EVs have lower lifetime emissions than gas cars: study
EVs have lower lifetime emissions than gas cars: study
driving.ca
EVs have lower lifetime emissions than gas cars: study
125 comments
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What my 40yo diesel has going for it is that it already exists. The production cost has been paid for already. I'm fully prepared to buy an eV or hybrid when it dies but in the meantime it's what I've got. Plus I don't actually drive very much.
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I made the calculation with a 10 years old Civic vs new EV once and the math came out in favor of the EV after a few years anyway, especially if you get green electricity where you live... Now with a 40 years old diesel it's even worse considering how much diesel emissions equipment has improved since it was built. There's a reason why some cities like Paris are completely banning older diesels...
You have to take into consideration that the total emissions from your already existing ICE vehicle keep increasing very quickly over time where an EV has a higher total when comparing two new vehicles, but then the EV has so much lower emissions during usage that they catch up very quickly, even if the electricity they use comes from coal powered generators. Hell, the average big truck probably release as much emissions every year as what it took to produce it in the first place...
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Diesel has more NOx emissions and significantly more particulate emissions than cars running on gasoline, which is why cities are banning older vehicles running on Diesel. They're harmful to people's health, especially if they lack modern filters.
For CO2 though, Diesel usually runs miles around gasoline. That's why the EU has favored Diesel engines over gasoline one's since signing and ratifying the 1997 Kyoto protocol to reduce greenhouse emissions.
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Any chance you can source your numbers? I tried to do the same calculation for my 18 year old gas car, and it came out a being a wash.
Finding hard numbers on the energy cost to build a new car was tough - the green sites showed the EV car poofed into the world with magic and butterflies, while the gas-centric sites made it sound like it took the entire world's GDP to produce a single EV.
Also disheartening, the very few sites I could find that would list replacement costs for a battery pack had the price higher than the vehicle itself - IE, when the battery pack goes, you throw the car away & buy another one. That's been a huge turnoff for me.
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I generally agree, but I've driven 14,000kms in six years. I just don't drive that much.
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Unless your vehicle has particularly bad emotions, generally speaking that's the recommendation. All vehicles have a front-facing emissions cost from their manufacture; EVs having more due to the battery materials. While it's better in the long run to have an EV on the roads than a gas/diesel, there is value in maintaining an existing vehicle.
Like, I'm not sure how to properly convey the point but there's something about reducing the market demand for a new car and its environmental impact. If someone were to trade in their old vehicle and buy a new one every few years (which is unfortunately pretty normal in the US for middle class'folks), they'd actually have a worse carbon footprint buying EVs because of those front-loaded emission costs.
The best step towards a greener future is cutting out unnecessary production rather than chasing the next gadget that's supposed to save the world.
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Not necessarily, an EV running on green electricity catches up in about 30k km if I recall correctly, that's two years of driving.
The vast majority of ICE cars emissions come from their usage, not their production, so it's environmentally beneficial to take them off the road and recycle as much of them as possible even if they're still road worthy.
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on average, Canadian EVs have up to 77% lower emissions than conventional models
That's quite a bit less. The headline sounds like "Do ICE vehicles pollite less than EVs ?" is a valid question, is there any argument that's the case? I'd have guessed EVs were obviously better, and you'd be hard pushed to argue otherwise?
(obviously I'm thinking 'new ev' vs 'new ICE' - putting second hard vehicles introducrs all sorts of caveats)
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It might be due to a larger proportion of green energy sources powering these EVs, not sure how they calculate the emissions figures.
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These kinds of studies usually go by the average emissions of the relevant country's power generation.
Heres the relevant bit for this study though, it has both national and by province:
In addition, electric vehicles also benefit from the low-emissions intensity of electricity generation relative to gasoline in most parts of Canada. Comparing the lifecycle emissions of the two fuels on an equivalent energy basis, grid electricity emissions are 61% lower than those of gasoline at the national level and 20%-93% lower in the 8 provinces/territories whose grid electricity is cleaner than gasoline.6 A handful of provinces and territories have grids that are more emissions intensive than gasoline based on the 2023 domestic electricity generation profile (chart 2). That said, even in this latter group, most electric vehicles still have lower fuel-related emissions and lifetime emissions than comparable gasoline vehicles because they use less energy during operation. (See appendix for a breakdown of electricity generation by fuel type).
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They go into detail. Most FF electricity will be 40%-60% effiency, though peaker plants can be as low as 25%. ICE to wheel efficiency is 18%, and natural gas is cleaner than oil to boot. Canada has a lot of hydro and nuclear.
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Public Transit is even better
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Does this take into account emissions from the exothermic combustion event experienced by many Teslas, especially those parked outdoors on dealer lots?
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Manufacturing a BEV creates about twice the emissions as making an ICE vehicle, primarily due to making its lithium-ion battery
This is likely exaggerated, or certainly not "necessary emissions". You can estimate the production emissions by the cost of the car. EVs are now reaching sticker prices below ICE cars. Especially in China. While making an ICE engine includes significant manual labour, and steel or iron ore production can be decarbonized with Hydrogen, the manufacturing of individual engine parts out of steel is a more intensive process than casting an electric motor casing/stator, and winding some copper.
The China link is that they are the ones most likely to decarbonize mining through either LNG, H2 and electric. With price parity of EVs (happpening in NA too), manufacturing emissions should be very close.
On the point of fuel vs charging, one of the best symbiosis of EVs is home solar, including oversized solar to use less imported energy into home. Cheapest way to charge an EV, and also serve as emergency home power if needed.
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Meanwhile, other studies say they wear tires out way faster because they're heavier, and rubber tire dust adds quite a bit to the emissions as well.
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While we should definitely prioritise public transport and micromobility over more cars, the tyre wear thing is a smaller issue by orders of magnitude compared to CO2 emissions.
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Have you ever worked in a mechanic shop to actually smell tire and brake dust? Hell, even if I wasn't a smoker, my lungs are already probably fucked.
And you're not considering, where does all that tire dust actually go? Every time it rains, it gets washed off the roads, off into drainage canals and the environment in general. It doesn't just disappear.
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Pick up trucks are the same weight or more than most evs sold today. The tire wear discussion was on weight of vehicles, not evs. Other sites reported on it and grossly overestimated the average weight of an ev.
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Have you ever stood next to a Cybertruck?
I have. Those stupid sharp corners are close to the height of the average person's fucking heart.
And they're glued together no less. Like WTF, real vehicles secure everything properly with threaded nuts and bolts.
You can't even get out of a Tesla on fire unless you know how to disassemble the door panel to access the emergency latch. WTF?
Also, vehicle weight scales are pretty damn accurate, even mandatory in certain industries. I'm pretty sure nobody estimated a damn thing, they literally weighed the vehicles.
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That's not even true now, modern ice cars have bloated weights to the point of matching or exceeding EV equivalents.
2024 Ford mach e: 4,595 to 4,952 lbs
2024 Ford explorer: 4,345 to 5,076 lbs
2021 Acura TSX: 3709 to 4221 lbs
Current Tesla model 3: 3891 to 4081 lbs
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Why not compare a car that offers multiple variants instead of using different models?
I could tell you that my 1993 Audi S4 was close to 4k pounds to prove that cars haven't increased in weight that much, it would be irrelevant.
If you compare the same model that comes in gas, hybrid and EV versions you get a realistic portrait. The Kona is one and going from gas to hybrid to EV is a 400lbs jump each time (from about 2900lbs to about 3700lbs).
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Maybe I’m remembering wrong but wasn’t that study just based on weight…. Not tested on actual EVs, nor actually comparing EVs weights, but blanket labeling EVs at like 5k lbs or some shit?
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Entirely dependent on the model. A base model RWD EV sedan (Model 3, Ioniq 6) weighs less than 2 tons.
If you have a moronmobile like a Hummer, sure.
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The lightest model 3 weighs about 3900lbs. Which is going to be like 1000lbs on any similarly sized ICE car
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This comment is not useful unless backed up with data on how much relative emissions this would contribute.
Unless provided, please refrain
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Not OP, but tire dust is a real problem. It's one of those things we haven't studied until very recently. It's just gone under the radar because it's easy to point at tailpipe emissions.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/tire-dust-makes-up-the-majority-of-ocean-microplastics-study-finds
Now are EVs worse? If we compare the same class of vehicle, EVs are going to be about 20% heavier, so yes, they're going to create more tire dust. Is that worse than the tailpipe emissions from a gas vehicle? Probably not. But it's deceptive to not include tire dust when comparing emissions between the two vehicle types.
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It takes approximately one barrel of crude oil to manufacture one passenger vehicle tire, so please don't try to push the line of shit that EVs don't use oil, they most certainly do.
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My 2016 Challenger is 4200 lbs whereas my Tesla Model S is 4500 lbs. Hardly a large enough difference to matter, especially when you consider I had a Ram 3500 which is 7500 lbs. Even most SUV's are heavier than my Tesla so I wonder why weight gets brought up.
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125 comments