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
EvEn ThE tIrEsSs?
For a while the right was claiming that evs, being heavier, caused more pollution from wear and tear on roads and tires.
Glad this article shows it was bs
If they truly cared about that, we’d have trams everywhere already.
I mean, if you listen to the FuckCars people, tire dust might be the end of civilization.
The end of Salmon for sure.
When sodium batteries become the norm, lithium mining won’t be a factor and the picture will improve even more.
Another reason why I’ve been hesitant to be an early adopter. Clearly this tech hasn’t matured yet.
It’s such a catch-22. Do I want a car that goes 1000km on one charge? Or do I want to be limited to200km at a time but without some AI gooning at me 24/7.
I’d say you missed the “early adopter” period by like a decade. I’ve owned a Nissan Leaf since 2013, recently upgraded to a used 2023 Kia Niro. The Niro goes almost 300 miles, which is farther than almost any of our trips, and I don’t feel like AI is “gooning” at me, whatever that even means. It comes down to either you want to quit burning gas or you don’t.
I’ve owned a Nissan Leaf since 2013
I don’t feel like AI is “gooning” at me, whatever that even means.
Honestly based on the severity of this incongruency in thought, I’m gonna have to remove you from my lemmy experience.
aw, OP is a dweeb who’s upset that people can’t follow his incoherent garbage.
I have a 2017 Kia Soul EV. Not sure what gooning is but I’d say my spouse’s ice vehicle is worse. It’s always connecting and uploading something.
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.
PS: Ngl, what I’d actually LOVE to see are for example hydrogen cars.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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
Now try an E-Bike.
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.
Can’t you get one with pedal assist for the hills and just go very fast on the flats and downhills with the pedals?
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.
Yes, that as well 🙂
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?
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.
E-bikes have one more “e” than they need.
E-bike compared to an ICE car or a regular bike?
For a second, I seriously thought you were talking about getting kidnapped by ICE… #USA
surprisingly, the e-bike has lower emissions in both cases
because emissions from food production?
As long as we have the problem 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
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.
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.
we really should have mandated huge changes when we hit 60 mile range batteries because honestly the vast majority of people use less range than this every day.
and, atop all this, they’re finding batteries are degrading far less than feared. https://insideevs.com/news/748501/ev-degradation-study-rsev/
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
Leafspy confirms my numbers, so it’s “luck”. In my case, luck means living in a cooler climate area and no DC fast charging.
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!
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.
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.
It can last 20 years with no problems other than the expected gradual degradation, or it can fail suddenly at any point because a single cell going bad ruins the whole thing until you either get that cell replaced (do NOT attempt at home) or the battery replaced.
if I get to 120k or more miles before I need to think about a battery swap or rebuild.
To be comparable to an actually maintained ICE not made by Americans, Koreans or the Fr*nch, it should be more like 300k miles. Which, to be fair, your EV may reach too and if it does you will have saved a ton of money in maintenance costs compared to having to do a ton of fluid changes over that span. But we have poor information on how 20+ year old EV batteries hold up because they don’t exist yet. Currently we know the earliest Teslas have had a worryingly high battery failure rate at ~13-14 years of age which is why most EVs still get sold for cheap after 5-6 years, before the battery warranty expires.
We have projected lifespans which shows new EV batteries lasting essentially forever, but how do we know it’s true?
But my personal issue is the cost more than anything. Mercedes wanted over 40k EUR for an battery, EVClinic repaired it for 4800€ so battery didn’t need to be replaced, but even for 4800€ I could buy 3-4 used engines for my car and get them installed by a decent mechanic, or even more engines and install them myself, meaning I essentially could run this car without oil changes for several years by just replacing the engines. Now why did Mercedes ask 41k EUR for a battery that’s clearly still in warranty since the model isn’t even as old as the battery warranty yet? Nobody knows, but in a forum thread someone said that Mercedes told them the battery warranty only covers up to the vehicle’s value, whereas the cars themselves cost much less now than the batteries do. This is probably just Mercedes being shady as fuck because they’ve realized they’d go bankrupt if they had to honor battery warranties on these.
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.
Most of my fairly modern ICE cars have had 300k km or more on them and all of them were sold as still running and driving, all with annual safety and emissions inspection still valid. Only reason I kept replacing them like socks in 2024-2025 was that my ex would randomly drive into shit, meaning bent wheels, holes in oil pans, etc. One had almost 600k km and another (before said ex) had been rewound in Lithuania so real mileage was about 700k km but it showed 400k km, no engine trouble on any of those. Mostly Audi, a few Mercedes, one BMW, two Volkswagens, etc. The reality is, tons of Mercedes diesel taxis get over a million kilometers at some point, usually on the original engine and transmission. My current Audi has a notoriously bad transmission that everyone says you should avoid. I pulled out the original filter and fluid at 400k km and after the change it shifts like brand new. Why does everyone say they’re bad? Because nobody maintains them and they all have their mileage rewound before being imported from some Western European countries with poor official records availability (like Germany, pretty much impossible to verify real mileage). Same with BMWs with the same transmission (6HP). People buy a 20+ year old car that has “250k km” on the odometer then get surprised that things fail when the real mileage is 500k+ and nobody has given two fucks about changing fluids and filters at a sane interval for years and minor issues get ignored until they snowball.
The only car I actually did have real engine trouble on was a Chrysler with only 250k km. So maybe don’t buy American cars.
An ICE engine I can also still fix at home if something happens, which is usually like a plastic coolant pipe or something (EVs also have coolant pipes). There’s nothing stopping me from replacing parts on an engine or even IN an engine, but I don’t want to touch a high voltage battery, ever. They’re just not repairable at home.
Modern batteries last 200,000-400,000 miles
Early Teslas have had a 15% failure rate to date (perhaps more now, this was from a year ago). Regardless of mileage, you can’t trust them anymore. Newer EVs have a lower failure rate but then those are still too new to tell. We’ll know in 15 years.
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.
Better than getting a hundred thousand miles out of a used gas car?
Gas cars continue to pollute C02 emissions.
Aren’t the vast majority of CO2 emissions from all cars during production (mostly the steel)?
So do EV if the electricity comes from c02 emitting sources.
I believe studies have shown that EVs still lead to less carbon emission overall, even if the electricity comes from fossil fuels. Plus, having the emissions be centralized (at a power plant where you can ameliorate it with CO2 scrubbers) is arguably preferable to having them emitted just kind of everywhere around highways and so forth.
Also, we need electricity either way, we don’t necessarily need ICE cars in the same way, and the power plants are gonna be on either way. Besides which, ultimately, these are separate problems, there’s no reason we can’t support EV adoption and transitioning to more renewable energy at the same time.
It’s better to keep driving the ICE cars that exist than all run out and buy new EVs, but we should be replacing them with EVs when the wheels fall off, not new ICE cars. Some ICE cars will probably always continue to exist in various specialized roles, but they’re ultimately just too complicated. Fewer moving parts, less work = EVs will take over in the long run.
Economy of scale. While I’d prefer the electricity I use to charge my car come from a clean source, a single coal plant is more efficient at producing power than however many thousand individual engines.
Okay but that still doesn’t answer the question of how much co2 is used to manufacture an EV and how that compares to running a used gas car.
(And your comment is still ignoring the efficiency factor. My car gets 40mpg the way i drive, that’s much more efficient than your average gas car. Coal plants run at about 33% efficiency, not to mention the loss of efficiency transferring the energy to the charging station and then to your car and then to the tires of your car.)
The math question, a question of arithmetic with hard numbers, is not answered by your prose virtue signalling.
Ah yes, I am virtue signaling, while you are taking your proud stance against the woke mob. Good on you bud.
All that out of the way, let’s look at your points:
You get 40 mpg in your current car, cool. If every car was your car and every driver drove like you that would be a good point. Considering all the massive trucks, ancient beaters, and huge SUVs I see on the road I would argue that that isn’t the case.
Regarding the efficiency issue, a 2020 study I found put ice gas engines at 11-27 percent and diesel engines at 25-37 percent. This would indicate that evs are, at worst, about a net even compared to ice cars. On top of this, carbon capture is much easier to accomplish when energy is generated at one place rather than by every individual vehicle. Also, energy wasted on transmitting power to the tire? My brother in Christ, does your car not have wheels?
Finally, this entire argument is around whether evs powered by fossil fuels are more efficient than used ice cars. This is ignoring the fact that one, used evs exist, and two, my used kia ev6 can be powered by renewables, while your ice car will only ever use gas. As we transition to a more renewable heavy energy grid, my care will get more efficient while yours at best stays the same.
Anyway, long useless rant into the void over. If you are arguing in good faith I hope I’ve brought up some good points, and if you aren’t I hope your car throws a rod.
I don’t have any sources, but I have looked into this a bit in the past because this is exactly my situation — driving a piece of shit into the ground
while when I looked into this in the past I was unable to find (or at least remember) conclusive evidence that a new EV is better than using something that already exists, it was at least on par. I think my difficulty with remembering the outcome was which studies factored in what things, so the takeaway I actually remember is just that an EV is probably better and definitely not worse than continuing to drive and old IC vehicle
in my case because I don’t drive a lot and I want to pay very little for my vehicle, I decided to not get an EV and instead buy a used pos that’s slightly less of a pos than my other car which will be retired to the scrapyard soon. if I drove daily, I’d be a lot more inclined to buy an EV (both for operating costs and environmental impact).
I drive daily and when i do some napkin math it works out to 100k miles in my 40MPG used car is breakeven with a new EV. But i couldn’t afford a new or used EV anyway so the choice was made for me lol
There recently was a study showijg exactly that: Its better to build a new EV than to use completely new, already produced and so far unused ICE cars.
Citation needed.
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.
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.
Might be an unpopular statement on this community: But I was actually still on the fence if current EVs were a net benefit or not.
I’m also torn between waiting for newer makes/models to hit the Canadian market, and buying one now before they start putting AI in them.
The problem with EVs isn’t that they’re better than ICE cars, it’s that they’re the least better alternative.
If you’re forced to own a car, they’re the superior option. But also, bikes and buses and carpooling are all even better. Hell, just owning a smaller car can be an enormous improvement.
buying one now before they start putting AI in them.
I think we’ve crossed that bridge about ten years ago. Just about every car has a digital dashboard now. And all those dashboards update remotely. If your vehicle doesn’t have some AI bloat in it yet, you’re always a forced update away from getting it.
Really need an openwrt equivalent for cars soon
yeah, that’s the reasoning for why my “new” car is a 14yo rusty econobox.
I don’t drive much, and I already own a not-terrible-for-emissions vehicle that often gets used to haul and tow stuff. I carpool and bike when possible. I avoid things that require lots of driving.
my net impact for switching to a comparable EV is much smaller than somebody commuting with a Bronco, I’ve already taken steps
You can turn off data harvesting in some models. Kia is one example.
Get a used EV, you’ll save a lot and can get an older model with less AI.
And even the thing that wears the most (aside the wheels) on an EV lasts longer in real cars than initially expected.
Definitely buy used. These things drop like rocks during the first year of ownership. I got 50% off MSRP for letting someone else own the car for the first 9000 miles.
This is the way to go. I bought the wife a 2023 VW id4 Pro with 14,000 miles on it. It was $24,000. New is up in the 40s. And to both of us, it’s still a new car. The other one we’ve got is a 16 year old ice car. I did the math, CO2 emissions using my state’s electricity mix worked out to be a quarter of the ICE’s.
I wish this was true where I live… It’s more like 30-40% drop for 4 years old car with 150k km (100k miles).
I guess it’s a silver lining of living in a country that is completely captured by oil companies. I catch a lot of flak for having an EV, but the truth is in the odometer readings. We had a 2 car household, and we put 24,000 miles on the EV in a year and a half, and went from 14,000 miles a year on our gas car down to less than 2000. We just sold the ICE because we stopped driving it, and couldn’t justify the 400 dollars or so a month to keep it.
https://www.carboncounter.com/
For anyone who wanted to click the URL in the OP.
How about no new cars? That’s the best option by far.
TLDR: Cars still bad. EVs less so, but still significant CO2 contributers (better in places with more renewable).
I’ve always been more about electric trains and busses than electric cars.
Especially when they are grid tied, so no big batteries
And bicycles (e- or otherwise, but kinda especially e- because they get more people doing it who wouldn’t have considered it before).
Same.
