Tesla does their own with real world data. It’s a non-issue. Save the planet. Stop making excuses and get an EV.
My car's first set of tires were very bald at 25,000 miles. That's not unusual on new cars in general as they seem to come from the factory with low longevity tires, but it's still quite a short tire life.
Yes anything in a gasoline engine is gone, and brakes get less use.
But there are still maintenance items.
Every time you fill up on 20 gallons of gas, that is 400 pounds of CO2 that will be dumped into the air.
Used EVs are apparently very cheap. Most new cars are prohibitively expensive, the average new car cost is something like $50k now in the US. If anybody is concerned about cost of new cars, they are buying used anyway.
The median length of car ownership is something like 7 years. Even if you are switching between used cars, most people are switching vehicles at some point.
From what I understand even considering battery mining and using dirty electrical generation, you’re still at breakeven within a couple years of driving with an EV.
Yeah lithium mining is bad, but don’t forget that oil is also extracted and “mine.” And your gas car uses a LOT of it.
I wouldn’t think too much about then average new car cost of $50k. That average is skewed by:
1. Expensive new car purchases (average != median)
2. Lower income people don’t buy new cars at all.
Still, some of the best new car deals are EVs because dealers can’t get rid of them due to the sudden expiration of federal incentives. Plus the used ones depreciate like crazy despite having better maintenance and lower miles. The lease deals you might get on an Ioniq are insane, good luck getting a gas car lease with that kind of value.
Let’s also not forget that the majority of housing units in the USA are single family homes where charging at home is likely to be an option.
> From what I understand even considering battery mining and using dirty electrical generation, you’re still at breakeven within a couple years of driving with an EV.
Only when compared to buying a new ICE, as it takes 1-2 years average mileage in the US and 2-4 years in the EU for a new EV to reach emissions parity with a new ICE. It takes well over a decade in the EU for a new EV to recover it's production emissions va driving an existing used ICE. It's never environmentally friendly to scrap an ICE for a new EV.
In my case I already own a hybrid that I only drive 2000 mi/yr and there is not yet an EV that I could buy with so little embodied carbon that it would make sense to do so. At the rate China is decarbonizing, presumably the embodied carbon of their EVs will soon be minimal, but not yet.
Really? I could imagine it being significantly longer than an average EV, but never? Regardless of driving pattern? Got a link or can you show your math?
According to the company itself, their bloated truck-like luxury object has double the emissions of a normal hybrid car.
Rivian: 60,140 kg carbon per lifetime.
F150, at 20mpg: 78,740 kg carbon, for fuel alone.
So even ignoring the embodied carbon in an ICE vehicle, and paying comparatively high embodied CO2 cost of a new Rivian, it's better to switch immediately, (if CO2 were the sole concern, which it never is.)
What would you compare the Rivian to?
My kid races mountain bikes so I have become extremely familiar with Rivian (and Cybertruck) MTB Dad, and I think they are a joke. With only a little planning I can get three bikes and three riders in a Honda Insight, while R1T Dad needs an optional accessory to get even one bike in the bed. People choosing these things are, 99% of the time, not behaving rationally. They are buying luxury goods that they believe signal their environmental credentials.
The cultural irrationality of the truck/car market in the US crosses all ethnicities and class lines. If we are trying to evaluate the effectiveness of EVs, I think we need to compare the Rivian to the closest fossil fuel powered vehicle, even if it's something that causes me to disrespect the people making these choices.
That's pretty much the order of "greenness" in personal transport.
New EVs will pay off their added carbon footprint in roughly 1 or 2 years in most locations. The ultimate determining factor of how fast that is the energy mix of your local power generation.
The only time it'd probably be better to continue using an ICE is if that ICE is a moped or you live in West Virginia and drive a hybrid. For pretty much all other vehicle choices, switching to an EV will be greener.
It takes 2-4 years of that mileage alone for a new EV to reach lifetime emissions parity with a new ICE in the EU (which I know is longer than the US due to the vast differences in average emissions per vehicle between the two continents).
For most of the world, the GP is correct. Driving whatever car you have will always be more environmentally friendly than buying a new EV. Reduce and reuse are environmental cornerstones for a reason.
Which is why I put a used EV as being better for the environment vs a new one.
But both will be better for the environment in their lifetime than keeping a used ICE on the road.
It's more economical to keep your current car until it starts seeing major mechanical issues. However, environmentally an EV will (almost) always beat an ICE, the sooner you get one the better. Especially in a place like the EU where you can get even more environmentally friendly EVs due to the lower amounts of driving. You can, for example, grab the BYD seagull which has a 30kWh battery pack. That alone significantly reduces the new EV environmental impact beyond what some of the older numbers would have shown.
This is simply not true. A new EV will not reach emissions parity with a used ICE car in its average useful lifetime (12.5 years).
This isn't close or controversial, so I wonder what the basis for your mistaken belief otherwise is? Not even EV companies make this claim.
If your used ICE vehicle has 15 to 25,000mi in it, then yeah, replacing it with an EV today is the better choice. It's more a matter of when it will be the better choice.
This is only not true if you have very low yearly milages or a particularly efficient ICE. Which, maybe you do.
[1] https://www.politifact.com/article/2022/dec/06/carbon-dioxid...
That's the payoff period for the carbon differential between a new EV and a new ICE, not a new EV and your existing ICE, where the carbon cost of production is already sunk. Hence why the GP commented that keeping your ICE is environmentally better than buying a new EV.
Also note that 15-25k miles is 24-40k km, or 2.4-4 years of the average annual mileage in the EU. That's to break even with a new ICE. To break even with a second hand ICE, it's on the order or 15-20 years, or effectively longer than the useful life of the EV.
> If your used ICE vehicle has 15 to 25,000mi in it, then yeah, replacing it with an EV today is the better choice. It's more a matter of when it will be the better choice.
This claim is simply false. There is no point in the lifetime of a used ICE where replacing it with a new EV will result in reduce overall emissions.
No, that's to break even with a new EV per the article I posted.
I'd love to see a source that says otherwise. I think you have a bad source for the CO2 emissions of new EV production.
> One common claim is that electric vehicles have higher emissions associated with battery manufacturing. While manufacturing emissions for battery electric cars are roughly 40% higher than for gasoline cars, the ICCT’s research shows that this initial “emissions debt” is typically offset after around 17,000 kilometers of driving, usually within the first one to two years of use in Europe.
The emissions debt is relative to a new ICE.
In cradle-to-grave emissions, electric cars are much lower than ICE cars in lifetime carbon footprint, often 50% lower.
That doesn't change the fact the replacing a used ICE with a new EV will result in increased overall emissions and increase the net carbon footprint.
> I'd love to see a source that says otherwise. I think you have a bad source for the CO2 emissions of new EV production.
This is a completely uncontroversial fact and no environmental or governmental bodies make the claim which you are putting forward, so I'd rather like to see your sources.
Source: https://theicct.org/pr-electric-cars-getting-cleaner-faster/...
Just fuzzy eyeballing (I don't see the actual numbers for the manufacturing estimated CO2, just the graph), it looks like ~10% of the lifetime emissions for a new ICE come from manufacturing. That would put the the new EV payback vs used ICE at 4 or 5 years.
At that point, it just sort of depends on how long you hold onto your ICE for.
My wife might be able to do it with the amount she commutes, but for me, working from home, it's utterly laughable.
How many co2 tons are generated in making a new Nissan leaf?
I suspect it's much lower than that number now-a-days. Primarily because the energy going into batteries production will both use less power and likely comes from greener power sources.
If nissan is to be believed, since then they've cut the CO2 emissions from production by 40%. So maybe in the range of 9T?
The sunk cost fallacy applies not only to dollars, but also to any quantitative phenomenon. The important thing to evaluate is the cost going forward. When you look at the cost of that new Nissan Leaf, you need to amortize the initial carbon cost over the rest of its lifetime, not just the few years you have it!
New EV vs used ICE will depend on how much you drive and in what conditions. I would guess what I do (in the UK) is uncommon in the US but it must be possible but working from home plus living in a town rather than a city means I only do low single digit thousands of miles a year and that almost entirely on clear roads.
People in much of the UK commute by public transport and use their cars lightly (e.g. for shopping on the weekend, trips, etc).
Transportation and exercise are linked. Walking kills two birds with one stone.
Glad you asked.
Biking has an energy efficiency of around 99%. Very little of the effort you put into biking ends up as waste heat. Walking, on the other hand, has a much lower energy efficiency. You are putting much more effort overcoming and generating friction as you move your legs. You are also doing it for a longer period of time since you are going slower.
It's one of my favorite counterintuitive facts.
> I would guess what I do (in the UK) is uncommon in the US
And that's for sure. In almost every US city if you want to do anything, you are driving. Where I'm at, everything is at least 10mi from my home. That racks up the miles pretty quickly.
> Walking does not use fuel so efficiency is not really relevant.
Ah, it is. You eat food, that's fuel. It's the major source of CO2 for both activities. Now, it can be insignificant. If the only food you eat is like oatmeal and beans that you grow yourself, then yeah it's going to have a non-existent impact.
However, if you have any sort of meat or imported foods, that CO2 budget can go up pretty quickly.
The actual energy for making the steel for a bike, which will outlast your children, isn't significant.
That implies all exercise is a bad thing. i think you will find very few people are sufficiently keen to reduce CO2 that they will deliberately get less exercise and damage their health. I am certainly not doing that. At the moment I am trying to get more exercise.
> Bikes require very little steel
Compared to a car, certainly. Compared to shoes, an awful lot.
> a bike, which will outlast your children
The typical life span of a bike seems to be about five and ten year years. I really hope my kids last a reasonable multiple of the top end! The level of sales of cycles in the UK (well over 1 million a year) vs the number of people who cycle at least once a week (less seven million) implies a life of about five years. About half of that is leisure cyclists so not really comparable to people using transport to get somewhere.
Leisure cyclists want to get more exercise so by your argument about that being a bad thing they (and therefore half of all UK cyclists) are actively harmful.
https://road.cc/content/news/uk-cycle-sales-plummet-early-19...
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64e71a4f20ae8...
Biking is less demanding on some parts of the body that only can take so much stress. So you can push other parts more if that makes sense: top cyclists can do 400-600 W sustained or 1-2 kW in short sprints. That's not less exercise, that's several times more than a walker or runner can do. So in the same time as walking you can either be faster at your destination and save time and/or energy, or go further while spending the same or less energy, or output more energy. The choice is yours.
Anyway, from the CO2 perspective, biking vs walking is splitting hairs really.
Very few people are top cyclists, or top anything else. Top cyclists are doing it as a sport, not as a means of transport.
> Anyway, from the CO2 perspective, biking vs walking is splitting hairs really
I agree. I am responding to people who are claiming it is better than walking to a significant extent.
Well you were mentioning exercise, so I reacted to that. The point is everyone biking as exercise can push more watts than when walking, if they want to.
In many cases, this is rational. Yeah, a used Model 3 with a great rate plan is probably worth it as a commuter, but what if you are an outlier? Even a low battery failure rate can be a risk, and extended warranties are expensive.
But also, some of it is irrational, as the FB comments effectively feed many false fear driven narratives.
I've gone back and forth on this. When you buy an EV your old ICE vehicle is not destroyed, it continues it's lifecycle when it goes to someone else. Moreover, there's value in sending a market signal in buying an EV, which is important at this stage of transition.
Maybe the argument is about average age of the road fleet? That a used ICE vehicle should be replaced with a used EV?
Brings a tear to my eye.
What kind of car you buy is a simple but very impactful choice. One that many people are not making due to misinformation.
No thanks. I will instead actually do something to help the planet by continuing to drive decades year old vehicles whose production costs have long since been amortized, and which have much lower maintenance cost.
Bonus: I can also safely park my old automobiles indoors without any worry of spontaneous combustion. #winning
Another bonus: People all the time chat me up about my old automobiles, wanting to buy them. EV owners don't have the same experience for some reason.