Life Cycle Emissions: EVs vs. Combustion Engine Vehicles
Life Cycle Emissions: EVs vs. Combustion Engine Vehicles
We look at carbon emissions of electric, hybrid, and combustion engine vehicles through an analysis of their life cycle emissions.
We look at carbon emissions of electric, hybrid, and combustion engine vehicles through an analysis of their life cycle emissions.
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You have to make wayyyyy too many assumptions for this to be a useful comparison.
There's a lot of people who live in places with electricity generated mostly or entirely through renewables for instance.
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I'm assuming (ha!) that like the rest, this is an estimated average. Of course every person and car will vary, it's not like it'd make sense to break out every car, every factory and their individual emission costs, etc either.
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It's based on a use phase of 16 years and a distance of 240,000 km. That's a pretty conservative estimate of ~9300 mi/year.
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A missing, but important, element in this discussion is vehicle disposal/recycling capability and environmental impact. The current state of battery recycling adds another layer of complexity to this equation.
https://www.autoblog.com/article/electric-car-battery-recycling-reuse-storage/
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@SmolderingSauna That's a false argument that the fossil fuel lobby loves to bring up. The reason there isn't widespread recycling of EV batteries is because 99% of all the EV batteries that have been made are still in operation. The batteries typically outlive the cars, and are put to secondary uses for stationary applications.
https://blog.ucsusa.org/hanjiro-ambrose/the-second-life-of-used-ev-batteries/
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-storage/used-ev-batteries-are-storing-solar-power-at-grid-scale-and-making-money-at-itIf you want to ring your hands about battery waste, the US throws out about 54 megawatt-hours worth of lithium battery storage each month in the form of single-use electronic vapes.
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Source is article that references PR from EV manufacturer? Not science.
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It's not great is it? Reasonably we just need less vehicles
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Are we seeing the same chart? 2/3rds of the carbon emission from the EV comes from the ridiculous way that many communities are still generating electricity. But that's totally fixable!! We are generating more and more electricity thru renewables every day, and eventually nobody will have the audacity to claim that wind turbines are bad for the environment. Or at least no one will believe them.
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It's still a net improvement, even with the incorrect assumption that everyone's electricity is equally filthy. Can we as a species please stop letting the perfect be the enemy of the good for like five minutes?
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We have programs where I live that enable you to have 100% of your electricity use covered by renewable sources without needing to install solar on your home or build a wind turbine. The fossil fuel plants may ultimately be where the exact energy being used is generated currently, but the added costs enable further investment in renewable infrastructure and the individual use is fully offset by renewable generation elsewhere.
I encourage anyone that's environmentally conscious but doesn't think they have an path to accessing green energy sources to research similar programs with their energy provider.
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I never said we need to be perfect, you're dismissing the argument to save your feelings.
I said we need to drive less. It's not hard, it's not perfect, and it's the centre of most European planning efforts to mitigate climate change.
Electric cars are and industry solution to an industry problem, they're not a reasonable response to climate change
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If only we promoted more public transport/trains...
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Careful now, the model that is referenced defines the lifecycle of battery EVs as 16 years and hybrid and combustion as 18 years. Normalizing fuel production and maintenance to 18 years would put the BEV at 43.
It’s also assuming that you would use a single battery pack until the end of life of the vehicle and that we are steadily progressing towards 100% fossil free energy production (targeting 2033 as the completion date).
Global adoption rates, change resistance, production rates, raw material availability, economic impact, leaders who care more about power and money.. I just don’t know that it’s feasible and the burden is all being placed on the lower and middle classes.