Hacker News Reader

Comment by theandrewbailey | Hacker News Reader

> Why it matters: The longer people hold onto their internal-combustion cars, the longer it will take to replace those vehicles with newer, more environmentally sustainable technology.

Continuing to use the ICE car you already have is the more environmentally friendly option over manufacturing a battery powered car and using it.

View on HN

Environmental concerns are not a reason why people own really old cars. Cost is. They'd buy something better but they can't and they are stuck with an old car.

Eventually, you get a trickle down effect with EVs as well. They can last quite long and the new ones are gradually getting cheaper. At some point the cumulative maintenance cost and fuel cost start canceling the benefits of hanging on to your old ICE car. There will be plenty of relatively good ones to swap it with for a while as people abandon their ICE cars with more affordable EVs. So the good news, there's going to some supply of relatively new but cheap ICE cars for some time to come. The better news is that at some point those will be competing with old EVs and the EVs will be the more economical option and you'll have the option to do both.

However, a lot of people with older cars don't have the option to spend on the more economical car though. Old cars are cheap to buy but not to drive. They need repairs, burn more fuel, and can break down on you. It's a form of poverty when that is all you can afford.

In the same way people own fridges or washing machines that are cheap but inefficient and cost them a fortune in energy cost. The fancy energy efficient models would save them money. But it requires having the cash on hand to buy one. Also people are bad at math.

I'm going to old onto my old ICE car as long as I can. It has almost no electronics it has no over the air update system and I own it and have full control over it.

It seems every new car out there is a smart, electrified out the wahzoo abomination that needs regular updates. I work enough in software to know I want as little software as possible in my vehicle.

> I work enough in software to know I want as little software as possible in my vehicle.

The old joke about how the only piece of technology software engineers keep in their homes is a 15-year-old printer, and a loaded gun next to it in case it starts making any funny noises ;-)

Even better would be a '70s vehicle with no electronics so it would survive an EMP event and not have its electronics fried.

I have one. It has electronics (that I've added as upgrades), but they aren't critical to function. However, I'm not sure how robust the electrical system is to EMP since it's new enough to have an alternator (which uses diodes for rectification), and needs electricity to operate its ignition system.

Only a vehicle with a mechanically injected diesel would probably qualify for surviving a true EMP event.

Not sure how this works out. I mean, if you were throwing your car into the trash, definitely. But presumably you'd instead be selling it to someone who needs one, right?

I had a similar debate about the 'wastefulness' of upgrading phones each year. As long as previous phone is going to someone else, was any more waste necessarily created?

I feel like I must be missing something, because of how prevalent such arguments are.

It's still marginally more wasteful because there's more supply in the used market and with enough of the same decision in aggregate, the used market would go from using phones until they're 5 years old to using them until they're 4 years old, because that's what people could afford with $100. Like if there's so much supply in used market because most people buy new, then there's a lot more people who don't prioritize reselling their used item at all because it's only worth $20 (at the extreme)

I think that makes some sense. Thanks.

That's a big "if" though. Phones get held onto for a few years, then just get thrown into the trash (and not even as e-waste) because they're only worth a token amount, if anything at all. Cars, on the other hand, are a) large enough you can't just throw them out with the kitchen waste, and b) have value, even just as scrap or a tax write off.

When you sell something the price goes down. This trickles all the way down the line, and at the end of the line some marginal product (car or phone in your example) switches from "valuable enough to use" into "it's cheap enough to be trash now".

When people talk about replacement rates, they are talking about the process of it passing through all the owners until it is actually thrown away.

You may not do it yourself, but somebody is going to eventually throw that car away.

EV’s keep getting more environmentally friendly as for example the electricity used to manufacture them come from low carbon sources.

Recycling a X year ICE means ~26 - X year of pollution savings, but you also get ~X years of normal EV usage. Aka your not paying the full cost of an EV just for a few years of savings, your paying a fraction of an EV for that fraction in savings.

Assuming the best case of say high mileage and 100% wind/solar power the savings could be quite significant.

100%. And buying a bike and using it as much as possible is a million times better.

You can't build your way out of congestion, and you can't buy your way out of car pollution.

There is definitely some case where this isn't true. An indestructible 8 mpg truck will definitely be more polluting than an EV using solar electricity that lasts 30 years.

But mostly, I agree, and think the cutoff is somewhere around 25 mpg. Our first priorities should not junking 13 year old 30 mpg ICE, but instead greatly reducing the number of 17 mpg vehicles that are still being sold today, especially with no commercial utility like a 4runner.

I'm not sure if your indestructible 8mpg truck example was facetious, but you've actually, very accurately, described the Grumman Long-Life Vehicle - also known as the truck that delivers mail in most of the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_LLV.

I wasn't aware those are getting 8 - 10mpg in city, wow. Ya, I'm glad they're replacing those soon.

This link referenced a study where hybrids take the equivalent of 325 gallons to produce[0]. This one is 474 for ICE[1] Let's say an EV is 500 - 1,000 gallons of gasoline energy then.

One year of those Grumman LLV on the road, 1,500 gallons at 12k miles/yr is easily out-polluting the entire production and use of an EV replacement.

[0]https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/green-life/2013/10/ask-mr-...

[1]https://www.motorbiscuit.com/how-much-energy-to-build-a-car/

> I wasn't aware those are getting 8 - 10mpg in city, wow. Ya, I'm glad they're replacing those soon.

Most ICE vehicles will be in single digits MPG if all you did was repeatedly accelerate and brake at a frequency of curbside mailboxes. It's an ideal for EVs scenario.

Hybrids do pretty well. A lot of the hybrid mpg improvement comes from regen. braking and engine stopping during city driving, not highway. Prius would get 40 - 50 mpg in those conditions.

Besides hybrids, this isn't true of at least some gas only vehicles also. I tested this once a few years ago when I had to drive like that for half a day in a non-hybrid 2008 Honda Civic. I filled up before and after to get the MPG and was amazed at how high it was. I think it was high 20's IIRC. The A/C was running the entire time as well.

They've been talking about replacing these things "soon" for decades...

I never realized that those vehicles get 8 mpg, but it makes sense because they are always making stops and possibly turning off and on again.

My old F150 isn’t very fuel efficient, but it’s used solely to haul things and use the pickup bed. I probably put less than 2000 miles on it a year, which is part of my consideration for tolerating its poor MPG. (18.3 MPG the last time I measured.) I think this is something that has to come into consideration as well. I bought a very old truck and use it sparingly. It uses far less gas than your average commuter car, solely due to how little it’s driven. Given that I bought the truck for $2500 dollars, there is zero chance these days that I could get a comparable vehicle for anywhere near the price. When it finally breaks down, I probably won’t try to buy something ancient again, but I probably also will have spend close to $30k.

> An indestructible 8 mpg truck will definitely be more polluting than an EV using solar electricity that lasts 30 years.

I suppose it depends on how many miles that indestructible truck drives, but I presume on the first day of the 31st year, the moment you buy a new EV to replace the old one, the environmental impact flips the other way? Surely everything that goes into manufacturing a new car is dirty enough to offset that 8 mpg.

No, I don't think mfg'ing is anywhere close to dirty enough to offset how bad 8mpg is for any reasonable mileage.

I've seen links for 500 gallons gasoline for car production, let's say safely 1,000 for an EV.

8mpg at 12k miles/year is 1,500 gallons, and over 30 years, 45k gallons of gasoline.

An EV will be produced at 1k and then for the foreseeable future be charged with excess solar energy during the day mostly. That doesn't seem close.

Yes, the article mentions this further down.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com