapped 2022
elonjet.net
elonjet.net
~ 1,895 tons of CO2 emissions.
According to the EPA (https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...): "A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year."
So about 420 cars worth of emissions.
What are the actual stats on manufacturing a Tesla vs manufacturing an internal combustion engine car? Where is the "CO2 emission breakeven"?
Basically, yes, things are as they seem and EV's carbon footprint has only a minimal manufacturing overhead to go with the extremely large consumption advantage. They aren't as good as giving up private transport entirely, but yeah: buy the Tesla.
This argument doesn't fly, basically. It's just the same recycled FUD distributed by the fossil fuel industry, just coming out of the mouths of different folks now that it turns out Musk is a political enemy.
[1] Among a ton of context. As always, "it's complicated". But the answer is definitely in favor of the EV.
EDIT: also that's a mistaken quote. The article actually says it takes between 6,250 (all hydro) and 40,000 (all coal) miles for an ICE to produce the amount of CO2 that the manufacturing of a battery would produce.
Doesn't at all account for
1. the rest of the damn car
2. emissions due to unclean energy sources
But yes the battery is definitely the most polluting part of making an EV, so that is somewhat promising even though a battery's lifespan tends to last less than an ICE
You're also forgetting:
3. Much higher energy efficiency per distance travelled. Even if you have a bunch of oil and are forced to use it to push wheels around on roads with no other energy source, EV's still win on carbon output!
[1] Depending on how you classify ethanol additives, I guess. But regardless, the carbon emissions content of the electricity grid is vastly higher than any agriculturally-source fraction of the gasoline economy.
The 2,500 miles figure is just:
the amount of CO2 emitted in the production of a battery represented as how many miles driving an ICE to produce a similar amount of emissions
EDIT: also, you misread that bit. 2,500m is for one metric ton. The article states that a battery's manufacturing will take between 2.5 and 16 metric tons of CO2
So the actual figure is: 6.25k-40k miles
> Just how much is one ton of CO2? As much as a typical gas-powered car emits in about 2,500 miles of driving
2.4 - 16 tons in manufacture of a 80 kWh battery = 6000-40000 miles.
That's not accounting for the GHG's emitted in generation of the electricity, which if it's coal based takes longer to claw back (and there's probably a million other things to take into consideration, weight increase is often one).
Not to shit on EV's. I think they are the future and will be a great improvement, especially in cities, but there is a non FUD manufacturing cost that needs to be worked off.
Around 2016, the total carbon footprint of a gas car was lower than a Tesla, pretty much for its entire life. It's getting better and better as energy gets cleaner, though.
Doing so will produce a wealth of sources that all point to OP being misinformed on this issue.
https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths#Myt...
Tesla Model Y (EV) vs Honda CR-V (gasoline):
9,200 miles if the grid is 100% hydroelectric
89,000 miles if the grid is 100% coal
The gp has made two statements:
1) that manufacturing is more polluting.
This is confirmed by your EPA link - the graph shows EVs are ~ twice as polluting in this area.
> Some studies have shown that making a typical EV can create more carbon pollution than making a gasoline car. This is because of the additional energy required to manufacture an EV’s battery.
2) that in 2016, the breakeven wasn't met.
Your EPA link states figures are from 2020. Obviously the breakeven is going to vary greatly by region depending on grid mix, but renewables in the US mix used in the EPA figures has grown ~33% between 2016 & 2020 so the difference isn't going to be small here.
The gp's line may be a myth on technicalities, but not a particularly binary right-wrong one. It's recently been a close enough call to be worthy of discussion, rather than the dogmatic claims of dishonesty in the replies.
Personally, I did the math on a Tesla purchase in 2020 given my own climate (very cold), driving patterns (90% high-efficiency highway driving), and energy mix. The end result was somewhere between 50k-100k miles to break even compared to a small, fuel-efficient Honda.
Keep in mind that a Tesla is a comparatively big car, and if you don't want to haul around that much car, you don't have to - estimates in the literature tend to compare cars of a similar "class," when your personal alternatives may be outside that class.
Also, the Reuters folks (and the EPA) are a bit optimistic and fall on the low end of published estimates I have seen for the carbon footprints of electric cars.
However, keep in mind that there's a huge variance here and many of the factors swing both ways: comparing a Tesla model X to a Honda pilot in SoCal (warm climate and tons of green energy) for a commuter (mostly city driving in traffic) may break even at 5000 miles or less.
And if they're not actually carbon neutral than the leasing company is committing fraud, not say, Taylor Swift.
Running one of the worst possible businesses for emissions (vanity air travel) and having the gall to call it sustainable is rather jarring.
American: ~15 tonnes CO2 per year - 126 years
European: ~10 tonnes CO2 per year - 190 years
World average: ~5 tonnes CO2 per year - 379 years
I don't think this accounts for non-CO2 impacts either (e.g. contrails). Multiply the years by about 2 as an estimate of that.
What's going there? A test flight?
The drive from airport to airport could be 45 minutes even if it takes the plane only 6.
I did this on a private jet, pilot never shut the engines down while unloading. It was a stop and go.
What no one asks themselves is when they first noticed they hate this person, and why everyone else they know started hating them at the same time.
You could use Climeworks to actually sequester 1895 tons of CO2, forever, for €1,895,000. So about doubling the operating cost, a bit under $5 million. Still…not that much? I mean, having the CEO on-site is useful. In person meetings are useful.
https://climeworks.com/one-off-climate-purchase
Side note: I do not think Elon Musk is nearly as rich as reports make him out to be. His net worth is wrapped up in a single stock that went into a bubble, and now also in Twitter, where he is heavily underwater. He is not rich in a diversified way like Gates or Buffett.
But he is still more than rich enough to afford $5 million per year!
So if you were going to sequester that CO2 in some conscience-clearing "I'm carbon neutral!" exercise, I suppose you'd have to sequester 2.6 times the amount your private jet emitted.
And that's still ignoring the social/network effects of your behavior, which are arguably non-zero. i.e. high-roller high-visibility douche bags flying constantly encourages others to behave more in a similar fashion. "at least I'm not flying as much as that Elon guy - books flight for just a dinner somewhere different"
And yeah to do this ethically you’d probably want to publicly support sequestering your own usage, say how to do it, and then you’d likely have a net positive impact.
So I’m down with people criticizing him for hyping his environmental contributions while not doing it on this point. My main point is that the overall costs are not extravagant given his position.
That said, they may well come to look extravagant depending how badly the Tesla bubble bursts….
"I'm not an Elon fan, but I'm going to defend him like I am."
I however, do not think his private jet expenses are crazy given his nominal position as richest or almost richest person in the world.