EVs are lowering Bay Area's carbon footprint | Hacker News Reader

EVs are lowering Bay Area's carbon footprint

news.berkeley.edu

42 pointsgeox72 comments

Anecdotally, but in SF I am noticing more and more non-Tesla EVs every day. A lot of Hyundai and Polestar. And of course there are so many Teslas that I wouldn't be able to tell if they are gaining market share - that's been true for a while now.

Part of me is hopefully there's a quieter future ahead, but I suspect motorcycle drivers will be the last holdouts and they make most of the noise anyway.

If the $7500 tax credit applied to motorcycles, I’d buy a Zero SRS in a heartbeat

I am also excited for less cars specifically modified to sound like loud farts driving around all night!

It's kinda beautiful that my Volkswagen electric SUV with the baby seat in the back can out-accelerate most any farty angry-headlights car. It'll never look as good as my old Studebaker, but by god it'll outrun all but the hottest of rods that car to rev their engine at a stoplight.

The ID4's 0-60 is 7.something seconds. An early 2000s VW GTI ($3000?) with a mild tune is faster.

Perhaps, but when you're driving an ID4 and riding on a high horse, you get an extra boost.

All I know is that I hear a hell a lot of noise behind me.

Maybe the point is to make it sound like you're working really hard but not actually go fast, I've kinda checked out of car culture.

> I've kinda checked out of car culture.

well -- with all due respect -- maybe leave comments like the following to people who are into cars. 6.0-7.0 0-60 hasn't been quick for 30+ years.

>it'll outrun all but the hottest of rods that car to rev their engine at a stoplight.

a 1992 Acura Legend will run a 7.6, a BMW 530i from 05 will run a 6.7, a 1999 Ford Mustang will run a 5.4.

Not that it matters in the very least bit, i'm glad you're happy with the car -- just don't bother with the 'quickness' comparisons.

Decibel comparisons? go wild.

food for thought : a sibling has a very loud modified Honda that is obnoxious as hell. He drives slowly everywhere he goes , but by every indication all the traffic near him thinks that they're in a race with him just by virtue of his car being so damn loud as if it were racing. Maybe something similar?

I out-accelerated a Porsche boxter in my ford focus EV with similar or worse acceleration stats to the ID.4

We were neck&neck but then he had to shift out of first.

0-60 is one measure but in city driving the 0-30 is even more relevant.

Bad driver :)

Funny, last time I was in a place where night time loud cars were a problem, it was the stupidly loud music that was more an issue.

Sadly, I doubt that switching to EVs will fix that.

In my LA neighborhood, it's trucks with mud tires and old german cars modified to go POP POP POP that annoy me the most. Loud exhaust is a very very close third. Loud diesel being first. Followed by V6s lol.

I don't understand people who put straight pipes on a Jeep Wrangler with a V6. I just don't. I have a Jeep Wrangler with a V6 and the engine sounds fine with the stock exhaust - in fact with the JLs I think that's the ONLY way they sound good. I think every third party wrangler exhaust sounds awful.

EV technology is pretty much "there", for day to day living.

What I'm looking forward to is (what I hope will be) an explosion of creativity in EV design. Once the base platforms are there for 3rd parties to build on and people don't care about squeezing out every last mile of range (because it doesn't matter), cheaper and more fun cars will emerge.

I can’t wait for the first cheap EV sports car, like an MX-5, gt86, or similar size. It would be cool if you could design one with an h pattern, for the driving fun, but I’m sure it’s not necessary. It better be cheap and no frills, too, as I don’t need any tech other than a good EV drivetrain and 150 miles of charge.

Range tanks when you’re having fun, and batteries last longer with longer range cars.

I’m hoping for a small sub 30k car with decent handling and 320+ miles of EPA range fairly soon. But I suspect that would seriously hurt Model 3 sales so I doubt Tesla’s going down that route anytime soon.

The main Model 3 is pretty much there already? $40k base price, -$7500 for the rebate, -$5000 for picking an inventory model. That's well below your $30k for the 250 mile variant, and not much above for the 320.

And prices will continue to steadily drop all year. I'm fairly sure Tesla will prefer to sacrifice margin to maintain volume.

Tesla’s price is bouncing all over the place but the quote I just got from there website for a long range Model 3 = Vehicle Price $47,740 + Destination fee + $1,390 + Order Fee + $250 = $49,380.

That’s the price people are generally using for comparisons. If they built a car without any self driving hardware or gimmicks like electronically controlled vents, and didn’t charge a large premium for larger batteries they could get much closer, but that’s not their business model.

tesla.com/inventory is about $5000 cheaper than the build-to-order options.

And people don't compare prices with destination fees. Perhaps they should, but they generally don't. And your refusal to include the rebate indicates to me that you're more interested in scoring Internet points by taking shots at Tesla than you are at actually purchasing a Tesla for under $30k.

Try and be consistent. Tesla.com/inventory cars can be ~5,000$ cheaper but only if you ignore the very tax credit you’re talking about. “Eligible for $7,500 Business Tax Credit only” Demo Vehicle 1,165 mile odometer

Useful if you make to much money for the federal tax credit and don’t mind a used car, but we are still talking $43k + fees and taxes.

On the other hand if you get a car that’s actually 30k then you may or may not qualify for a tax credit on top of that price. But at minimum it’s going to be far cheaper.

tesla.com/inventory are brand new cars fully eligible for the rebate.

I was looking through several which explicitly mention they aren’t, thus the direct quote from their website I was using here.

The company isn’t simply applying a discount for no reason otherwise they would just ship one out when someone orders a normal car with the same specs.

The reason is simple. Tesla now makes more cars than they can sell at list price. And they'd rather lower price than lower volume.

inventory used to be cancelled orders and fairly scarce. Now it's more.

Opposite side of the country, but Atlanta is absolutely chock full of Rivian. They're everywhere.

I've seen electric motorcycles for a few years now.

Not too many. Honestly, they don't sound that great, sort of like a loud R/C car.

One friend got a zero recently. He told me it goes 0-60 under 2 seconds, which I don't know if is is BS or not.

But most of these motorcycles are "off-brand", even zero had not-great tires.

Even Harley had a bike, but I don't think it sold well.

Now that the major japanese/etc brands are paying attention to electric bikes, I think the market might expand.

and I thought telsa was going to make a 4-wheeler.

I love EVs but electric motorcycles are struggling because they are trying to replicate the luxury car model Tesla used which simply doesn't apply as well to motorcycles.

Big and expensive motorcycles are more about the badge/history/"character" than they are about function.

You have to move down the value chain to find opportunities for new entrants where function plays a bigger role in the purchasing decision.

Not to mention bikes that appeal to and are affordable by riders that don't already have that badge affiliation.

Unlike most people's relationship with their car a motorcycle is inherently a more emotional connection because the experience is much more visceral. Doubly so at the expensive end where you have big cruiser daddy's on their Harley's or middle aged men buying a Ducati or trying to be "adventurous" on their BMW GSA. These buyers all bought those bikes because of the emotion they evoke but also what other people think when they see that bike.

IMO electric needs to conquer scooters first. Then ship a bike like the NC750X which is an astoundingly boring but perfect bike for commuting. These are the areas without all that inertia to overcome and where you can prove out the power plant and batteries with riders that will appreciate the functional benefit without belittling the sound and lack of character etc.

I currently ride a CB500X if anything riders like me are the best bet for sales after the NC750X crowd. I have my bike configured as a mini-tourer with pannier bags, top box etc. I get great range of around 450kms per tank (around 280 miles) which for the long distance trips it's set-up for is adequate. Considering I got my bike used for less than $3k and maintenance on it is less than $200/yr it's a hard sell to move to electric from a financial perspective. For a brand new bike I don't think I could justify more than $10k USD for something that can do the same thing and unless it was made by Honda or Yamaha I would be making a huge sacrifice in terms of dealership network, reputation for reliability and resale value.

> IMO electric needs to conquer scooters first.

Or western countries such as the US and AU need to adopt more scooter use perhaps?

Asian countries have heavy scooter use and electric scooters already have more than 10% of that market in countries such as Taiwain with numbers steadily climbing.

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/01/11/gogoro-batteries-power-...

Hot Battery swap for Scooters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpOQpwKeSnI

Yeah I have seen some. NUI in particular was fairly present when I was living in Vietnam even 6-ish years ago.

I have lived in Thailand since though and yet to see more than a handful of electric scooters here.

In this market it would need to be Honda or Yamaha to take the first step.

Peak crank torque of the Zero DSR/X is 229 NM in the spec sheet, with a gear tooth ratio of 90/22 gives about, so 936Nm of torque. A 170/60-17 rear wheel is 0.318 meters radius, so 2943 Newtons of force where rubber meets the road trying to move 247kg of motorcycle.

Acceleration is force divided by mass, so theoretical maximum the DSR/X can accelerate at 11.91 m/s^2, or 2.25 seconds 0 to 60. That's assuming absolutely no power losses, that it sustains peak torque throughout the entire run, that the rider has 0 kilograms of mass, and that there's no risk of a wheelie.

I dunno, but I'd lean towards either BSing or hasn't actually taken a measurement with accurate equipment.

> Between 2018 and 2022, 57 of the sensors in the Berkeley Environmental Air Quality and CO2 Network (BEACO2N) recorded a small but steady decrease in CO2 emissions

Convenient date range considering the global pandemic and WFH shift …

I have been surprised that environmental activists haven't protested return-to-office policies for the incident increase in pollution. Seems like there is very little data backing up RTO other than commercial real estate sunk costs, and loads of costs like lost time commuting, energy used to commute, emissions due to traffic, etc.

Do executive feelings count as data

Wasn't this one of the reasons behind the Amazon walkouts

the lack of resistance to RTO from many political perspectives has been stunning tbh

Wfh sure seems like a negative in terms of measured economic activity - less gas buying, fewer coffee and lunch purchases and happy hours, and or course depressed commerical real estate, all leading to lower tax in take. Happy to see the political upside.

the upside is its better for workers and the climate lol it also reduces the spread of COVID-19, which is an ongoing pandemic.

At first I was for cars with higher MPG.

Then I was for more mass transit.

Finally I realized it'd be cheaper to move work closer to where we built houses for the peons to live instead of close to where the boss lives.

Nothing closer than a home office.

I know of one huge international pharma company with a site in South SF that is reducing conference attendance with the stated purpose of reducing emissions, while simultaneously requiring all employees to be on-site 3 days a week regardless of job function (yes, lab workers have to be in the lab for their work, but plenty of positions spend most of their time on video calls with other sites in Sweden, Netherlands, England, China, India...)

the study accounts for shelter-in-place mandates during COVID: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c09642

The paper[1] goes into this in more depth. COVID was definitely a factor, but not the only one. For example if you look at the YOY comparisons, both halves of 2021 hadlower emissions YOY than 2020. The H1 decrease you can blame on the COVID lockdowns that lasted until May. But by July 2020 everyone who was going to WFH was WFH, and by July 2021 many people who were WFH in 2020 were commuting again.

[1]: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c09642

ICE cars are also more efficient and less poluting, which could also account for some of the decline.

Don't ruin it for me!

I only read the headline and was feeling justified purchasing 3000 pounds of globally mined steel, aluminum, rubber, plastic, graphite, copper, nickel, manganese and cobalt.

You can feel good. the carbon debt from manufacturing is amortized over the life of the car. As long as the car is driven more than 19,000 miles, EVs are better.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/19/business/electric-vehicle...

And what was the carbon footprint increase in the areas where the batteries were manufactured?

This is a shallow and ignorant opinion. Carbon footprint compared to what? Public transport, or more likely, an ICE car? 2 minutes critical thought is enough to consider this question as null.

Ye, because fossil fuel extraction and refining for lifetime of car is all roses and sunshine.

I believe this is a question worth asking — and answering.

Page 13 of this report from pro-climate MIT science advocacy group The Union of Concerned Scientists is of interest: https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cl...

It claims the manufacturing CO2 footprint for an EV would almost be identical to the footprint for a similar ICE vehicle except for the battery which does indeed increase the EV’s footprint by 15%.

However they also claim that the total CO2 footprint for a 135,000 mile lifespan is still just under 50% less for an EV. This is of course due to the operational CO2 cost being much less for an EV when compared with an internal combustion engine.

I don’t know how many ICE vehicles are scrapped before their time due to an EV purchase but the CO2 overhead of switching to a brand new vehicle will be recouped within a few tens of thousands of miles.

The lower EV total CO2 footprint is based on current grid CO2 emissions (page 13):

> We use U.S. average electricity grid emissions to estimate manufacturing emissions, while the average electricity grid emissions intensity during vehicle operation are based on a sales-weighted average of where EVs are being sold today.

If the grid is supplied by a growing proportion of renewables + lower CO2 sources over time, the lifetime CO2 footprint of EVs should decline further.

EVs with an efficiency of 150Wh/km charged from a grid that only pollutes at 100g/kWh (eg Brazil, Canada) have a footprint as small as 15g/km.

The US grid is 4x dirtier than that but 60g/km still doesn’t come close to 180g-200g/km of an ICE doing 8l-9l/100km (25-30 mpg.)

EPA has specifically addressed this in their EV FAQ because it’s such a common dig: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths#Myt...

This was discussed previously and the consensus was that break-even point with ICE is around 20k miles which is not a lot

I'm not sure we should be celebrating EVs when we could have done much more with public transportation and micromobility.

Given that they have 90kWh battery packs, I don't think many of the Jaguar I-PACEs in my area have even hit the "break-even" CO2 point when their owners are now trying to unload them. For some of these cars it's taken 5 years to get to just 25k miles.

https://www.kbb.com/cars-for-sale/all/jaguar/i-pace/seattle-...

My e-bike with a .36kWh battery pack has done far, far more for the environment than any EV ever will.

Picking a Jaguar is a little disingenuous as luxury cars like that are often sold fairly quickly as their owners can afford to buy/lease new cars more or less as often as they would like. Unless they are going straight to landfill for some reason, their lifetime should be longer than their ICE equivalents since they are simpler machines and much easier to do maintenance on.

> I don't think many of the Jaguar I-PACEs in my area have even hit the "break-even" CO2 point when their owners are now trying to unload them. For some of these cars it's taken 5 years to get to just 25k miles.

That’s a silly example and I dont see how it invalidates anything in my comment. Those are leisure vehicles, do you really believe someone will pick an ebike or a bus to go on a Sunday ride along the coast?

I didn't see where it correlates any decline with EVs versus less driving - was that somewhere in the article, or a given? I could think a lots of reasons (including a very big one) for lower auto emissions over the past 10+ years.

I remember 10 years ago the smog was quite rough on summer days. It's still there, but it seems less grim these days

I was in the south bay from 1985-2003, and the air quality seemed decent. But every time when I biked up Mt Hamilton and looked down into the valley, it was like looking into a bowl of thin soup. Talking about it with a friend who grew up there (he was born about 1960) he said the air quality used to be absolutely atrocious.

Although it is easy to lose hope about so many things heading the wrong direction, air quality is something which has improved substantially, and of course it would be great for it to improve even more.

Around 1981-1985, smog was quite bad in the SF Bay Area. It was a horrible brown-yellow.

I don't think most people appreciate how far away it is to reach Mt. Hamilton or how precarious the road up it is. Took a couple of gfs on drives up there.

I used to bike up Hicks Road near Mt. Umunhum.

Other good vantage points: the top of The Dish route behind Stanford and the observation deck of the de Young Museum.

The measurement became the target. Hope we have brake and tire dust particle measurements soon.

I hope so too.

I haven’t touched the brake pedal in months. Tyres would be interesting too monitor.

I hadn’t considered this side effect of engine breaking in electrics. But yeah, the cumulative impact is probably appreciable!

I recall hearing the excess weight makes up for regenerative breaking in added tire wear, but I'd love to see a formal study to back up whatever memory that got pulled from.

Would those not be covered by PM2.5? PM2.5 has also decreased in the Bay Area (removing the effects of the massive fires of the past decade). Particles from physical wear are many orders of magnitude larger than molecules.

Good news, EV and hybrids can do regenerative breaking that don't use friction to slow down. You can go a really long time and not touch the real breaks beside the 5mph to stopped

Yet they wear tires at least 20% faster which also pollutes

Yes, but they weigh more, so tire wear increases, non-linearly from my understanding.

The weight is all battery. It will come down, it already had in Asian nations where long range doesn't have the same marketing affect as it does in the USA. Americans thinking they need 1000 mile batteries and literal tank like chassis puts their cars at a massive efficiency disadvantage.

Shouldn't brake dust be down too due to regenerative braking?

EVs definitely chew through tires faster. On top of being heavier they also have massive amount of torque. Same happens if you have a sporty ice car and you like to gun it - you will be buying new tires every 30k miles

Doesn't the power generated count as part of your carbon footprint?

I can tell because Teslas have high pointing headlights that blind me

Many newer cars have projector style lights and our eyes suffer. The headlights are almost a point light source and hard on the eyes.

I think the new DOT adaptive lighting standards should help if manufacturers move over.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-allow-adaptive-dr...

Has the same kind of study been done in, say, Norway?

Oslo, Norway's capital city, has a goal to be carbon neutral by 2030. So they're keeping track of these things[1].

From that page:

The statistics shows that the direct GHG emissions from road traffic have been reduced by over 15 percent compared to 2009. The change is mostly due to an increased adoption of biofuels, increased share of electric vehicles and a renewed car fleet.

About 38% of the cars currently driving in Oslo[2] are fully electric (with an additional 6% hybrids).

[1]: https://www.oslo.kommune.no/politics-and-administration/stat...

[2]: https://www.klimaoslo.no/klimabarometeret/veitrafikk/personb...

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