Following is in video description by @MoneyShift
The most common argument against electric cars is that once you factor in battery manufacturing and lithium mining, they aren’t actually cleaner. MIT tested that directly, and the answer is no longer ambiguous.
Researchers Marco Miotti and Jessika Trancik built a lifecycle model covering thousands of US zip codes, drilling down to individual driver behavior rather than comparing broad regions. They accounted for battery and vehicle manufacturing, fuel extraction and refining, regional electricity mix, local meteorological data, traffic density, trip length and duration, acceleration patterns, gas and electricity prices, and state fees. The study appears in Environmental Research Letters.
The concession first: building a battery is dirtier than building a comparable gas car, and an EV starts life with a larger manufacturing footprint. MIT states that plainly rather than working around it.
The findings: in most US locations, a battery electric vehicle reduces lifetime greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 60 percent compared to a similar gas vehicle, with larger reductions in urban areas. On cold weather, MIT found that in a climate like North Dakota, efficiency can drop as much as 50 percent on a particularly frigid night, but the effect on annual emissions benefits is minimal. Miotti’s own conclusion was that even in the most unfavorable conditions, EVs still reduce emissions substantially.
On cost, EVs are competitive with comparable combustion vehicles in lifetime ownership cost across most of the country, even without clean vehicle tax credits. Where electricity is relatively affordable, battery electrics tend to cost less outright. The study also found that individual driving behavior matters roughly as much as regional electricity mix, with the biggest reductions going to people who drive more, drive larger vehicles, and spend more time in traffic.
MIT also updated their public tool at carboncounter.com, where you can compare lifecycle emissions and ownership costs for nearly any car on the market.
None of this means you have to like electric cars. Dislike the steering feel. Dislike the brake feel. Want a manual. Those are real objections. The emissions one is finished.
Car news the way Doug DeMuro, Jason Cammisa and Chris Harris cover cars, every day
I’d say that hybrid cars are better though, because they’re presumably (?) cleaner to produce than fully electric ones, but also cleaner to drive than fully gas ones; although Idk if I’m missing something, anyways.
Or an even better option: scooters go brrr.
Idk about the production side. But as I understand it the big issue with hybrids is how the emissions look in practice (at least here in Germany).
Based on a study from Frauenhofer-Institut ( link here warning PDF+in German) emissions are fastly higher in the real world compared to what the official spec say on paper. To the tune of being up to 3x higher.
I also think at least here in Germany a lot of hybrids were bought by corporations due to better taxation. But in practice rarely get used in pure electric mode, as the users have no incentive to do so when the company gives you a fuel card.
that’s only for plugin hybrids, but if people are dumb enough not to use them properly, we can’t fix stupid with OTA updates.
That’s truly unfortunate af.
PS: Ngl, what I’d actually LOVE to see are for example hydrogen cars.
Nah you won’t. Because hydrogen is even worse than ICE.
There are green ways to create hydrogen. Like through Electrolysis. The problem is that you lose about 30% of energy in the conversion compared to straight up using the electricity in a battery.
But the most common way to create hydrogen is by cracking oil. And it creates a less energy dense fuel source than diesel, while creating more pollution.
It is pushed by oil companies for a reason.
Then there is also the fact that it is impossible to create a container for hydrogen because the molecules are just too small, they slip though any material in existence.
I meant, actually clean and cost-effective hydrogen cars.
They’re possible, actually, if you use liquid hidrogen to start with. The problem is that this is precisely something that’s inconvenient for the oil industry.
The fact that you only dare to research the surface doean’t means that’s the only thing that exists or is valid.
The fact that you only dare to research the surface
Takes huge energy to make H2, truck it around, and to store it in liquid form. Take your own advice.
Hybrid cars are a lot more complex than either EVs or ICE cars. More complex makes them more expensive to produce and more likely to need costly repairs.
If the world governments were actually serious about carbon emissions and transitioning to EV, they would bring in standardization laws on EV designs. It’s currently a fragmented mess. Tesla casts their frames around a battery, making both replacement and frame repair impossible. We need to start with one standardized battery pack that is easy to replace. This would keep cars on roads 20+ years.
I’m all for standardization but the battery will usually outlast the car. What do you mean Tesla casts their frames around a battery?
Tesla cast aluminum frames on model Y are integrated with the battery pack. This makes battery replacement technically possible, but so expensive no one will do it, and when there is a crash, the battery takes damage.
https://tesla.zverski.eu/en/articles/my-4680-texas-battery-issues
Similar concept to phones that glue the battery in place to encourage disposal. Green Elon wants to make cars disposable.
Hear hear!
Standardisation is drastically needed. It is crazy that currently the battery change can be more expensive than the whole car that is still in good condition otherwise.
If the world governments were actually serious about carbon emissions and transitioning to EV, they would bring in standardization laws on EV designs.
That’s why I’m an advocate for a world government.
China good
Also locking down replacement parts to only dealer installs needs to be banned.
Tesla doesn’t even have standardized parts in their model lines. That’s why body panels are so expensive.
does it count where the electricity come from?
US is only 20% nuclear
France is 68%.
so with 60% coal and gaz electricity in US the car is 40% less CO2 intensive than a oil car… seems it all boil down to how the electricity is made. France is poster child for nuclear power, I doubt other EU member are so clean
EU average energy production is 27% fossil (9% coal), 22% nuclear and 50% renewable.
https://electricity-data.eurelectric.org/electricity-generation/electricity-generation-by-fuel.html
The only countries that had over 60% of their energy produced by fossil fuels were Cyprus, Malta and Poland
seems it all boil down to how the electricity is made.
Even if 100% of the electricity was made from burning coal, EVs make less emissions than ICE. ICE is a lot of incomplete inefficient combustion and over 75% of the energy in gas is wasted as heat.
If we stuck to EVs from the first cars (which were EVs) it would seen pretty stupid to ever justify gas cars.
They’ve outsourced our jobs to China for the past 50 years, haven’t increased minimum wage since 2009, and have skyrocketed the cost of everything with inflation but we can’t have cheap chinese EV’s in the USA because it’s bad for some reason. Honestly I think we need to shoot our oligarchs. I just have to say it. The only reason they aren’t letting us buy cheap EV’s is because the only way they can keep themselves rich is by rigging the economy using anti free market regulations. The rich USA oligarchs have effectively become communist. This is what communists do.
Lol because china is… pro free market?? Destroying foreign industries via price dumping is literally on page one of their playbook.
Trade with China is good as long as it’s the little people losing their jobs. But as soon a as a billionaire loses 5 dollars it’s suddenly bad. Sorry but fuck this. At this point I would rather have China running things than the evil bastards running the USA.
Bring me the Chinese EV’s. I want to buy one. In a free country I would be able to buy one.
Imo trade with china is good as long as it is value creating for both. If one side acts adversarial trying to destroy an industry, then fuck them and you should tarrif them. And destruction of the economy hurts the workers. And thinking workers have it better in china is utterly delusional.
$30,000 new cars are destroying America’s middle class. It shouldn’t be normal for people to go into debt to afford transporation. If China can sell us EV’s at one third the price, then open the damn door and let China sell us cheap EV’s. If American companies like Ford and Chevy can’t afford to stay in business, they deserve to go bankrupt.
These same companies willingly outsourced our jobs to China and didn’t give a damn when they destroyed American families in the process. Now we’re supposed to care about the rich bastard’s wallets?
Fuck no. China absolutely is the lesser evil here.
Destroying foreign industries via price dumping
Luckily, this time their competitors prevented this by not having a domestic EV industry to destroy.
In my opinion it’s absurd to associate these people with communism in any way.
They accumulated their power / influence by abusing an underregulated and corrupt capitalistic system.
Additionally - although I understand the sentiment - calling for their execution is just wrong. Instead what we need is market regulation (and maybe put them in jail if possible).
Agreed. IMO the epstein-billionaire class cannot be reformed.
Batteries are a problem but it doesn’t take much napkin math to see that, on an individual level, homecharging an EV for 30-50 years is better than distributing and burning the energy-equivalent gasoline over the same period. It’s better if off-peak grid energy is used. Even more efficient if the grid power is generated partially with renewables. Or best of all, homecharge from a home battery system that recharges exclusively from home solar. It is the highest initial cost outlay and highest initial inputs of polluting materials, but then the resulting power approaches being “free” for the life of the system, and creates no further emissions in its generation process.
don’t forget the gigantic inefficiency of digging petroleum out of the ground, loading it on to and off of a boat, shipping it around the world, refining it into gasoline, pumping that into trucks, driving those trucks to a gas station, then pumping it all into the tanks to sit around and degrade until someone pumps it into their tank so they can drive it around for a couple weeks, only for SIXTY FUCKING PERCENT TO BE WASTED AS HEAT.
instead, my power company gets photons from the sun, turns those into zippyzappy, and that travels down the wire into my fucking battery where it’s used by an electric motor. far, far fewer steps, far fewer points of conversion, and every erg goes to pushing the wheels round and round, not heating up a fucking engine block or providing yet another resource chokepoint for the assholes to fight over.
I’ll never understand the neglect these kind of calculations give to the energy storage and distribution required, conversion and losses inherent to combustion engines, it’s heinously inefficient and only survives because of nostalgia and legacy idiocy.
Uhhh that napkin math forgets to account that over 30-50 years you’ll need multiple batteries/cars. Hard enough keeping a 30 year old ICE going these days and usually those spring cheap failures (but many, since they’re more complex). An EV battery is tens of thousands even if the car is old and worth <10k, unless you go used with no warranty. All batteries fail eventually, even if they’re getting better these days.
It’s still more efficient than ICE, but at this point we need batteries that reliably last 20-30 years so the people who can’t afford to buy new can use the old ones without worrying about a huge ticking time bomb or doing cell replacements on a high voltage battery at home.
Batteries are already lasting 20 years, projecting out. And that’s just the ones that were made 10 years ago.
How long do modern EV batteries last? I’m not sure we have any definitive answer yet but I can tell you as someone who recently purchased a used EV with 60k miles on it, I am amazed at how well the battery still performs. From what I can tell, I’ve lost maybe 10% of total battery capacity from brand new. I’m now at just over 70k and haven’t noticed any material impact of battery degradation. I won’t be surprised if I get to 120k or more miles before I need to think about a battery swap or rebuild.
And battery tech is only getting better.
Modern batteries last 200,000-400,000 miles, depending of how people use and abuse them. Fast charging and 100% charge reduces lifespan.
Good luck getting 100,000 miles out of modern ICE engines.
But, ICE engines can be built to last a million miles. And, could be made more efficient, and we could stop people from buying wasteful vehicles they don’t need, etc.
All I’m saying is, had we been much more responsible, ICE engines would not currently be such a huge problem. But, we weren’t, and they are. I’ll blame capitalism, and the forced ignorance that brings.
But, ICE engines can be built to last a million miles.
But they don’t. See GM, Hyundai, Kia, Ford recalls.
You can only do that if we removed emissions and fuel economy requirements.
While anecdotal I do have some real world data on this: My family owns a 2016 Tesla Model S and we just did a professional battery test last month.
The battery still has 88% of its original capacity left, at currently 305,000 km (~190,000 mi) on the odometer and 10 years of use.
The only maintenance done on the battery was one cooling fluid change & reseal.
Keep in mind that this car is running on at least 10 year old tech and I’m sure that we have learned a lot since then.
My 11-year old Nissan Leaf, with the oldest and worst battery technology in modern EVs, is now at 80% battery capacity.
Replacement battery is $6k, installed.
But 80% is enough for me so I won’t need to replace it for a long time. This car will easily last 20 or 30 years.
“But I can’t afford to spend even $5k to replace the battery when it happens!!!”. Baloney. What I can’t afford is paying 4 times the cost per mile for gasoline, FOREVER.
Set up an monthly automatic transfer in your checking account to a savings account, for the amount you would have spent on gasoline. Call it your battery replacement fund. It will be plenty in no time.
Replacement battery is $6k, installed.
11 years, saving you conservatively $2500 a year in gas, before Iran war, so you are still $15000 ahead. Given these cars are really cheap used, free car.
I owned a 2013 leaf and had <80% after three years.
I currently have a 2014 Tesla S and it’s just at 81%.
Your luck is insane or the numbers aren’t right. I agree with your main point though. Replacing a battery is still way cheaper than a new car, even if you factor in other long term maintenance
I think it kinda depends on where you live (and maybe if you keep the car in a garage or outdoors). In theory, batteries that stay around the same temp all year should last longer than batteries that experience strong seasonal temperature shifts.
Replacing a battery is still way cheaper than a new car, even if you factor in other long term maintenance
Some Tesla’s battery cannot be replaced, the frame is cast around it. Exactly what assholes would do.
citation requested for this because… I don’t believe anyone would ‘cast’ - as in metal casting - framework around something like the battery pack, even the assholes at tesla.
it may be engineered inconveniently but even they have to replace cells in packs sometimes. please, provide some examples of this in production.
I think the idea is they use the battery packs as part of the frame: https://www.tesla-mag.com/en/revolutionizing-electric-vehicles-teslas-unconventional-battery-architecture/ but given that this patent is from 2024 I’m not sure if they’re actually building cars like this yet. Maybe the truck.
“Tesla’s patent describes a unit where vertically arranged cells are bonded together with structural adhesive, creating an ultra-rigid honeycomb that can endure road forces comparable to traditional vehicular frames.” So basically it sounds like they’re dousing 18650 batteries in construction adhesive, building a metal box around that, and then taking those metal boxes and welding them together into the floor of their car frames. I would do more research if I cared, but I don’t. Fuck Tesla!
citation requested for this because… I don’t believe anyone would ‘cast’ - as in metal casting - framework around something like the battery pack
It’s called a structural battery pack.
Same asshole concept as gluing batteries into phones. Impossible to replace a battery, and in accidents, the forces transmit right into the battery. TSLA sells it to it’s stans as weight saving and innovation, and we all know those idiots believe anything.
Leafspy confirms my numbers, so it’s “luck”. In my case, luck means living in a cooler climate area and no DC fast charging.
Wonder if that’s still true when you consider that an average EV lasts like… 5 years at best before the underside rusts through and the “lifetime” fluids corrode the car from inside out
That is if the driver doesn’t crash thinking the car can drive itself
Driving a 13 year old electric car here. No issues so far! ☺️
None of us are immune to propaganda, but some of us make for excellent amplifiers.
It’s so neat that you cite the source when the video author does not lmao
lol at least he named them so I could find it myself.
As long as we have the problems of cars, this sounds like the least worse option.
Thanks for outlining it in the post OP. I never watch videos, but I read the text.
a fellow c/fuckcars enjoyer I see.
Ya I really wish more people used the body of video posts. I also prefer to read
Still won’t buy and EV. I’m cool with the range and everything, but fuck this subscription shit to unlock features it already has. Plus I’d rather pay for an oil change once a year than 5-7k for a new battery every 5 years, plus spend more initially for the car itself (ICE vs EV), it takes you 5 years to break even monitarily then you’re buying a new battery.
Sodium/silicone is going to change a lot hopefully.
You have swallowed some serious FUD there.
Oh shit, batteries magically stop working after 5 years? Someone better tell the car manufacturers, they must be about bankrupt since they all offer 8 year battery warranties…
I mean, the subscription, infotainment ads, and survaliance shit is in new ice cars as well, like all new cars are just like that. The only model coming out this year that doesn’t seem to have that is the slate truck, which, ironically is electric.
Isnt used still better than both? The work has already been done to make the car.
New cars are rolling spyware you can’t repair and will never own. I’ll be fixing old cars until its impossible.
You can buy an old EV
Sure but the range is abysmal
no
Misconception. Range dropoff is not dramatic and in fact is not terribly noticeable over the normal lifespan of the car.
Source: I have driven the same electric car for 10 years with negligible range loss. In south Florida, which is not a kind place to be for a battery.
Edit: Unless you have an old school Leaf where they opted to not use actve cooling, which very much does thrash batteries. Note that this is a relatively rare design.
No cuz electric cars are still more carbon intensive to build than combustion cars… driving the EV is what offsets it in the long run, meanwhile driving the combustion engine does the opposite. Especially given how older cars are less fuel efficient.
No cuz electric cars are still more carbon intensive to build than combustion cars
That’s not actually true. There is one Volvo white paper everyone quotes and no one actually reads, they compare an EV to ICE and conclude EVs take more carbon.*
*When you exclude the motor and transmission from ICE.
But by reusing I’m saving all the factory materials and labor to build another car. Reduce…reuse…
Cars are recycled. They end up in parts wrecking yards for years, then the metal is recycled.
It makes the most sense to compare the cars by the lifespan of the car rather than who happens to own it at any given point.
If you sell an old ICE car thinking you’re doing something great for the environment, you need to consider that someone else is going to buy it and drive all the remaining miles out of it anyway. Unless you send it to the scrap yard.
If you buy a used car, it simply means that the seller bought a new one instead of you doing that.
So by all means, buy used if you want to, it makes a lot of economic sense, but in the grand scheme of things, the only thing that matters to the environment is which vehicles get produced to begin with. So it’s out of your hands unless you order new cars before they’re produced. Once it’s been made, someone will drive all the miles that it was produced to drive.
Now it might seem logical that repairs could offset the production of new vehicles, however with the difference between EVs and ICEs being soo large over time, it still makes the most (environmental) sense to buy a new EV instead of keeping an old car on the road.
the only thing that matters to the environment is which vehicles get produced
We can also produce fewer
Yeah the best option is to live close to stuff.
no. I’ve seen recent studies that showed that driving your existing petrol car or buying used is still environmentally worse than getting an electric car. Not to say that I’m buying electric - I can’t afford it.
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I won’t be searching for this to prove you wrong. you made the claim, so the burden of proof is on you.
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I can’t comment on repairability nor spyware, as I have no idea
Studies show that although EVs produce more carbon emissions when they are manufactured, they are responsible for much lower emissions when they are being driven compared with a petrol or diesel car. Overall, the whole-life emissions for an electric car are almost 90 per cent lower than for combustion engine vehicles.
“We found that in the vast majority of cases, and even for a brand new gas vehicle, you would be far better off scrapping the gas vehicle and switching to electric,” says Campbell. “It takes more energy to build an electric vehicle, but the savings from driving the vehicle swamp all the upfront costs.”
July 7, 2021 - Reuters analyzed data generated by an Argonne National Laboratory model to determine at what point a typical electric vehicle (EV) becomes cleaner than an equivalent gasoline car in terms of its lifetime carbon footprint.
Based on a series of assumptions, the data showed that a Tesla Model 3 in the United States, for example, would need to be driven for 13,500 miles (21,725 km) before it does less harm to the environment than a Toyota Corolla.
Dont forget the people always quote carbon comparisons but no one really champions the air quality changes and the impact that has on peoples longevity and chronic deseases.
And a more minor, but delightful, change is less noise pollution. You dont realise now peaceful it is around EVs until a loud car roars past you, or the constant low hum when your close to traffic.
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I’d also like to add that the manufacturing footprint can (and hopefully will be) reduced. So the difference will grow. Fossil cars will not get more efficient. Also fuck cars.
https://www.carboncounter.com/
For anyone who wanted to click the URL in the OP.
Now try an E-Bike.
E-bike compared to an ICE car or a regular bike?
surprisingly, the e-bike has lower emissions in both cases
because emissions from food production?
No, the emissions from eating extra calories vs charging is a bullshit argument, mainly because a majority of people in the west need to lose weight and are already digesting too much food.
Now my regular bike! Mostly because UK laws are dumb and limit ebikes to such a low speed that its pointless for me to get a legal one.
No! If you want an electric motorcycle, then get one and drive on the regular vehicle roads. The limits on ebikes keep them as bikes. I live in a very hilly town and a basic ebike means I can keep on biking now that a regular mountain bike is getting to be too much work. If defacto motorcycles are using the bike lanes and paths, we might as well allow cars and dump trucks on them as well.
If I can cycle faster than the legal ebike limit, isn’t it a bit low? I overtake legal ones on my way to work, illegal ones zoom past.
Just want a slightly higher limit. Like leave the motor power limit but drop the speed one?
No. Lower it. Classify fast ones as motorbikes and ban them from looking like bikes.
My friend in his 30s got run over whilst jogging by an ebike on a shared pedestrian/cycle path and hasn’t been back to work yet. His face had to be reconstructed and his leg and both hips are a mess.
If that was a road legal ebike, a regular bike would have done the same amount of damage given that I am going at a similar or faster speed than legal ebikes already. Then you have road bikes going even faster than I do.
Then you have sprint speeds which are even higher. For a short distance I can push close to double the ebike speed limit on a smooth path. There is a mile or so coastal path here that works really well for getting up speed. Downhill obviously allows even more speed.
If that’s the case, maybe you are going too fast also?
There isn’t a maximum speed a bike is allowed to go and I would be within the speed limit for the road I am on. So no, I am not going too fast.
Now if I was to go full speed on a crowded shared path, sure, that would be riding dangerously and is illegal.
I wasn’t there and didn’t see it, but I can’t imagine it was a legal bike, my point is that the fast ones need to look less like bikes so that the police can identify bikes that shouldn’t be on cycle paths easily.
I imagine that you as a keen cyclist have experience and road sense and pay attention to other road or cycle path users in a way that someone who has a lot of experience on the road has to do if they’re not going to end up in a crash. You don’t become a fast (pedal) cyclist without a bit of experience.
Can’t you get one with pedal assist for the hills and just go very fast on the flats and downhills with the pedals?
Motor and battery would be a bunch of extra weight, there are no hills where I live.
Or take the bus
If it’s a diesel bus the ebike is better for sure. Even the ev might be better, depending on a bunch of factors.
All of the new buses in my city are BYD 100% EVs.
Hence “if”. Good job, your city!
Some people have families… maybe a dog, maybe they need to move things around. Some people! Not all people, and e bikes are great, but not an everything solution.
More cities, more transit, more low carbon personal transit sure, but I don’t think it’s helpful to treat everyone like a homoegeonous mass of factory outputed needs and wants.
Like a lot of problems, this needs to be tackled from multiple directions
People should do whatever they want. However, I will say I know more than a couple of people who use cargo e-bikes to move around their kids and dogs and such. I agree that they’re not an everything solution, but they can do a lot.
Fair enough!
OK, now what’s your argument for E-Bikes?
E-bikes have one more “e” than they need.
Some people want to ride alone through city streets, efficiently, the breeze in their hair, a pet squirrel named Thomas atop their shoulder, who laughs in it’s way at the dreary drivers in the next lane, cacooned in their steel cages with their stale air. That’s not all people though.
Why are you linking to YouTube instead of the study?
The study is linked, it just isn’t the first link
How about no new cars? That’s the best option by far.
