What If All the Gasoline Cars Became Electric Vehicles?
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Gasoline cars emissions = 3e9 lbs = 1360777110 metric tons
This implies USA per capita emissions from cars = 4 metric tons.
Current total USA per capita emissions is 14.86 tons. So reducing the car emissions by 75% (by switching to EV) will take total per capita emissions down to 11.8 tons.
I believe the acceptable level of per capita emissions for the 1.5C target is 2.3 tons [1].
[1] https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/carbon-inequalit...
No, we're out of time. We need to focus our energies on everything significant. That's electricity generation, transportation (both personal and commercial), heating and agriculture.
Getting electricity to ~90% carbon free, switching heating from fossil fuels to heat pumps and switching personal transport to EV's are unique in that they are win-win -- they are cheaper than fossil fuels in the long run.
We’re much better off transferring large trucks to either in road charging or trains.
Also, electricity and thus EV’s has gotten a lot cleaner over time and that trend is continuing. US per capita emissions in 2004 were 9t oil, 7.4t coal, 4.1T natural gas, and 0.4t other. In 2021 that fell to 6.3t oil, 4.9t natural gas, and 3t coal keeping 0.4t other. https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-fuel
The US grid effectively traded 4.4t of coal for 0.8t of natural gas + renewables. The specifics vary, but globally electricity is getting a lot cleaner per kWh which makes both manufacturing and use of EV’s less polluting over time.
This is why people are pushing EV’s. Over their lifetime they don’t use todays grid they use todays grid and the grid that’s going to exist in 20+ years. Their infrastructure that scales with however green we can make the grid which will likely be very green in the future.
Imagine if climate change was a myth, and the only thing we got from all this effort was air that was safe to breathe. Wouldn’t that still be worth it?
Such a great sentiment! ICE cars don't only contribute to global warming, they pollute the _local_ environment. And not just the emissions, noise too. Neighbor bought a hybrid. In the mornings, they zoom away to work. Before, they'd wake me up with the rumble of the einge. Nothing to do with global warming, but a very real increase in quality of life.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/03/518323094...
It’s kind of shocking when you consider the volume of material removed from both tires and breaks over time * the number of cars.
Is it? Everyone that owns a car or has lived with some that owns a car knows that tires and brakes wear down and need replacing. We're talking a 1/4" of a tire and however thick a brake pad is. We know precisely (other than my rounding from laziness of looking it up) how much material is removed.
What point were you actually wanting to make?
When I was a kid, I just assumed it all fell on the road. Let’s be honest, adults never consider the full lifecycle of every product they buy. We only know what we can see in front of us.
I personally didn’t make the connection to air pollution until well after graduating college and I would be surprised if many people make the connection on their own instead of assuming it’s just landing on roads etc.
EVs unfortunately also double down on cars' need for parking in busy areas (due to the need for charging stations) which totally disrupts urban fabric and wastes valuable land that could be housing, businesses, or parks.
For rural areas, though, I can see the climate benefit of the EV transition. Without the climate benefit, though, I am just not sure whether the side effects of EVs, like lithium battery production and disposal, would outweigh "cleaner air".
We are always going to have cars: whether gas or electric.
If private companies want to fund a conversion to EVs, great. But that's not exactly what's happening. There are huge federal and state subsidies happening to incentivize the transition, and those subsidies could instead be used to repair and public transit systems, which at least in my city are literally crumbing, and improve safety for cyclists and pedestrias.
- Huge amounts of economic growth during a transition period that requires skills all up and down the skill ladder.
- Significantly cleaner air and water which will save hundreds of thousands of lives each year.
- Significantly cheaper electricity as the cost of the input to the system(wind, sun, tides, etc) are free.
- Actual energy independence as enemy states cannot block our import of solar energy.
I'm sure there are more benefits. The list of negatives is basically just: a bunch of people entrenched in the current system lose money and power.
I just really struggle to understand how beyond those who'd lose money/power anyone opposes this transition.
-What makes you think we'll get huge economic growth from building very expensive infrastructure?
-An excellent goal, but we can get this for example with gas turbines which provide cheap, reliable power, or nuclear.
- If renewables provide cheaper electricity, then we don't need to do anything, they'll dominate the market! Although they do provide cheap power when operating, reliable power remains expensive and people want reliable power. Of course this doesn't mean we shouldn't build wind/solar!
- The US has energy independence with fossil fuels now. Its expensive to convert renewables to storable form, whereas fossil fuels can be stockpiled in huge quantities.
The primary negative is cost! To give an example, a recent report estimated solar at $20/MWh, gas at 45, and solar with four hours of storage at 160! That's for electricity, the easiest area to reduce fossil fuels, but only 20% of energy consumption.
Currently, 20% of US power generation comes from coal. Replacing this with gas would halve CO2, as well as providing huge air quality benefits. Just one example of a relatively easy small win that we have available short of green everything.
https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april...
And that's for 100MW solar with 50MW of 4-hour storage
$10 + $130/6 = $31.67. Sell for $40/MWh and profit.
From memory. Passenger cars produce about 5-10 times more PM-2.5 from exhaust than tires. And about the same for brake dust.
Older diesels are filthy. As are older motorcycles without cats. Newer ones are a lot better.
My conclusion is EV's are probably trading reduced PM-2.5 from brakes to increased PM-2.5 from tires. Over all it's still significantly less PM-2.5. Although I'd be concerned about difference in health effects because PM-2.5 from exhaust, tires, and brakes aren't identical.
Edit: Friend has been doing studies on how air pollution reacts on surfaces including PM-2.5. Makes me think the subject is actually very complicated. And state of knowledge is incomplete.
Airless tires should dramatically reduce this, in testing right now: https://wgno.com/automotive/internet-brands/french-postal-va...
(wgno.com)
Why should airless tires make any difference to that specific issue?
Depending on how I drive, that can be up to about 60mpg, which is where the car definitely tops out.
24mpg to me seems like madness!
Trucks and the fat SUVs that are super popular here get astronomically bad fuel mileage. Think low 10s MPG. Even worse when towing stuff.
Small cars do alright but are decreasing in popularity. Looking around the parking lots I frequent, where everyone has new vehicles, it's insane. All SUVs. Even when it's dominated by "smaller" SUVs like Mazda CX-5, Honda CR-V, Toyota RAV4, Lexus RX370... Those are still big boys.
In particularly, this number of 24mpg (as an American) seems pretty in line with my expectations, so I decided to use it.
To the point: 73% of what exactly? 80% of total emissions? 40%? 10%? Given the externalities, it may mean the difference between worthwhile or irrelevant.
[1] Sustainable Energy: Without The Hot Air: https://www.withouthotair.com/
>To the point: 73% of what exactly? 80% of total emissions? 40%? 10%?
I do not understand what you are asking. What are all these percentages? The number I calculated was an estimate of the decrease in carbon emissions if you replaced all gas cars with EVs in the US.
They include vans and light trucks in the car numbers, but the electric vehicle are all passenger.
To do this correctly they simply need to use the average MPG for a passenger car. That's it - from just that you can do all the math, you don't need the total fuel consumption in the US.
>We can also use 24.2 mpg as the average fuel economy for a gas powered vehicle in the U.S. [10] to expand on our approach, slightly. Using this value we find a slightly largely value for total gallons of gasoline burned per year of 163 billion.
That is a good point about passenger EVs vs vans and light trucks. I'm not sure if it makes the analysis "deeply flawed" as it would proceed the same way just possibly switching the actual number used in one place.
They are less noisy, less stinky and much smaller, they blend in much better with existing infrastructure e.g. parking spots, driveways.
I'm continually bewildered at the additive approach to cars versus a much better subtractive approach. Though I guess cars are more easy to measure for GDP. What's the GDP contribution of a sidewalk? Hard to relate that directly to new businesses and such.
I would say it certainly requires thinking, but we also know that we can't (and economic physics will dictate this whether we like it or not) continue with car-only infrastructure and we also know for a fact that EVs won't fix many of the problems they seek to address. Emissions can be one area that they help in, but they're not a silver bullet and they're laughable compared to things like busses, biking, walking, street trams, etc. when it comes to addressing emissions (never mind traffic, premature deaths, cost, etc.).
I think the problem is we already have suburban sprawl. Rezoning and rebuilding the community with mass transit, buses or better yet subways/trams is not cheap. Then you need to get the community that has already invested in their suburban homes, to put their tax money into such public infrastructure.
I do think it would be a monumental task to get people to re-examine how they live and are handicapped by cars, but transit is just one piece of the puzzle there.
(PDF warning)
https://www.vejdirektoratet.dk/sites/default/files/publicati...
Quoting the conclusion:
EV’s are 4-5 dB less noisy than similar ICE at low speed when driving at steady speed. But at about 30 km/h the difference in emitted noise is not significant. For speeds higher than 30 km/h the tire/road noise gets dominant and from there on the choice of tire is more essential to noise reduction.
>For speeds higher than 30 km/h the tire/road noise gets dominant and from there on the choice of tire is more essential to noise reduction.
City speed is 50km/h and EVs for some reason comes with loud tires.
I have never lived in any city with anything else than 50km/h being the limit and closely to the average.
From your PDF:
"The steady speed results of the Nissan Leaf and the Golf variant and the polynomial trend lines are shown in Figure 8. For all the measurements speeds the Leaf [EV] emits less noise than the Golf [ICE]."
This is measuring 10kph to 70kph.
Also these are small European vehicles compared to other small European vehicles. You won't see those so much in a downtown US city.
Consider that the volume in US cities is from the noisiest cars. It doesn't matter if the average car is just as quiet as an EV - it matters what the average total noise is, and that depends on a few loud cars. Likewise pollution. One "rolling coal" fuckwit is all it takes.
I'm pro EVs so please stop reading things into what I said that I didn't actually say. I specifically said the problem is the tyres.
But lets stick with Europe and your PDF.
You have cherry picked the exact one place where "EVs" are "louder". Specifically you picked:
1. A commercial EV van.
2. Traveling at 50km/h.
3. At a steady state.
In every other measurement, the EVs were quieter:
1. The passenger EV is always quieter.
2. The commercial EV is quieter at any other speed.
3. Both EVs are quieter at anything other than steady state, i.e accelerating or decelerating.
My experiences of European towns and cities are that cars stop and go a lot. In pedestrian areas or residential areas are often limited to below 50km/h.
And again, I remind you that these vehicles were themselves cherry picked and are not representative of vehicles on the road in the USA or Europe. My mum drives a diesel passenger car and it is assuredly not quieter than any EV even when it's not moving - and that's a car that is in good working order.
And even then, the conclusion from this paper is: "In urban areas where the speed it often above 30 km/h the introduction of EV’s will not have a great influence on the traffic noise."
It's a delight.
Even if it were polluting just the same forever, it would be a significant improvement.
Believe me when i say this, I worked for VW during diesel-gate and thought the solution was EV being embraced by the largest auto manufacturer: VAG. But the reality it's far more complex than that: we have to enforce as much WFH as possible, in conjunction with realizing we must have a conglomerate of energy sources including fossil fuels, but also see that what we have been doing is entirely unsustainable and not even desirable in terms of large scale transportation and logistics.
it doesn't even fit the mould since younger millennials and Gen Z do not want nor can they afford cars; so who is going to buy these things after it's main demographic has been exhausted?
I'll save you a click:
Conclusion
I predict that if all gasoline vehicles were replaced by EVs we would see total C02 produced drop from 3 trillion lbs per year to 810.1 billion lbs per year, a 73.0% decrease. Comparing this result using data from [8] we see a 77.9% decrease predicted. We consider this validation for such a simplistic, high level approximation with the goal of being understandable to people outside of academia. We performed a separate calculation using 24.2 mpg for the fuel economy for gas powered vehicles in the U.S. and calculated the total annual emission to be 3.3 trillion lbs. This value lands in between the previous two methods of calculating total annual gas emissions.
The predicted decrease in emissions is compelling but it is still important to expand on these of calculations to include more environmental effects that distinguish the impact of these two types of vehicles. The type of impact is most likely not completely characterized by carbon emissions alone
Which rare earths are those? Because there's only one rare earth in motors and zero in batteries. There are rare earths in most electronics, but not really any more in EVs than in any other car.
The rare earth in motors -and not even in all motors- is neodymium, which is the second most common. There are huge deposits worldwide and *the US gets over 85% of its REE domestically.*
Has that changed? This was my understanding of the situation:
“I think most people outside our industry would be shocked to learn that there are virtually no factories in the US building these magnets at scale,” said Shilpan Amin, GM vice president for global purchasing and supply chain. “Well that’s about to change.”
0: https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/9/22825948/gm-ev-motor-rare...
https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2022-02/Neodymium...
I fail to see how that is untrue then, if the labour arbitrage holds then nothing is being refined in the US and is then still solely taking place in China were Xi has made it a priority to remediate destroyed soil after decades of dumping waste as Cheaply as possible during its Industrialization, mainly for export make to the West.
If you are looking instead at air pollution, ie particulate matter, then tires are a larger contributor than exhaust, and EVs due to weight are often worse than ICE cars.
1. Make cars, but powered by electric batteries! Don't mind me, just driving my 2000 lbs of batteries to the store and back! If I hit someone they'll suffer grave injury, I require monopoly access to city roadways, a parking lot that dwarfs the land use of the building I'm visiting, direct regular contact with the government for licensing, and a long list of negative externalities. Check it out though, less CO2 maybe?
2. Anything else?
3. Increase availability and production of electric bikes
4. I don't really care how we get there. We do not have a choice in the matter.
But it makes no sense to critique a solution to problem A by saying it is not ALSO a solution to problem B.
Particulate emissions are a separate problem. A local one but also important. Poor air quality contributes to diseases and deaths and EVs don't solve this one completely, although they do 1. reduce tailpipe particulate emissions (especially conpared to diesels) and 2. Use regenerative "engine braking" meaning less particulates from brake pad wear. However they still have tyre wear and that may be rather worse than an ICE car partly due to weight and partly due to immediate delivery of high torque to the drivetrain.
> 282,000,000 vehicles * 14,000 miles/(year vehicle) * 241.4 Wh/mile * 0.85 lbs C02/kWh = 810.1 billion lbs of C02/year
Aren’t Wh and kWh being conflated in this calculation?
Some ugly accidents with batteries catching fire?
Prices would increase as more batteries are needed (so, increasing the price of some goods)?
Solar power generation would increase and become widespread, and prices would decrease as competition would become higher?
> I ignore the potentially, important environmental impact of the manufacturing processes of the two types of vehicles.
And in the second paragraph I discuss it further.
>This is a naive and simplistic approach but it is a starting point and allows us to highlight this very important aspect of the topic. Furthermore, these values are still relevant in more complex calculations which take into account other factors like manufacturing, maintenance, longevity, etc
That comparison is essentially manufacture of batteries + electric motors vs. manufacture of gas tank + IC engine + mechanical drivetrain like gearbox.
Energy required for manufacture does not necessarily imply CO2 emissions. Could be renewable or nuclear powered car factory.
Raw materials is a different matter of course. Lithium vs. steel (mostly).
Driving around: electric power vs. inefficient, polluting & noisy ICE. So EVs for the win there. :-)
You assume that people drive BEV as often and as far as they drive ICE. They don't.
You assume people always charge BEV from the grid. People can also use solar panels.
You assume gasoline forever has to be fossil. It does not need to be.
You forget the carbon footprint of manufacturing of either kind of cars.
You assume all people can afford buying new cars. They don't.
You assume there will be as big second hand market for BEV and it is now for ICE. It won't be, because of the battery degradation.
You assume that current grid can handle simultaneous loading of all BEV. It can't, and you don't include the carbon footprint of grid extension and increase of the generation power in your calculation.
And last but now least, a typical green propaganda trick, you are only calculating one variable and ignoring negative effects in another variables: - people waste more time waiting for charging - people forced to switch to inferious means of transportation - people reducing their leisure travels - a two-class mobility with the lower class of poor people living in apartments without own charging possibility who cannot afford a BEV or are forced spending hours per day charging at public stations, and the higher class of home owners with solar panels, charging their cars for free - higher prices for taxi, delivery services (and therefore all retail prices), facility management, mobile nurses, construction worker and other people who drive more miles per day as one over-night charge can give. - special service vehicles like firefighting trucks, police cars, military vehicles, super-heavy trucks etc. cannot use fragile battery energy only, and need to use gasoline, which becomes very expensive and hard to get, if 99% of other cars are BEV and so all gas stations are closed.
So you should either stop publishing shit or invest a lot more time in your calculation.
I just thought I'd go after the lowest hanging fruit, like if EVs didn't even lower emissions when ignoring everything else, then it's a slam dunk. But after doing this rough first pass at the calculation, EVs at least seem to pass that test.
The thing is, I may not include everything but you can easily see how I came to my conclusion. That was a large motivation for this. To actually put out easily accessible numbers and have a discussion. It sucks that you can't present your critique in a reasonable manner but I appreciate you commenting.