Do EV's actually do anything beneficial for the planet?
I've seen a lot of posts here on Lemmy, specifically in the "fuck cars" communities as to how Electric Vehicles do pretty much nothing for the Climate, but I continue to see Climate activists everywhere try pushing so, so hard for Electric Vehicles.
Are they actually beneficial to the planet other than limiting exhaust, or is that it? or maybe exhaust is a way bigger problem?
Good luck convincing people who live outside dense population zones to bike 3 hours to work. And "just move" is not an option. Think rents and home prices are bad now? If everyone moved to cities imagine the price gouging.
E: for the record I'm all about public transportation, it's just unrealistic to think we completely ditch cars. They are too useful so EVs make sense going forward
No reasonable people are expecting someone that lives rural to bike into town. Going between rural homes and cities is one of the places where personal cars are unavoidable. Ideally, they drive to the edge of town and park next to a subway station that they take most of the rest of the way.
I agree, but just to clarify a minor point: small rural towns are actually some of the most walkable and bikable because they were built before cars. If you’re staying within a rural town, you don’t need a car.
Imagine how much cheaper cities could be if 2/3rds of the real estate wasn't parking? Also, moving doesn't necessarily mean going to New York. It can also just mean moving closer to your job in a small town. Which would also be easier if you could turn all the parking lots into homes.
The problem is not the people who live far from decent public transport but those people who live in the city and uses it every day, on city, all roads are always for vehicles like cars and trucks, instead to be for pedestrian and for bikes. On bad connected places a car can make sense but most of the people in city have cars when they rarely go outside, they could rent a car and would be cheaper for them for those days they need to move away. About EV, I think we still have the same problem, but the waste it generates keeps on ground instead flying on air.
You summarized perfectly the problem I see with the "fuck cars" crowd. They never acknowledge the need for cars in some cases. America's population centers are definitely large cities where public transportation SHOULD be championed, but there has to be an acknowledgement of the rural population (around 15% in America I believe) where cars are a necessity.
reform zoning at the state level and put in protected bike lanes literally everywhere. also kind a lot of people can do a little biking. I can so some trips by bike in by inner ring suburban area
How much of the population lives in those areas? I can't imagine it's more than 10%.
Good luck convincing people to give up their horses for these new fangled "automobiles." Did you know this "gasoline" is highly flammable? A horse go go anywhere you can, and doesn't need a "road." Who's going to pay for, build, and maintain these "roads" anyway?
Brought to you by Herman Luddite, Horse Breeder.
People who say EVs do nothing just want to complain for the sake of complaining a lot of the time. EVs aren't ideal, but they are better and more crucially they shift the consumer thinking away from ICE cars and towards alternatives.
EVs do something - they're better than ICE. But we're wasting a lot of money on them that could go towards better public transit. We desperately need less cars and the EV vs ICE debate can distract from that - I think that's why you see so much of a pushback against EVs.
Honestly, the rabid part of the fuck cars crowd are letting perfect become the enemy of good enough for now. The sort of thing they want could never stand a chance of happening. Not anytime soon, not under this breed of capitalism where corporations have a say in the government.
EVs are good enough to slow down emissions to the point where maybe our descendants will have enough time to shift public opinion and get rid of cars entirely. Until then, cars are going to stick around, best thing to do is compromise for now, and use the time bought to have a chance of getting everything you want later.
There is enough money to fund both EVs and public transit. No need to cut money from one to give to the other. We should take this money from the funding for military or religious purposes.
Hybrids are great, but straight evs only work if you have two vehicles and use the EV to commute around locally in a city. EVs lose around 1.5 to 2% of range per year and lose 30% of their range during cold weather. Then if the battery fails in a long range EV you're looking at a $10,000 to $25,000 bill to replace it, making all those vehicles you can see now that are 20 years old and still road worthy a thing of the past. If the US actually swapped to mostly EV it would destroy anyone who has to rely on buying older vehicles to get by.
EV also in its current state is no good for anyone in apartments or renting or places that can't easily plug in their vehicles from home. A for lightning for instance takes like 4 days to charge on a 120v outlet and while it advertises a range of 300 miles, it's cold weather mileage is about 210 and stopping at a fast charge station to quick charge up to 90% will cost you $50. No better and often worse on prices than an ice. In this sense it only works out well if you have a house with a garage for your vehicle and an added bonus if you have solar panels. Right now though, that's not most of the population at all.
But it's also really dumb to go the other way and focus so much on EVs, isn't it? Why replace our cars with slightly-different cars, build a whole new charging infrastructure for them, and then phase them out, say, another 40-50 years down the line? It's not just tailpipe CO2 emissions at issue, it's poor land-use causing a major housing crisis, it's the cost of cars skyrocketing out of financial reach of many people, it's habitat destruction causing populations of wild animals to crash and many to go extinct, it's particulate matter from tires causing human maladies like dementia and cardiovascular disease, it's an epidemic of social isolation and loneliness, it's traffic violence killing over a million people a year, it's sedentary lifestyles leading to diabetes and cardiovascular problems, it's CO2 emissions from manufacturing cars and building the infrastructure that they need, it's the large-scale use of fresh water for manufacturing, it's the loss of autonomy for children, it's municipalities going broke trying to maintain car-centric infrastructure, it's the burden on people in poverty needing to buy and maintain a car, etc. etc.
I mean, the ultimate solution is to have cities and towns that don't force us to get in the car to drive everywhere, for every little thing, every day. There's little meaningful difference between transitioning cities away from ICE cars and transitioning cities away from electric cars. We could just start now, and maybe Millennials might be able to see some benefit before they retire. EVs are fine as a stop-gap measure while we work on that, but I see them being treated as the main event.
I don't think we are focusing completely on EVs, they're just a very hot topic for some reason. There's plenty of high speed rail projects, pedestrianisation and other non car related innovations coming through
Buying an electric vehicle does not make the world a better place, but buying and using a gas vehicle makes the world worse by a bigger margin, so if you're buying a vehicle, an electric vehicle is probably better.
This is a good way to put it. If you're in the market and need a car, ICE you are knowingly hurting the planet a lot. Buying an EV you're at least not making the planet worse.
It is the nuclear power vs fossil fuels vs renewables debate all over again. Nuclear is much greener than fossil fuels but comes with its own challenges regarding cost, safety and waste disposal. Renewable energy like solar, wind and hydro are better than nuclear but the point is that nuclear and renewables are not enemies rather they are allies who have to band together to beat fossil fuels.
Public transport is like renewables, the best solution but one which needs time because years of underdevelopment and under-funding means that they are not as developed as they should be.
EVs are like nuclear. Not the perfect solution but have the capability to serve areas and use cases that public transport (renewables) can't. There are issues like them costing more than the alternatives and that the disposal of waste produced by both is a problem with an unsatisfactory solution.
ICE vehicles are like fossil fuel energy plants. The worst of the worst with regards to their effect on the planet. Their only advantage is that they offer convenience.
So I think we should stop the narrative that EVs(nuclear) are bad because the are not the best solution at hand but rather combine increasing adoption of both EV(nuclear) and public transport (renewables) to combat the true threat that is ICE(fossil fuel energy plants).
Nuclear power is alright if you disregard it turning two cities into wastelands for a century.
First priority is to get rid of cars in general. Try to use bicycles and public transportation. If you don't need a car to get to work, consider a car share service to replace your private car/private parking space.
EVs probably have around 1/10th the lifetime emissions of a gas car, which is still really significant.
Easier said than done in a lot of American cities and burbs. I’ve tried to go without a car, and it just hasn’t been practical.
I’m on the edge of a denser American metro that actually has a subway, and when I ditched the car for some of my jobs, I added several hours of commute to my day, and it honestly started to wear on me physically.
When I have the money I’ll probably jump over to an EV. It seems like the most reasonable solution for where I live and work.
Yeah, unfortunately transit options depends a ton on where you live. not just which city, but also individual neighborhoods in that city and where your workplace is. Even when you live near rail-based transit, often cities might not bother running proper routes and schedules to make it viable. But we should support public transportation and bike infrastructure efforts when we can.
I’d go broke without a car. I live close to work but shop in the suburbs. The price of groceries at the “bodegas” are shockingly offensive.
EVs probably have around 1/10th the lifetime emissions of a gas car
Do you have a source for that because that's radically better than any number I've heard. Most analyses I've seen have been more like 40-60%.
Doesn't this hugely depend on the power generation in your area?
It's basically "refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle" except for cars it's "refuse, cycle, public transport,, car pool"
#1 - Burning fossil fuels (automobiles, specifically) kills 250,000 Americans a year. It causes a TREMENDOUS amount of pollution that is hugely impactful to health and quality of life
#2 - The only way to make our energy usage sustainable is to centralize production - ie you have to make all automobiles electric to start before the transition of the grid to renewables has a more dramatic effect. BTW, 40% of energy production of the US in 2023 was renewable. So our grid is getting cleaner and cleaner by the day.
#3 - Climate change. It is the most existential threat to our survival in our lifetime, bar none. We should do everything we can to leave the planet better than when we came. And right now we are failing miserably.
FYI, for all the naysayers saying EVs are "as" or "more" polluting than their ICE counterparts, this has long been debunked. Please do not listen to the Russian/Chinese propaganda or the comments of idiots that have no ability to analyze data.
I like your post, but regarding China, you are dead wrong. They are the country that hast adopted electric cars the most, even more than Norway. There are also lots of videos on youtube of travvelers being surprised about this, seeing lots and lots of car brands that they (and me) never heard of before.
can you please provide sources for your claims?
You just did. For #1, here is the relevant US data (https://news.mit.edu/2013/study-air-pollution-causes-200000-early-deaths-each-year-in-the-us-0829).
The increase of renewable energy sources from 17% to 40% from 2020-2023 is amazing and mostly due to policies enacted by the current administration. I don't understand how that isn't being celebrated and I can't imagine how that progress will be damaged with the Republican nominee in power.
EVs are good for the environment overall but you are not going to fix climate changing by buying more things.
Most of the criticism towards EVs comes from the idea that buying the shiny new thing is a net positive when it's actually less harmful than buying a traditional car.
Tldr: if you are going to buy a car, buy an EV, but don't just buy a new car just to switch to EV if you don't need it.
Another point is that cars, car infrastructure, and car oriented development is one of the single most wasteful ways to use land. Building smarter cities with alternative transit systems, mixed use areas, and actually using all 3 dimensions like many newer cities in China could protect so much habitat from needlessly being destroyed. There's hardly any truly wild land left on the east coast, it's hard to tell what things used to look like now that practically everything is covered in suburbs and strip malls.
I fully agree, cars are just not needed most of the time.
Yeah that's what people being annoyed at the push towards EVs seem to always misunderstand, too. It's not about immediately throwing all your current stuff away. It's the same with heat-pumps for heating: Should you immediately throw away your gas furnace you installed 2 years ago? Of course not. Should you get a heat pump if you need to replace your heating anyways? Hell yeah!
The criticisms are also that companies use slavery to acquire the materials to make EVs. And they don't work well in the cold (see current cold snap in Canada), the lifetime of the batteries aren't great, and we still need to destroy huge swaths of land to create cars, park/store cars, and drive cars.
EVs are only going to save the car industry. To fix it requires a redesign of cities (see Strongtowns, not justbikes, city beautiful, etc.).
That's only because the US and other first world countries have shied away from mining rare earth elements because it is traditionally a very dirty and polluting industry. So poor and developing countries did it their way... with slavery and incredibly ecologically damaging techniques.
New techniques are being developed in the US that solve those problems. It originally wasn't worth the effort because we had plenty of lithium to make 18V drill batteries. Since BEVs have proven to be capable and desireable over the last decade, critical material supplies just didn't keep up and those new techniques were just a twinkle in the eye of some smart people.
If you'd like to learn more about how we can completely avoid the slavery and pollution problems related to getting lithium, take a look at the Salton Sea enhanced geothermal projects. I am personally going to invest a portion of my life savings in that company if given the opportunity.
EVs are only going to save the car industry. To fix it requires a redesign of cities (see Strongtowns, not justbikes, city beautiful, etc.).
Nail on the head! EVs fix one problem, but the biggest problem is the idea of the personal vehicle. Most people shouldn't have a personal vehicle, especially for people who live in medium cities or larger. There should be a sort of car share instead.
EVs are much better for the environment than ICE vehicles. Mass transportation is much better still.
I like to think of it as "better than".
They're not perfect, but they're better than what people might do instead.
I could swap my older car for a second hand EV, which would be an environmental improvement.
The current car does 50-ish MPG, about 1.5 miles per KWH. An electric would do 4+miles per KWH, which going in reverse is 100+MPG.
A bigger improvement might come from me getting the bus/train/bike everywhere, which is where the fuck cars argument comes from.
But I am disorganised, a bit lazy, and I don't want to shepherd 4 people onto the train, paying £150 to go 100 miles.
So for me, slightly better is better than no improvement at all.
The energy used can be green, depending on what the national grid is up to that day. But it's always more green than burning dinosaurs.
And the reduction in brake dust is always a nice plus.
which going in reverse is 100+MPG.
Holy cow, why don't people drive in reverse all the time?
/s
Because you have to go forward before you can go backward.
/s
What kind of 80s shitbox are you driving that gets 50 MPG? Are you using Imperial gallons or driving a hybrid?
My aunt had one off these way back, don't try and climb any big hills but could go around for a while on a pint of gas.
I'll have you know it's a noughties shitbox. 999cc engine, 4 seats, and can just about fit 2.4m lengths of wood in if I'm careful.
And yes, imperial gallons (I had to do some maths, as the figures for MPG>M/KWh use american customary)
Sounds like the heydey of the Geo Metro, which got astonishing MPG for its time.
In case you missed it, co2 is causing global warming, which has the ability to extinct mankind in the future. EV don't produce any co2. Some idiots will talk about indirect emissions, but the point is moot. You don't remove indirect emissions by removing EV, you remove them by cleaning power grid and logistic lines.
EV are a necessity on a short term basis. Developing public transports and alternative to cars are also a necessity.
There are a TON of issues with EVs as a first line approach to emissions. Manufacturing emissions is a big one, admittedly that one will come down as infrastructure gets up to date with what we have already for vehicle manufacturing.
A much more important factor, however, is the fact that the individual's contribution to emissions is negligible. It doesn't really matter what we, as private citizens, do when corporations or billionaires produce so much carbon emissions. When Taylor Swift's JET ALONE produces more carbon annually than 1000 individuals driving their car daily, it doesn't matter one iota what kind of vehicle the average joe drives.
We need infrastructure, and we need governance. Pointing the finger at regular guys and saying you're the problem because you drive a combustion engine is folly at best.
When Taylor Swift’s JET ALONE produces more carbon annually than 1000 individuals driving their car daily, it doesn’t matter one iota what kind of vehicle the average joe drives.
Amazingly, you're missing your own point. If it's not about individuals, well, even Taylor Swifts jet by itself is a rounding error when considered in the context of global emissions.
But more importantly, it seems like you are contradicting yourself in a pretty fundamental way. You are perfectly comfortable taking Taylor Swift's emissions and holding her responsible for those due to her belonging to a class, namely folding her into membership of "corporations/billionaires". So Taylor, insofar as she represents the collective actions of that class, gets moral responsibility.
But individual consumers are also contributing significant emissions when conceived of as a class, which is a way of conceptualizing individual actions that, by your own Taylor Swift example, you are perfectly comfortable doing.
It doesn't mean it's the only thing we should strive to change, but it definitely is one of them, because the global collective emissions of people using internal combustion engines is in fact a significant input into CO2 levels, and we can reason about these things at those scales if we choose to.
We need to shit down billionaires planes indeed. But we also need to remove all cars that produce co2. Their emissions are significant. It means we won't survive if we don't remove them.
The problem you're touching is the one of whom will pay the price of the transition. And indeed it'd be better if rich people were paying.
I'm sorry, did you just handwave away indirect emissions? You do understand that the vast majority of our energy production still dumps large amounts of CO2 in the air?
What we need instead of EVs is well designed walkable cities with mixed use buildings where one no longer NEEDS a car.
If all you need for 95% of your travel is your legs or a bike, most people will actually just opt out of owning an expensive vehicle that they no longer need.
What we need is good a public transportation system in the form of busses for middle range and trains for long range transportation.
EVs is little more than a patch to keep the status quo on horribly designed cities.
In the Netherlands I could go everywhere (and did go everywhere) walking, or by bike. I sometimes used a train for longer distances but in the end I didn't need a car for anything.
You do realize how long and how much money it would take to actually redesign and construct our cities to be bike/walkable? We should definitely start but it will not be done in time. We NEED EVs in the mean time. Even then it only works for cities and the majority of America is spread too far for it to work. I'm not riding my bike 20 miles to and from work when it's -20 outside.
No, they didn’t and you pretty much just said the exact same thing they did with more words.
Even looking only at the healthcare costs of the exhaust-induced unhealth, you see massive economic benefit.
It's the old star-topology vs decentralized-mesh-topology question...
It is much more efficient to have 1 giant windmill, rather-than a zillion little ones.
It is much more efficient to have electric-trams than the number of cars required to move the same number of people.
As for electric-cars vs internal-combustion-engine-cars, the relocation-of-cost from always buying gasoline, to just plugging-in at night, is something that many people have openly adored.
The Engineering Explained yt channel bluntly stated that if you're in the city, it's a no-brainer.
Rurally, or in the arctic, you can be screwed, however.
I've no idea what the equation is for how much exhaust per mile-driven is produced, between
but it wouldn't surprise me if it is significantly more efficient, just due to getting the maintenance up to industrial standards.
( sloppy maintenance costs, and some companies push sloppy maintenance, not changing oil frequently enough, e.g. in order to produce engine-wear, forcing required-replacement.
Some yt mechanics call-out this practice. )
_ /\ _
No product is good for the environment.
But an EV is a hell of a lot better than an ICE.
Here's what the Union of Concerned Scientists has to say about electric vehicles. In short, they're a win.
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/electric-vehicles-are-cleaner
The cynical take is that EV's don't exist to save the world, they exist to save the car industry.
The more neutral take is that between an EV and an ICE car, the former is preferable.
Fact of the matter is that in order for many people to use a private car to go from anywhere to anywhere, you need a shocking amount of space and resources to make that work, especially if you compare that to expecting most people take those journeys by mass means, by bicycle or by foot.
So if you propose electric cars as the silver bullet solution for climate change, in a place where walking, cycling and transit are systemically kneecapped and held back, and nothing is done to solve the latter part, then the environmental impact of EV's is a drop on a hot plate.
I think pretty much anyone would agree that pervasive public transit with pervasive coverage and short wait times would be pretty much ideal.
I hate to be cynical but I can't see us getting there any time soon in the US. Mainstream American culture is so delusional about the idea that we're all RUGGED INDIVIDUALISTS that the idea of touching people is utterly repugnant.
I would love to dream of a world where this could happen, and maybe I should stop dreaming about self driving cars and start dreaming about this instead :)
Meanwhile, public transit everywhere in the US besides Manhattan is utterly abysmal and even in cities like Boston where public transit is decent-ish most people who can drive do.
Those who can't either take a taxi/Lyft if they can afford it, and if they can't afford it they suffer. It's the American Way.
One issue is not simply attitudinal (I have the right!), but habit/expectation (this is normal!).
A lot of people already structure their lives around cars. It's hard to get someone to go from "yes, it is normal and right for me to travel 40+ miles a day for errands" to "it is unreasonable for someone to visit these 5 places across town in a single afternoon".
Meanwhile, let's also face that EV's have to carry around large batteries. One advantage that ICE cars do have is the power density [J/kg] of petroleum fuel is leaps and bounds better than that if a lithium battery. This means that EV's are likely to produce more road noise from rolling, the dominant source of noise above 50 km/h, as well as more wear to the roads, since wear is a function of vehicle mass to some pretty high power. (I thought it was m^(4), but I'm not sure)
On top of that, while EV's don't have any tailpipe emissions, the power that they need still needs to come from somewhere. Thus the carbon emissions for use are a function of the national power grid of the place where you're charging your car.
Thus, A) if cars are already a fairly small part of the transportation mix, B) steps are taken to further improve the quality and availability of alternatives to cars, and C) the power grid is dominated by nuclear power and/or renewables, then EV's could be better for the environment.
They're better than ICE cars so provide a path for improvement on the existing installed base for transportation whilst not requiring people to significantly change their habits or large public investment.
However they're not the environmentally best solution for transportation in urban and even sub-urban settings: walking, cycling and public transportation (depending on distance) are vastly superior realistic solutions from an environmental point of view in those areas (they're seldom very realistic in the countryside, hence why I'm being very explicity about it being for urban and sub-urban areas).
However making cities and, worse, suburbia, appropriate for those better alternatives requires public investment (and we're in the late ultra-capitalist max-tax-evasion neoliberal era, so it's very much "screw collecting taxes and spending that public money for the public good"), time and even changes in housing density in many places (US-style suburbia is pretty shit at the population density and travel distance levels for realistic commuting by bicycle or public transport).
So Electric Cars are a pragmatic environmental improvement in such areas (and pretty much the only realistic solution outside them) and one where the economic elites don't have to pay taxes like everybody else since unlike for public transportation the cost of upgrading is entirelly born by consumers.
Yes. Shifts power source to the grid. Grid can use different sources for energy production.
EV power trains are much more simple to maintain, and will last longer once we stop anchoring them with disposable components and features. I’m looking forward to the EV “Corolla” with hand crank windows.
Shifts power source to the grid. Grid can use different sources for energy production.
Such an excellent point, which I hadn't seen mentioned before. It means we can have more control over those sources. Thank you.
with hand crank windows
I want hand crank windows back anyway. Faster and more reliable. So frustrating when the "auto complete" aspect of modern car windows means I cannot easily get the window half way closed or only a crack open. But I must be in the minority on that.
So frustrating when the "auto complete" aspect of modern car windows means I cannot easily get the window half way closed or only a crack open. But I must be in the minority on that.
I love driving with all the windows open about 1/4 or 1/2 open when the weather is nice, and that has included cars I owned and various rentals over the years. All of the cars I have owned or rented for the last couple of decades require pushing hard enough to have a kind of 'click' feeling before it does the automatically all the way open or closed thing. I'm sure some car maker has a setup that makes it easy to trigger the fully open/closed accidentally though.
Does it not work manually if you only push it slightly on your car?
other than limiting exhaust, or is that it?
Gee, when you say it like that, it makes extinction-level events sound not so bad! It is That Bad, so that would be the most direct answer.
The important thing to note is that even though some electricity is generated from fossil fuels, EVs eliminate the path-dependency that ties transportation to fossil fuels.
The best solution is 0 cars anywhere.
A more realistic solution, is to replace planet-murdering cars with planet-kicking cars.
The math that I have seen on when an EV becomes better for the planet compared to an ICE is kinda all over the place, mostly due to how the power is generated.
Where I live, with a high amount of coal, buying a used ICE vehicle makes more sense than buying a new EV. If we drove more than just our weekly grocery trip, it might make more sense.
Its all about efficiencies even on a coal fired grid an EV produces less emissions a prius.
As long as you would drive enough so that difference can offset the fabrication of the EV. Most people will hit this number in less than five years.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/when-do-electric-vehicles-become-cleaner-than-gasoline-cars-2021-06-29/
We drive about 350km a year on a high-coal grid, so we won't drive enough for a new EV to be better for the environment than getting a used car that was headed for disposal.
I know people who drive more per day than my household drives per year, so I know that we are going to be a fairly rare case.
A more realistic solution, is to replace planet-murdering cars with planet-kicking cars.
What a sad truth. Maybe we can add "and fewer of them".
The best solution is a reasonable number of cars and still having commercial vehicles like we have today... ideally those vehicles will be electric and most people will walk/bike/public transit to work.
Framing it as all or nothing is pretty unhelpful.
They are two separate solutions for different phases of the problem.
Doing only one of them doesn't fully solve the problem, you either continue to pollute now or you are stuck polluting, albeit less, forever.
I'm sure it annoys people that both are necessary and if you happen to live in a situation where the first is unnecessary for you, it can look like it's not necessary for everyone. But most Americans live at least 20 miles from their workplace so the vast majority of us can't just wait for policy solutions.
Doing "pretty much nothing for the climate" is hyperbole, I think. It's hard to say what the net climate benefit EVs might have, because our system is so complex. The numbers I found show that electricity and heating accounted for the highest, single category of CO2 emissions, at around 15 billion tons annually in 2020. Transportation came in second at around 7 billion tons. If we could wave a magic wand, and instantly do a 1:1 replacement of ICE cars with EVs, it would put a big dent in that category's emissions. It would also spike the electricity and heating category. Would the increase be less than the savings in the transportation category? LIkely, and the benefit would increase as more renewable electricity sources come online.
But even if we further used that magic wand to instantly get all of that new electricity for EVs from renewable sources, that still wouldn't touch the vast majority of emissions, in which car-centric lifestyles play a large role, e.g. manufacturing, construction, land use, even electricity and heating. So saying that EVs will do pretty much nothing for the climate is inaccurate, but so is saying that they're a big part of the solution. They're just incrementally better, and the size of the increment is arguable.
I think the push-back is mainly directed at that line of magical thinking that says that all we need to do is switch to EVs to drive to the grocery store, bring re-usable bags, and get Starbucks coffee in compostable cups, and the environment will be saved.
It's the same thing with recycling, companies trying to sell the idea that climate change is a personal failing of every single person even though said companies are responsible for like 90% of carbon emissions.
The problem with EVs is that we already have a better fix for this: public transit. Like trams and trains are both electric and would solve the microplastics caused by tires. Car companies are just pushing EVs to make a profit as always, the percentage of adoption required to effect climate changes isn't happening in the next several decades so just fix the issue centrally with proper public transit and actually effect climate change before we all die.
The often ignored part of this argument is that 50% of the US population at least lives in rural states. I grew up in a town with less than 10k people.
I'm 100% for more public transit, I live in a city and take the train to work. But for most Americans they do not and for the foreseeable future will not have public transit. I'm all for fighting for it, but it will be centuries before that happens.
EVs are NOT a perfect solution. They are a stopgap. But right now with where the planet is we need something now, we can't wait for centuries.
As for the companies are worse? Yes, they are. That doesn't mean we should just be complacent. It means we should be demanding they change AND lowering our own emissions. It's going to take everybody changing their lifestyles. The rich are the worst because few of them cause a huge percentage, but that doesn't mean the huge chunk of carbon we all put out together is excused either.
I grew up in a small town of less than 6000 people and we had bus lines connecting it to larger cities and a bus line that went around the town as well, I never had to take a car anywhere and you usually didn't see more than 3 cars at once because everyone either walked or took the bus.
The problem with EVs is that won't be adopted at a rate to make a difference while building public transit could happen faster so as a stopcap they do nothing currently and probably won't until it's too late either while only working as a distraction while public transit could be just be built with the same political will behind it as EVs have.
Getting everyone to switch to EVs is not happening in several decades, for example here in Estonia people mostly buy old used cars because new cars are ungodly expensive EVs even more so, I have seen one EV in 10 years.
It's the same thing with recycling, companies trying to sell the idea that climate change is a personal failing of every single person even though said companies are responsible for like 90% of carbon emissions.
God I wish this talking point would die.
How do you propose the consumption would change without alternatives? For example the meat industries is subsidised to hell, why would people stop buying meat if its the effordable option. You will never achieve systematic change with individual action, that has like never worked.
Another example is the requirements for cars is driven by car companies, not individuals. That was lobbied heavily and a lot of cities got redesigned for cars instead of walking.
A lot of good answers here. One made me think about the good aspects, not just the game reduction aspects.
Electric cars are creating additional sources of funding for battery research, improvement of the electrical grid (there was a movement to get rid of central power generating and just use generators at each house), and electric generation smoothing.
Better batteries faster will help humans to make better use of the minerals we pull from the earth and the electrons we set in motion. (Imagine a battery peaking plant with 1980's batteries.)
Improvement of the electric grid could limit wildfires caused by them.
Smoothing electric grid drawls moves generation from peaking with natural gas to more base load, hopefully with something better than coal.
Electric cars are creating additional sources of funding for battery research, improvement of the electrical grid (there was a movement to get rid of central power generating and just use generators at each house), and electric generation smoothing.
The kinds of battery used in cars and the kinds of batteries suitable for grid-scale operation only have a small overlap. They have entirely different needs. Car batteries make lots of trade-offs to very lightweight for example which is totally irrelevant in a stationary facility.
I think the only reason Li-ION batteries were even considered for grid-scale is that better suited battery technologies simply haven't been researched until very recently.
If our goal was energy storage for our grids, we would not be researching BEV battery tech.
Hard disagree.
This week, I'm designing a circuit which would traditionally use relays, but I'm considering IGBTs instead. IGBTs weren't designed for my industry, but they're so cheap (thanks to quadcopters) that I can just overspec them and get the job done despite the lack of optimization.
Grid scale energy storage was already being researched before the EV boom -- remember when people stopped talking about vanadium-flow? EV batteries undercut stationary-optimized batteries in $/kWh because EVs are lucrative enough to drive the research that much harder. Without the EV industry as the incubator for competing battery tech, stationary storage would still cost what it did in 2010.
In terms of Carbon, they produce about one third of the damage which an equivalent internal combustion engine car would.
There's a lot of factors that go into the final figures, like the specifics of the vehicle and the source of the energy used to charge it.
It's a bit like vaping instead of smoking. Neither are good for you but one is clearly worse than the other.
Does that third also take into account any differences in manufacturing them? In other words, the entire lifecycle.
That's the best figure I've seen for the total lifetime impact.
It depends on a like for like comparison. A really massive and inefficient EV will not stack up so well against a small efficient ICE, for example.
There's just too much variation for any one figure to be both simple and accurate
If they want more people to switch to EVs specifically, they absolutely need to try to make some changes if they can.
Chargers: In a world where many people are living in old apartment buildings and condos, people are going to need public chargers. I don't just mean enough for 20 people. If we want a big societal switch, we need to be able to assure people that they won't encounter what happened in Texas recently. 60 chargers is still pretty rough if your city has half a million people in it.
Cost: MANY people can only afford used vehicles. This is not only because of the up-front cost. Parts for repairs can become a massive factor when deciding what type of car to buy. Even if you can get a used car for 6K, you might not go for it if you know that certain important repairs will cost you up to 20K.
Design: There are concerns for a lot of people with things being too screen-based. Some people like knobs that you can change without having to look away from the road. How many functions will be stuck behind a subscription? Will an update brick your car? Is it ok to tow normally, or will it sometimes require a special flatbed that most people can't afford? Do we have the battery fire thing under full control yet?
If every single car eventually becomes too expensive, driving will either become a "caste" thing, or people will put things together at home that might be even worse for the environment. Shoddy DIY repairs can also count for this.
Reducing car use to a car driving caste is clearly an objective of the fuck cars movement. They want cars gone, if then public transit improves, that's great but even if it doesn't happen, at least the cars are gone.
I once calculated that my upper-middle class EV (2.1 tons in kerb weight, sadly) is better for the environment (indeed, carbon neutral since I'm only using clean energy) starting at 70,000km of driving usage. I'm at 20,000km now, so I'm already 28% there :)
In the USA, out of every economic sector, transportation creates the most GHG emissions [EPA1], and the majority of that is from passenger vehicles [EPA2]. Significant portions of the industrial sector's emissions come from refining automotive fuel [EPA3]. US total GHG emissions are down around 20% from their peak in 2005, but almost all of that has come from the electrical power sector [CBO1][CBO2]. Vehicular pollution has dramatic direct health impact on top of GHG emissions [HSPH].
Transport emissions are the long pole in the tent for the US. Solutions to that will be the focal point of US climate strategy for the next decade. Barring the demolition of the majority of US housing to re-establish walkability, our two best solutions are EVs and public transit.
EVs cut lifecycle emissions by about 55-60%. [UCS][ANL][MIT][ICCT][BNEF][CB][MIT][IEA]
Public transit cuts lifecycle emissions by... about 55-60%. [IEA][AFDC][USDOT]
Neither is a magic bullet. Both get their asses kicked by bicyles (and to a lesser degree, microcars). Both get better with increased passengers per vehicle. Both can be fueled with renewable energy for additional reduction. Both can be manufactured with renewable energy for additional reduction. Both take surprisingly equivalent amounts of raw resources and energy. EVs need batteries that are carbon-intensive under current practices, but rail needs large quantities of steel which is equally carbon-intensive under current practices.
There are a ton of factors I can barely touch on here, so here's a rapid-fire overview. Public transit offers unique advantages from an urbanist perspective and the liveability of cities [ST], but that's objectively different from sustainability. The US has such low average ridership/occupancy that our busses have more emissions per passenger mile than our cars [AFDC1][AFDC2], and that was before the pandemic -- it's even worse now [NCBI]. Low ridership can be partly attributed to the incompatibility of American suburbs with public transit -- which could be a major roadblock because 2/3rds of Americans own detatched homes [FRED], representing $52t [PRN] in middle-class wealth that they will likely defend with voting power. Climate solutions will need to maneuver around this voting bloc. I personally think individual EVs and intercity rail are complementary technologies -- the more cheap (short-ranged) EVs are out there, the more people will lean on public transit for long trips. Heavy rail gets way better efficiency per vehicle mile than light rail or commuter rail and I have no clue why [APTA][ORNL], but I'm not as impressed by light rail as I expected to be. Since public transit and personal transport leverage different raw resources and face different challenges to adoption, we will achieve the most rapid decarbonization if we do both at the same time.
TL;DR
This is a huge, huge question, and anything short of a dissertation would fail to answer it objectively. My best answer is that the most effective solutions to climate change are diverse, engaging multiple technologies in parallel. EVs are a piece of the puzzle, but not a one-size-fits-all solution.
Depends on what part of the planet you're talking about. America and Europe sure, but any sovereign nation with Lithium, well watch out, freedoms coming. Im just glad Trump was too dumb to make his Latin American coup work.
I mean "nothing" is beneficial to the planet besides just stopping dumping CO2 into the air and toxic bs into the land and ocean. There is NO substitute for stopping corporate pollution, I mean nothing. That said, electric cars have more perks than just environmental impact, they do marginally help and they're cool. but in reality, you have to learn to tease apart what actual climate action looks like VS corporate adoption of "green washing" their products and putting the responsibility on the avg citizen. But that is infinitely hard for some people to come to realize.
"Pretty much nothing" is an exaggeration, but they aren't wrong in stating that it isn't the ideal solution. You've pobably already seen them talk about how shitty the Lithium mines are for the environment, and if you're still getting your electricity from, like, coal plants or other environmentally unsustainable places, well, you're not emitting CEO2, but the plant that outputs the electricity that fuels the car is now outputting more. It's still better than nothing, though
My personal issue with EVs isn't so much that they aren't perfectly ecofriendly, but that the biggest pushers of EVs are still capitalists with an industry to make money. The best we have in terms of solutions is better civil engineering for walkable cities and a robust and efficient public transport system. 5 EV buses is better than 50 EV cars. Thing is, companies making EV cars still want to make money. They have no incentive to actually push for public transport (Some like Tesla seem actively hostile towards the idea), as they would make more money on 50 electric cars than 5 electric buses. Considering how much power companies have in politics, especially in the US (which is from where I'm speaking), things don't look good
I'm certain that EVs are less of an issue in, like, the Netherlands, where public transport is better, and people can just bike everywhere. Again, though, I am speaking as an ignorant American, seeing how things are playing out here. Either way, EVs are generally preferable to ICE cars, but they are a far-cry from the actual solution they are being marketed as
The biggest hurdle that needs to be overcome in my own eyes is how we source the precious metals for the batteries. Look up Lithium and Cobalt mines in Africa. Of course this applies to all lithium batteries (phones and cars being the biggest players).
Sodium-ion batteries are already a thing and they look very promising. A few more years and we might not need precious metals for batteries anymore.
Interesting. I've not heard of this new battery technology before. Sodium should be much more easily sourced I would think. We'll see, but for the meantime I'll hang onto my phone as long as possible and not buy lithium battery powered vehicles. Most people don't know about the working conditions that those children and adults are exposed to while mining lithium and Cobalt.
Just like universal healthcare, these systems only really work to their potential with full participation. If all (commuter cars at least) go electric, the incentive is then there for business/funded science to solve the related problems with generating electricity. We've already seen advances in leaps and bounds in recent years, and that's all with the drag of relatively small participation.
So the answer to your question is that they are currently less beneficial than they could be, but the potential of the platform is clear and superior to internal combustion engines. Emergency rooms triage patients based on severity of injuries - if a patient has a gunshot wound, a broken leg and signs of an early stage cancer, you start with the gunshot wound. People planted firmly in the position you represent with your question (not saying that's you, OP) are the ones that start to boast that medicine is a failure if the treatment for the gunshot wound doesn't also cure the cancer - it's the first and most important step towards the solution in that moment.
Here is a source with lots of detail on how carbon emissions compare: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/23/do-electric-cars-really-produce-fewer-carbon-emissions-than-petrol-or-diesel-vehicles
The tl;dr is that EVs have lower lifetime emissions. If the relevant grids use low-carbon sources then emissions are far lower. (But not as low as bicycles.)
It is all about people who either are arguing in bad faith, or are focused on perfection.
I don't drive much so my favourite EVs are trains, ebikes and electric buses.
You can run a fleet of ev on regenerative energy, that doesn't work with converting engine vehicles. BUT the problem is it makes no sense if we just exchange all the ce cars with ev ones. We need to stay away from individual transportation solutions towards public transportation.
Pretty much; although, (more importantly IMO) it also removes their economic support from oil companies. GHG's are still produced when obtaining lithium for the batteries, aluminium for the body, etc. There's as well the break and tyre particles that are still major pollutants regardless... despite all that it's still better then using a gas engine.
It's also not easy to convince someone to change their preferred mode of transport and EV's provide an acceptable (and in many ways superior) alternative. Not to mention taking the bus or riding a bike just isn't feasible for some people, similarly some places (like Japan with three separate voltage standards) don't have the necessary infrastructure and capacity to support EV's.
We rape Africa for those metals the in a similar way we've been raping the middle east for oil. I guarantee once the US starts mandating EVs and the majority start to transition over there will suddenly be some reason we need to have a vested military presence in Africa, with the possibility of wars centered around countries with these metals that we need.
It's better for air quality and would do a shitload towards giving us some spare time to process climate change, but they come with their own baggage of bullshit in terms of environmental damage.
They are already shipping sodium batteries. By using lithium early and studying it they're already finding cheaper and easier batteries to manufacture. Lithium is a stepping stone, that doesn't mean it's the final form.
The #1 problem with EVs is not the energy and materials used to create the battery because that is eclipsed many times over by not using gas during the battery’s life- the biggest problem is that the entire car becomes e-waste as soon as the battery is damaged or degraded in any way.
They also produce just as much tire waste as an ICE car.
I hope moving forward, EVs will be regulated and have modular parts, and can still be user repairable, unlike (most) smartphones.
I don't want them to have that "vendor lock in" that Apple and Samsung are famous for, component wise.
There's already a few videos of home mechanics replacing their own battery packs. Not a big thing yet, but as an engineer in related systems, it's great to see a first effort already happening.
The replacing the battery is simply a supply issue.
There is such a demand and so little supply, that if you want to buy just a battery (and not the entire car) you are out of luck. They'll put that battery in a new car and sell it before selling it to you as a replacement.
But that's short term. There are a huge number of battery plants already breaking ground and coming online.
In 2 years or so, the price to replace the battery will be a HELL of a lot lower, and the issue you linked above will be long gone.
I hope so but I doubt it. It’s not the price that’s so much of an issue but the fact that the packs are non-standard, non-serviceable, and the car is worthless without it. Manufacturers make money selling their own custom batteries at markup. It’ll take government regulation to force companies to begin using a modular system because there is literally negative incentive for manufactures to do it on their own.
There are studies after what kind of mileage an EV outperforms a regular car.
But the question is: Where do you get your electricity from? Is it regenerative energy?
A commercial scale coal power plant has a much cleaner output per kWh than your car running on gasoline (which requires excessive refining before it can be used). EVs are better but we should also look at modernizing grid plants.
Ah, Thanks. I found an old Reuters article: https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/is-your-electric-car-eco-friendly-you-thought-2021-11-10/
It's for the EU. The USA is probably somewhere amongst the not so good countries. Wikipedia says 61% of natural gas and coal, 20% nuclear and just 18% renewable.
Seems complicated. But generally true if you have some clean energy in the mix. I think we should go competely for renewable, the sooner the better. I mean in the end neither coal nor gasoline is sustainable. We're going to run out of both eventually. And there is the CO2. I mean the prediction is that well known oil deposits will run out in 30 years. And coal lasts us for 150 years. So we have to dig and find some more oil, but EVs and renewables are the future.
the thing is that EVs are agnostic to their energy source. you could get 100% from your own home solar panel setup if you wanted to
Sure. I meant you have to pay attention and do it right. In theory you can do all kinds of things. Drive super dirty vehicles to none at all and use your bicycle and the train. But the actual CO2 emissions depend on what we all actually decide to do. A solar panel would be a excellent. Especially if you live in the south where you get plenty of sun.
Lithium mining is not good for the environment.
They're marginally better but we don't need marginally better, we need to get our shit together right now.
Short term EVs aren't making a lot of difference due to the higher energy costs of manufacturing them. Long term cars are just a terrible transportation method, especially within cities, and we really need alternatives so that we can get rid of most of them.
On the other hand as renewable energy sources take over the grid the energy costs of manufacturing EVs will be less relevant to climate change, and it's just going to be faster to switch power plants and new car manufacturing over than it will be to rebuild the entire transportation infrastructure on all of Earth, especially North America. That time difference will have a large effect on how bad things will get by the end of this century. EVs are dumb, but also a necessary stopgap.
Exhaust and noise are still a problem. It won't do much on a climate level, but even if we manage to reduce car usage having the remaining cars be electric is useful. Both noise pollution and particulate pollution have negative effects on human health.
Maybe it's just my bubble but most climate activists I see are primarily pushing for renewable electricity generation, and consumption reduction across the board in all aspects of life. They are usually also against cars generally but it's a secondary subject.
It will actually have a huge impact on noise imho. I live near a intersection between 2 freeways, and lots of REALLY loud cars out there due to stupidly sized engines, or modified mufflers.. The majority of the noise isn't the movement of the car imho.
Also, it does have an impact on the climate too (it's been researched multiple times, and even with current tech, the overall emissions are substantially lower). Obviously Public Transport and Bicycles and such is better, but this is still a huge step in the right direction.
In fact, if technologies like Lithium-Air are developed, it will have an even bigger impact (because you can effectively reduce the battery weight 15x with the same range). Because you can also reduce the size of the car too, and the weight, you increase the efficiency further too. Sodium ion batteries being released this year already have an impact.
What is the carbon footprint, particularly of the batteries, during both manufacture and disposal. How does that compare to internal combustion engines?
Better after some mileage, the specifics of which depend on things like your country's power generation and what kind of ICE car you are replacing. It's within the first 15,000 miles / 25,000 km unless your country runs entirely on coal or something. Over the lifetime of the car it's significantly better.
It's a diversion tactic. The vast majority of greenhouse emissions come from large companies.
They want us to argue about irrelevancies amongst ourselves to distract from that fact.
Are EVs a net positive for the environment? Maybe. But that's like asking an atomic bomb survivor what they were wearing that day.
it's actually a pretty simple to figure out carbon footprint for gas powered cars. Gasoline is just a bunch of carbon atoms loosely linked together. You add heat, you add oxygen, and the carbon molecule bonds break in favor of bonding with oxygen to form carbon dioxide/monoxide, and release energy in the process. That's how combustion works. None of the carbon is destroyed in the process, all of the gasoline just gets converted into a gas; a greenhouse gas. Its why cars are the largest source of emissions in the US.
All of that is cut in an EV. With renewable energy sources there doesnt have to be any greenhouse emissions with EV's.
It is cut locally at the point of use by offloading the pollution and energy generation elsewhere. EV battery production as it is currently practiced is terrible, but also very far from where people actually use them.
They are net positive for sure, but only because of the potential for using less pollution energy generation instead of burning fossil fuels to move.
Where I live eaectric is 100% wind. with that and solar many places have a significat renewable Part. Even in the worst case fossil fuels are 2 or 3 times more efficent than a car engine.
EV battery production as it is currently practiced is terrible
Nah. Fossil fuel industry want people to think it is, and most people assume it is thinking there has to be a catch. Lithium "mining" is pretty low impact compared to traditional metal mining, and theres not that much lithium per battery anyway.
Yes, that's the point.
Gasoline is only part of the picture, however. For one, the chemical reaction by which concrete cures releases CO2, and concrete is responsible for 4-8% of emissions globally. Unless we're going to drive those new-fangled EVs on old-fashioned dirt roads, they account for significant greenhouse gases.
I’m no expert, but I’ve asked the same question myself.
First off, I’ve been told that yes, exhaust from I.C.E. vehicles is very much a HUGE environmental concern. That being said, however- due to issues with current electrical generation, means that unless large steps are taken toward sustainable green energy, running the current grid for enough to cover charging needs produces a comparatively close amount of pollution per mile driven. On top of that, is the issue with the rare-earth minerals needed to manufacture the batteries used in current EVs, which are extremely damaging to mine, especially in increasing quantities. And finally- once they are worn out, there is no reliably safe way to dispose of those batteries. And the current lifecycle of them averages around 3-5 years, so as more are disposed of, that impact on soil and water tables is projected to skyrocket.
So it’s a many-fold issue, and at the end of the day they aren’t necessarily WORSE than ICE vehicles, but they are also not really any better.
As for why people THINK they are super environmentally friendly? In a word- marketing.
Worth noting that with the current US electrical grid an EV produces about half to too thirds of the pollution per mile, and is expected to be down to one third by the time a new electric vehicle bought today reaches the end of its life. Given that cars represent a significant portion of the transportation sectors carbon emissions, which in turn represent theory percent of the US entire emissions, I wouldn’t call halving that inside ten years insignificant, especially as there is no practical alternative that could be implemented on a similar time scale that would be prevented by said EV adoption.
It’s also practically possible to decarbonise electricity, indeed renewables are now cheaper than fossil for new electrical generation even accounting for their intermittence, while it’s not really feasible to do so with oil. While carbon capture is a thing, it hasn’t been able to scale well dispite having been thrown money at for nearly fifty years now and there industries like aviation that can pay a lot more to get first dibs on said fuel.
Lithium is hardly particularly damaging to the environment to mine when compared to most other mining operations, like in the case of the worlds largest lithium producer’s(Australia) the coal mines next door. Cobalt actually isn’t that relevant in mass adoption scenarios as it’s cost means it tends to be completely absent in most adorable mass market EVs which currently tend to use LFP as compared to lithium ion or nickel cadmium.
As for recycling batteries, you just toss them in a industrial scale dielectric bath crusher and treat the output as absurdly high grade lithium-cobalt ore. The reason it has been slow to scale is not technical difficulty but rather a lack of demand, as even the first model S(one of the first properly mass produced EVs) will still have over two hundred of its two hundred and sixty mile range today. Given that one can cross the entire US with only a hundred mile range, there is still a lot more demand for reusing such cars then you get from the batteries scrap value even before considering the demand for cheap large scale batteries for things where that loss of power density doesn’t matter.
After the used and crashed market reaches maturity and we go from being able to just reuse them, recycling will actually become a significant strength of EVs, as a majority of the emissions are in battery mining, and thusly only happen once. We have a 97% capture rate on lead acid car batteries today, and thouse are only worth dozens of dollars in material, not thousands, so I hardly expect any to make their way into landfills in sufficient quantities to compete with the byproducts of even just refining oil on water and soil conditions.
A lot of ICE cars nowadays are hybrids which have just as many rare earth mineral requirements and still have terrible exhaust issues. EVs are a massive step up in sustainability.
Don't forget the fact that you've now got two propulsion systems to maintain, meeting at the nexus of a much more complex transmission.
More can go wrong, though admittedly Toyota seems to have gotten a lot right. But if you have an issue, lots and lots of parts to consider.