Are Electric Vehicles Better or Worse for the Environment?
extremetech.com
extremetech.com
Of course a 9000lb hummer EV is going to require more raw materials and work to build, more energy to move down the road, and more effort to dispose of... But all that diminishes in favor of the EV if the EV is built less like a Decepticon land yacht and more like a minimalistic car.
Combustion cars have more of a static mass from the drivetrain they have to haul around with a pretty light gas tank (hence manufacturers have loaded them with luxury stuff without blowing up the drivetrain's mass), but EVs scale down very nicely because the battery dominates the car's weight. Its like the tyranny of the rocket equation: the more weight they carry, they more weight they need to carry that weight around, and so on.
Thats kinda besides the point though, as operational energy efficiency is not the same thing as lifetime carbon emissions.
Just look at the rear design of the BMW i3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_i3#/media/File:2021_BMW_i3...
I'm still at a loss on why they designed it that way.
Dublin has tiny roads with two lanes of traffic and going to the centre in a car is an exercise in futility.
https://www.vejdirektoratet.dk/sites/default/files/publicati...
Basically tire noise will be the same on the same weight car with the same type of tires, EV or ICE. It’s just most EVs at this point are larger or heavier.
EVs do much better here.
If we believe this data[1], one would have to live like a resident of Sri Lanka, Jamaica or Myanmar so that 1 earth is enough per year (other countries are available).
Pessimistically, with the planet we currently have, not all 10 billion can live decently, and the minority who control the weapons would probably rather resort to violence rather than share things equally (just look at the borders of the EU and USA - and yeah even left-leaning governments are probably "helpless", they know if they let in too many refugees, they'll be voted out of office as soon as possible).
[1] https://www.overshootday.org/how-many-earths-or-countries-do...
Dilemmas...
https://www.thefp.com/p/your-iphone-was-built-with-child
Does anyone have numbers of resource usage of an EV compared to, say, an iPhone?
Or, for better perspective, compared to an electric bus divided by its average number of passengers per day?
I know, there won't be a single definitive answer to the latter question.
But I think the problem with vehicles is mostly their numbers and artifical abundance.
I'm all for EVs, but against any state subsidies to purchase one.
After all, the list price doesn't even include any "externalities".
Taxing the s.. out of individual vehicles (in other words, cash the externalities) and going strong on public transport, that would be "Better for the Environment"
The current dichotomy is a self-imposed dilemma with no right answer
1) what is the carbon footprint of an EV vehicle when we are recycling batteries
2) what is the carbon footprint of an EV as we increase efficiency/range
3) what is the carbon footprint of an ICE as they increase range
The reason this might be interesting is that EVs, I believe, are still in their infancy and are likely to continue to see considerable jumps in efficiency.
ICE vehicles are not seeing these efficiency gains at the same rate. The technology is fairly stale. However ICE cars are getting more powerful. With a 2l 4 cylinder engine now getting 200+ hp, which I think would have been unimaginable a decade ago.
So where do these developments run in the future?
The wide array of technologies for injection and burn efficiency are still largely unadopted as well.
The replacement costs of batteries at ~5-8 years of ownership are always conviently absent from the comparison between EV and combustion. No surprise.
EV are not in their infancy either, the first EVs are from over a hundred years ago and there have been models available since the 90s from major manufacturers
I think in Australia it is difficult to find a non-turbo charged car. I was amazed when I moved here that everything is a 2l turbo 4 cylinder.
EVs aren't new, but there hasn't been considerable investment over the last 100 years. All the investment has happened in the last 20. Battery technology wasn't good enough until recently to justify investment in more efficient electric motors, etc.
Similarly, I think the improvements we are seeing in combustion engines is that they haven't had competition for 100 years, aside from one car company vs another. Now they have something that completely changes the game, and it is amazing to see how well that industry has responded from a performance standpoint.
> All other things being identical, if an EV made from metals that were processed with green electricity only has one (1) order of magnitude less emissions than a petrol engined vehicle of the same size over the vehicle's lifetime, the equivalent EV where the metals were smelted with coal is one order of magnitude worse.
I don't know if the claim is correct but I hope the industry can do better than that.
The “cradle to grave” calculations for ICE vs EV (ie, inc manufacture & decommission) are quite stark: even without assuming green electricity EVs have—-at most—-only 32% of their ICE counterparts emissions.
Now 1/3rd doesn’t sound that great, but remember: that’s a worst case scenario for EVs and doesn’t include the long term recycling benefits either.
Not least: 2/3rds less car emissions would be a game changer for air quality & the climate.
Also, carbon capture will eventually exist at scale, and cutting CO2 production by 90% will cut carbon capture costs by 90%z
If we're being charitable we could let you take a few breaths of what's in the full box just to ease your suffering.
There are 1.4 billion such cars currently operating in the world.