As I’ve mentioned before, EVs are not a cure-all. There’s a lot of CO2 emitted in building the batteries, so it takes tens of thousands of miles of driving before there’s a benefit to using an EV. Here’s the latest on that:
EVs Are Only Environmentally Friendly If You Drive A Lot: Study (jalopnik.com)
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Interesting study.
But as I’ve said before…New EV batteries are being developed. There are dozens of new batteries on the horizon TODAY. Investment companies are investing HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS every year into this. Let’s see this report in 20 years if EV batteries change.
That study is BS to the core, but then almost all studies are BS to the core. Someone is paying for that study and they want study to back up their beliefs or business plan.
Making batteries does release a lot of CO2, but then so does making ICE engines and transmissions. CO2 is a byproduct of the energy (electricity and natural gas) needed to operate machinery, melt metal and all the other stuff needed in manufacturing. This study compares the CO2 from manufacturing batteries to the tailpipe emissions of an ICE vehicle to come up with the payback time.
An accurate assessment would include the CO2 footprint of the manufacturing of the ICE powertrain and tailpipe emissions to the manufacturing and tailpipe emissions of an EV. Manufacturing emissions of the EV should include not only the battery but the electric motor and drivetrain.
I am pretty confident that the payback will be different that stated in this “study”. BTW the studies that favor the EV’s are equally skewed to their favor. Both sides apply the “Fairfax Law”. The facts that support my arguement are the “fair facts”.
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This has been confirmed by several studies, including one by Volvo, who makes EVs. They include all the factors you mention. Not BS. I consistently see minimum miles to get a payback in the 20,000 to 70,000 mile range, depending on what the source of electricity is and the mpgs of the car used for comparison.
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I read that survey at the top and all I could find was tailpipe emissions of the ICE vs manufacturing emissions of the batteries.
I did leave out tailpipe emissions of the EV should include the CO emissions from the generation of the electricity.
One reason you see a wide range in the studies is who is paying. Another is the date the study was done or the date of the data they are using in the study.
This payback time is evolving. But “studies show” is always followed by BS. Even “government studies show”. In fact, government studies are often the worse. Government studies are funded by a department that the head of wants stats to support a larger budget for his department, and a larger budget increases his chances for promotion.
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Me? If I were to buy an EV it would be for convenience.
I have numerous cordless tools, they serve their purpose well.
If I replace my lawnmower, quite likely will be battery powered.
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I have a couple different reasons for calling this article BS. Driving a little and selling a car soon are just fine. Even if 68000 miles must be driven to break even on the carbon, why do these miles need to be done in some short time? Why do these miles have to be driven by the original owner? As long as the car stays on the road, it is beneficial. I also suspect that battery recycling has not entered their calculation.
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That’s my thought also, If it’s my only vehicle, what difference does it make if I drive the 68000 miles in 1 year or 30 years
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I don’t understand why there’s so much passion about electric vehicles. We all make decisions about what we want or don’t want all the time. And sometimes our opinions change. Horses and wagons were OK, I guess, but there must have been huge stinky piles of horse manure all over the place in cities, and sooner or later it had to stop. I’m sure people complained about the new ICE cars. Now we’re seeing a lot of people going to electric cars and some of them must like them. So why are other people taking offense? Once again, I don’t get it.
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My late grandmother’s viewpoint of the “good old days” of her youth, she was born in 1885, was that the whole world smelled of horse manure.
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Can you imagine the stench in New York or Atlanta in mid summer? In the era before cars the city paid thousands of people to pick up manure and then it was put on barges and dumped in the Atlantic Ocean. It’s also why you see Western towns with raised sidewalks, and fancy women’s clothing always included high boots.
And people died a lot younger, with all sorts of infectious diseases.
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Co-worker and her dad are longtime EV fan’s, first ones were basically glorified golf carts but they’re currently leasing a pair of 2023 Kia Niro EV’s. Charged with power from their solar panels about once a week based on their needs.
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Here’s my perspective on carbon and EVs vs ICE cars:
An ICE car will ALWAYS burn gasoline and produce carbon and other pollutants, until it meets its end in a junkyard.
An EV may need electricity created (for now) by coal/natural gas…but it won’t always be that way. It can use electricity created by other sources. That’s the key difference.
I switched over to electric/battery power lawn equipment a few years ago, and I’ll never go back to gas. So much easier to use.
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Reminds me of the Joe Jackson song Everything Gives You Cancer.
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One of the biggest reasons there’s so much pushback against EVs is that many people feel like the government is forcing EVs onto the populous. If there wasn’t as big a push to get people to buy EVs, I don’t think there’d be near as much flack as we hear now.
For most people, until the last 5 years or so, Tesla was an unknown, niche market car maker that no one really cared about. Now that there’s a push for EVs, Tesla has become everyone’s punching bag so to speak.
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Good point. For less push-back, the merits and demerits of EV’s should be decided by the folks forking over their own money out to buy the cars.
@Keith makes a good point as well, that research studies often seem to be biased toward benefiting who’s paying for them.
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There are several studies by folks who like EVs showing that it takes between 20,000 and 70,000 miles for an EV to ‘pay back’ the extra CO2 emitted by the manufacture of the batteries, depending on the source of the electricity. These studies include all the CO2 emissions for making both types of cars, and for buying the gas or electricity.
That’s my point - someone who doesn’t drive much is making things worse, CO2-emissions wise, by buying an EV for a large number of years than if they had bought an efficient ICE-powered car. If CO2 reduction is not the reason a person is buying an EV, then fine, enjoy the power, etc. Just don’t think that buying an EV is an easy, immediate way to reduce CO2 emissions.
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+1
For several years, my friends and I would play a game of Let’s count the Teslas. However, within the past year or so, the Teslas on the roads in my area are so numerous that it would be ridiculous to try to count them.
When I go to the Costco in West Windsor, NJ (next to Princeton), the Teslas in the parking lot now seem to account for… maybe… 30% of the cars parked there.
Then again, the Tesla storage lot in the same town has growing numbers of vehicles. A few months ago, it looked like there were ~50, but the last time that I passed by that lot, there had to be more than 200 Teslas sitting there.
The percentage of Teslas is probably lower in some other parts of The US, but I think that they may have reached the point of market saturation in my area. Some people just don’t want an EV, and those who do want an EV might live in an apartment or a condo that doesn’t allow them to do charging on the premises.
Even though I am not a fan of Mr. Musk, I hope that his car company can succeed in other areas of The US, but I really think that they have reached the market saturation point in my area.
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A great book you’d enjoy is “The good old days, they were terrible” by Otto Bettman. Amazon has it.
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Here’s the Department of Transportation’s announcement for the Advisory Committee for Transportation Equity. The Secretary of DOT did not say those words, but a newly appointed member, Andrea Marpillero-Colomina, said something similar to all cars are bad. If you read the list of 24 members you will see that there is a wide swath of groups represented. It’s very different from the way you portray it.
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