(Genuine question, not whataboutism...) what about the environmental aspects of manufacturing and distributing a vehicle other than CO2 emissions?
> old and set in their ways
I fear I may be approaching this stage myself! :)
The importance of those is a tiny fraction of the importance of CO2 emissions.
A toxic pit full of battery waste the size of a small town will not end life on Earth. An atmosphere full of CO2 will.
The greenest choice most of us can make is an old, used car with reasonable emissions and that’s fuel efficient. Like a 15 year old Civic or Corolla. Or do what a colleague of mine did - he revived a first generation Prius, flashed newer software onto it, and salvaged a battery pack from a newer, wrecked Prius.
There are also the caveats you mentioned that the analysis does assume that an EV is actually the greener choice, which is itself a function of a lot of other choices being made green also, such as whether it was constructed and powered with the most environmentally favorable choices of mining and manufacturing, most of which isn't really in the consumers direct control.
Relevant phrases are "well-to-tank" and "tank-to-wheel" which combine to give "well-to-wheel" numbers.
Is this with the battery tech of today, december 2024? So for EVs built in 2020 let's say, it was worse? I think there is some advancement in battery making, isn't there?
I assumed we're attempting to weigh up keeping an ICE vehicle that already exists - like my 10 year old diesel - vs building building a new EV vehicle and scrapping the old ICE.
Although maybe we're missing a trick. Not the dumping-it-in-the-lake bit(!), but the taking-an-old-ICE-out-of-circulation bit.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20...
It suggests that making an ICE car is roughly equal to the running in terms of carbon.
In reality manufacturing is about 10%, disposal 5% and the other 85% from running it e.g. fuel and maintenance.
It then suggests that keeping an old car is better because if you keep the car for twice as long then the emissions are half per mile, but you don't scrap functional cars you sell them onto someone else. This causes a cascade with the oldest and most polluting cars being scrapped.
I imagine this depends hugely on the kind of vehicle?
Our small [petrol] car cost the equivalent of $10k on the road, including all taxes. It has a tiny engine, four seats, and limited luggage space. It's fairly fuel-efficient (at least when I'm driving).
I've also recently driven a BMW 5 series (booked the cheapest "compact manual" as an airport rental vehicle, got that instead - win!) List price around 10x that of our little car. Nicer ride, of course. Bigger luggage space. Five seats.
Presumably in terms of carbon the BMW's manufacturing costs vastly exceed that of small cars, but is the carbon manufacturing cost linear with either its fuel efficiency or with its price?
https://www.carboncounter.com/#!/details?cars=34797;36030;34...
The tool also lets you set various assumptions like miles driven per year to see how they affect things.
In any practical sense, no, it's not. Its a dumb argument pushed by people trying to sandbag EVs.
Current recycling tech is pretty terrific (IIRC ~98% recovery of lithium, misc metals). Enabling the long fabled "circular" economy.
At some point we'll hit a (near) equilibrium. IIRC, ~20 years out. (Assuming Li-ion battery tech continues to improve at current rate. Thereby balancing out the lithium lost during recycling.) So we'll hit something like "peak lithium", greatly reducing mining (extraction) of new lithium.
Recycling is much cheaper than mining (both $ and CO2).
(I believe, but obliviously can't prove, that sodium (et al) batteries will enable new use cases and markets, complimenting lithium rather than replacing it.)
I think we're discussing the latter, where the upfront cost of the ice doesn't count because you already have it.
But generally we don't scrap old ones.
If you instead sell the old one to someone who drives an ICE car that gets worse mpg then that's a further benefit.
If you live somewhere that mostly burns coal to make electricity, your break even is determined based on the higher efficiency of electric motors and of the (energy efficient but filthy) big stack coal generators compared to the relatively clean but inefficient gasoline ICE.
But if they start building wind turbines and solar farms, because those are just cheaper and easier - suddenly that distance shrinks rapidly (maybe half) even though for you as an end user nothing changed, because electricity is fungible so you charge a car from the solar farm just the same as from a coal power plant.
Which is almost everywhere in the world. Fossil fuels make up around 80% of energy production.
> But if they start building wind turbines and solar farms, because those are just cheaper and easier -
If they were "just cheaper and easier" they wouldn't need huge clean energy investments and subsidies.
I love solar, but don't let anyone sell you on the fiction that your EV is avoiding fossil fuels at any time in the near future unless you have installed enough solar on your personal residence to charge your car every day.
And if you ask the people who have done that "hey, was it cheap and easy to move your car's energy consumption to renewables?" and they reply "Yes!", please bring their story back here and share with the class.
https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2023/execut...
Let's say doing things one way uses 10 units of something, and doing something another way then uses 5 units of that same something. Didn't you then avoid using 5 units of that thing?
Yeah, no. If this was 1984 you'd be right on the money. In 2024 "We mostly burn coal to make electricity" either means you're subsidising coal or you have no infrastructure investment to move to a better generation.
> Fossil fuels make up around 80% of energy production.
Where are you still seeing 80%? Last I saw was closer to 60%. A lot of that isn't coal, and the gasoline is not electricity production†. Gasoline is what we're replacing in the discussion, so "Yeah, but what about gasoline?" is a total misfire. Which mostly leaves methane. And that's a very different comparison to coal. There are indeed new methane electricity plants in lots of places.
A methane power plant might emit half or even a third of the CO2 of the equivalent coal plant. It's still a fossil fuel, but in terms of the ratio we're talking about for break-even on an EV, that's a huge difference.
> If they were "just cheaper and easier" they wouldn't need huge clean energy investments and subsidies.
You're seeing huge investments because they're expensive and make money, that's what an investment is. They're not investing in coal plants because that's a money loser. Yes, it's often subsidised, in my country the renewable energy schemes are subsidised via "Contracts for Difference" which have the effect of insuring the price paid for energy, leaving the problem of delivering the energy very much in the hands of the bidders, the government is only the hook for the agreed price of energy when it's delivered, this has the effect of making investment less risky - if you can make 1000GWh of energy over the lifetime of the project and the subsidy says you're definitely getting £50 per MWh, that's £50M, without CfD you can't be sure if you get paid £80 per MWh (we're £30M richer) or £20 per MWh (we're bankrupt) until the power auctions years after you've constructed the plant.
† Yes there are a handful of power plants running on this fuel, but they're insignificant at a global scale.
Production of EVs and batteries generate more CO2 before the first wheel turns, however, the total carbon footprint of ICE vehicles quickly overtake that of the EVs after 15,000 miles (24,140 km) of driving.
- It takes a typical EV about one year in operation to achieve "carbon parity" with an ICE vehicle.
- If the EV draws electricity from a coal/fired grid, however, the catchup period stretches to more than five years.
- If the grid is powered by carbon/free hydroelectricity, the catchup period is about six months.
Shouldn't we be comparing an old ICE which was already built years ago but is still operating vs building a new EV to replace it?
The carbon footprint of building the ICE is almost irrelevant, it's just the ongoing damage it is doing. Compare that with footprint of building and operating the EV that could replace it.
Everyone replaces their car at some point. If you are comparing a new EV, its best to compare its impact compared to a new ICE. We all know its probably best in most cases to keep any vehicle, even one that is inefficient, on the road for its useful life.
I didn’t know this until this thread. And I feel like I’ve heard people say things like they are going to improve the environment by ditching their current car for an EV, not because they’re planning on getting rid of their car anyways.
Here's Top Gear explaining it, as my attempt to convey the same information seems to have bounced off most people replying:
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/mythbusting-world-...
> But what if your existing petrol or diesel car is perfectly satisfactory? Obviously if you cause one less vehicle – of any kind – to be manufactured, you’re saving CO2 in the short term. But if you drive a lot of miles or your car is thirsty, then sell it to someone who drives less. Getting an EV would after a very few years move you into credit. If it’s efficient and you drive little, probably hold on to it for a while.
> In most areas of life, the greenest thing is simply to buy less stuff and keep it for longer. But with ICE cars, because they emit so much CO2 in use, it’s not always so simple.
(Apologies for the snark but...) mythbusting articles without any experimental data or references to back up claims - or claims they say they've debunked - aren't really my thing. Hopefully not really a HN thing either :/
I agree that there are shades of gray though. My counterpoint is that I am not so sure the non-commercial vehicle market is that efficient that when you sell a vehicle that it is going to the best candidate best on the miles driven. Your vehicle is still in the fleet and being used. I think the simpler argument is that for any modern vehicle, there is not a significant enough gain and you are better holding on to the vehicle until it reaches your preferred EOL.
Ditching their current car isn't setting their old car on fire. It's still in the overall fleet of cars.
Reduce, reuse, repair, recycle. Vehicles should be reduced first (drive less), reused second (keep using existing one), repaired (keep using existing ones), and finally you can recycle as best as possible.
All of this should happen prior to replacement. If you replace an existing ICE with an EV, the EV not only has to catch up with a new ICE, it actually has to "catch up" with your existing already made working ICE that has no new cost for construction. That's much worse than 20k miles because the cost of building your existing car is sunk. It could take as many as 50,000 miles of driving to break even against your existing used car.
Consumerism and early replacement of working goods has always been the mortal enemy of environmentalism.
That is precisely the sunk cost fallacy though: the principle is that continuing an endeavor simply because it already has been a cost paid shouldn't be done, unless the total continuing cost (including the eventual replacement) is less than the cost of immediate replacement (plus all continuing costs after initial replacement, including the eventual replacements of those in turn). Otherwise the principle says it is a waste of resources.
The 4 R's assume that the replacement is no better than the original at the job, which is why I described that analysis as the sunk cost fallacy. We don't have to take this assumption (personally, I prefer to bike over driving my ICE, so this analysis doesn't apply), but if we take the assumption that the EV does less environmental damage over its lifetime, then this assumed "environmental damage" function is minimized by discarding the ICE immediately, as any further use simply increases the total "environmental damage" caused by the choice of which car to use.
This can be seen in computers too, as newer computers are sometimes so much more power efficient then their replacement that they can very quickly save on resources by throwing out a perfectly working computer to replace it with a newer one.
This is unlike most other consumer goods which tend to be scrapped much earlier. If you're scrapping a car before its ~10-15 years old, chances are there's either something quite wrong with it, or you just drove it way too much and its gonna fall apart (i.e., something wrong with it).