Are Electric Vehicles Better or Worse for the Environment?

https://www.extremetech.com/cars/are-electric-vehicles-better-or-worse-for-the-environment

by cm_silva • 3 years ago

19 32 3 years ago

sylware2• 3 years ago

Wrong question, the right one is: How to make 10 billion people live with decent life standards and comfort without destroying the planet?

netsharc• 3 years ago

The standards probably have to be really lowered...

If we believe this data[1], one would have to live like a resident of Sri Lanka, Jamaica or Myanmar so that 1 earth is enough per year (other countries are available).

Pessimistically, with the planet we currently have, not all 10 billion can live decently, and the minority who control the weapons would probably rather resort to violence rather than share things equally (just look at the borders of the EU and USA - and yeah even left-leaning governments are probably "helpless", they know if they let in too many refugees, they'll be voted out of office as soon as possible).

[1] https://www.overshootday.org/how-many-earths-or-countries-do...

sylware2• 3 years ago

"First, we can be nice to everybody, then will come a time we will have to content ourselves to try to be fair... finally, we will have to choose: their children or ours."

Dilemmas...

seltzered_• 3 years ago

I generally refer to the framing offered by https://goodlife.leeds.ac.uk/

brucethemoose23• 3 years ago

I read those three reasons and see: weight, weight, and weight!

Of course a 9000lb hummer EV is going to require more raw materials and work to build, more energy to move down the road, and more effort to dispose of... But all that diminishes in favor of the EV if the EV is built less like a Decepticon land yacht and more like a minimalistic car.

Combustion cars have more of a static mass from the drivetrain they have to haul around with a pretty light gas tank (hence manufacturers have loaded them with luxury stuff without blowing up the drivetrain's mass), but EVs scale down very nicely because the battery dominates the car's weight. Its like the tyranny of the rocket equation: the more weight they carry, they more weight they need to carry that weight around, and so on.

guerby• 3 years ago

Fossil fuel lobbyists are really smart: for EV everyone is talking about weight and no one is talking about energy efficiency aka joule per distance.

brucethemoose23• 3 years ago

I mean even a EV land yacht is going to be really efficient. ICE wastes so much heat.

Thats kinda besides the point though, as operational energy efficiency is not the same thing as lifetime carbon emissions.

NBJack• 3 years ago

FWIW, it doesn't have to be a land yacht to look like an angry Decepticon.

Just look at the rear design of the BMW i3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_i3#/media/File:2021_BMW_i3...

I'm still at a loss on why they designed it that way.

brucethemoose23• 3 years ago

Inexplicable styling decisions are not limited to EVs, even if they get a disproportionate share.

Kudos• 3 years ago

Apart from anything else, it's great for the environment the EVs are operated in. I live in Ireland, and shittily maintained cars constantly spew awful pollution into the air around me as I walk around Dublin.

beezlewax2• 3 years ago

As someone whos lived in Dublin and a more car centric city like Barcelona the air in Dublin is hundreds of times cleaner than the air in Barcelona.

sanp• 3 years ago

Barcelona is a car-centric city? I guess it’s all relative.

neovialogistics• 3 years ago

I copied this from a climatologist's twitter last year but can no longer find the source, I suspect they've deleted their account:

All other things being identical, if an EV made from metals that were processed with green electricity only has one (1) order of magnitude less emissions than a petrol engined vehicle of the same size over the vehicle's lifetime, the equivalent EV where the metals were smelted with coal is one order of magnitude worse.

I don't know if the claim is correct but I hope the industry can do better than that.

photonerd2• 3 years ago

“All other things being identical” is doing a LOT of heavy lifting there.

The “cradle to grave” calculations for ICE vs EV (ie, inc manufacture & decommission) are quite stark: even without assuming green electricity EVs have—-at most—-only 32% of their ICE counterparts emissions.

Now 1/3rd doesn’t sound that great, but remember: that’s a worst case scenario for EVs and doesn’t include the long term recycling benefits either.

Not least: 2/3rds less car emissions would be a game changer for air quality & the climate.

hedora2• 3 years ago

A 50% reduction in emissions in the short term is barely enough to stay on track to not destroy civilization in our own lifetimes. We should take the order of magnitude win! (Even if it is “only” really the 70%, from that sibling comment)

Also, carbon capture will eventually exist at scale, and cutting CO2 production by 90% will cut carbon capture costs by 90%z

credit_guy• 3 years ago

Nonsense. A ton of steel produced with coal produces about two tons of CO2. If produced from recycled steel, it produces about 0.4 tons, but let’s say 0. So a two ton EV (like the Tesla Model Y) would generate 4 tons more CO2 than a similar ICE vehicle made with “green steel”. That ICE vehicle will generate more than 4 tons of CO2 every single year of its existence.

Dah00n3• 3 years ago

What I miss the most in the EV vs ICE talk is road noise levels. EV's are not necessarily less noisy at city speeds, unlike what seems logical, they are louder at above ~30km/h. Here's an example (PDF warning):

https://www.vejdirektoratet.dk/sites/default/files/publicati...

photonerd2• 3 years ago

There’s so much variability there though. The biggest factor there are the weight & the tires.

Basically tire noise will be the same on the same weight car with the same type of tires, EV or ICE. It’s just most EVs at this point are larger or heavier.

silvestrov• 3 years ago

Noise when accelerating is also very important in a city, not just noise at constant speed.

EVs do much better here.

Dah00n3• 3 years ago

Yes, the tires are a problem but as long as that doesn't get fixed EVs are still louder at city speeds. I have nothing against EVs or hybrids (I drive one myself) but it is a concern and really should be fixed.

moritzwarhier• 3 years ago

https://www.thefp.com/p/your-iphone-was-built-with-child

Does anyone have numbers of resource usage of an EV compared to, say, an iPhone?

Or, for better perspective, compared to an electric bus divided by its average number of passengers per day?

I know, there won't be a single definitive answer to the latter question.

But I think the problem with vehicles is mostly their numbers and artifical abundance.

I'm all for EVs, but against any state subsidies to purchase one.

After all, the list price doesn't even include any "externalities".

Taxing the s.. out of individual vehicles (in other words, cash the externalities) and going strong on public transport, that would be "Better for the Environment"

The current dichotomy is a self-imposed dilemma with no right answer

pedalpete2• 3 years ago

A few things that should probably be taken into a account as we move to an electrified future is

1) what is the carbon footprint of an EV vehicle when we are recycling batteries

2) what is the carbon footprint of an EV as we increase efficiency/range

3) what is the carbon footprint of an ICE as they increase range

The reason this might be interesting is that EVs, I believe, are still in their infancy and are likely to continue to see considerable jumps in efficiency.

ICE vehicles are not seeing these efficiency gains at the same rate. The technology is fairly stale. However ICE cars are getting more powerful. With a 2l 4 cylinder engine now getting 200+ hp, which I think would have been unimaginable a decade ago.

So where do these developments run in the future?

upsidesinclude• 3 years ago

Most cars are still sold without turbocharging. We are nowhere near maximizing combustion vehicles. That 100hp/l is somewhat in contradiction to your arguement.

The wide array of technologies for injection and burn efficiency are still largely unadopted as well.

The replacement costs of batteries at ~5-8 years of ownership are always conviently absent from the comparison between EV and combustion. No surprise.

EV are not in their infancy either, the first EVs are from over a hundred years ago and there have been models available since the 90s from major manufacturers

pedalpete2• 3 years ago

I'm trying NOT to make an argument, but to be even handed, and what do we need to understand about how these technologies will change.

I think in Australia it is difficult to find a non-turbo charged car. I was amazed when I moved here that everything is a 2l turbo 4 cylinder.

EVs aren't new, but there hasn't been considerable investment over the last 100 years. All the investment has happened in the last 20. Battery technology wasn't good enough until recently to justify investment in more efficient electric motors, etc.

Similarly, I think the improvements we are seeing in combustion engines is that they haven't had competition for 100 years, aside from one car company vs another. Now they have something that completely changes the game, and it is amazing to see how well that industry has responded from a performance standpoint.

hedora2• 3 years ago

Those are all good questions, but the answers are already well-understood EV’s already win on all of those metrics, hands down, even in parts of the US with lots of coal power plants, including CO2 emitted during manufacturing:

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/driving-cleaner

Veedrac• 3 years ago

Noise pollution, local air pollution from exhausts, and local air pollution from tires are all far more directly costly to human wellbeing at scale than water use in lithium mining.

AtlasBarfed• 3 years ago

The Eevee revolution will probably be salt water batteries anyway

cozzyd• 3 years ago

The electric vehicle I commute with (a train) is probably better fie the environment...

webprofusion• 3 years ago

If you placed a weightless empty box on your head and filled it with the average cars exhaust emissions for one year, the result 4.6 metric tons would crush you like a pancake.

If we're being charitable we could let you take a few breaths of what's in the full box just to ease your suffering.

There are 1.4 billion such cars currently operating in the world.

jesterson• 3 years ago

It's good to see some discussion on the matter, however it is likely be tossed like "fossil-fuel propaganda" by many.

Are Electric Vehicles Better or Worse for the Environment?

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