• cogman@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    While the emission cost of an EV indeed about 30% lower (data for Germany, probably worse in the US)

    I’ve never seen this number. The numbers I’ve seen generally paint EV emissions as fairly low with most of them occurring at manufacturing (see, https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.html ).

    Which state you live in has a huge impact on EV emissions. For my state (Idaho), emissions are hyper low due to the amount of hydro power.

    Even then, emissions are tricky to exactly calculate. The majority of EV manufacturing emissions comes from the battery manufacturing process. And, it seems pretty likely that EV batteries will see a second life after their first life in the EV. Batteries are too valuable to just throw away. We aren’t seeing a ton of that ATM primarily because most of the current generation of EVs are still on the road!

    Now, I have seen some pretty bad numbers usually from fossil fuel powered publications against EVs. Usually they’ll take the absolute worst case scenarios for an EV “Imagine all your power is coming from coal that’s being transmitted 6000 miles and from 1000 year old plants with 5% efficiency. See, EVs are just as dirty as ICE!” Those articles universally ignore the fact that we have a mixed generation grid with renewables growing rapidly.

    • Atemu@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Sorry, I kinda missed your reply as it quoted the same source as the other one. Here’s what I said to that: https://lemmy.ml/comment/1611213

      it seems pretty likely that EV batteries will see a second life after their first life in the EV

      Why do you think that? In order for that to happen, this form of recycling must be significantly more economical than a new battery (which I doubt it currently is) because auto makers won’t recycle out of the goodness of their hearts, that’s for certain.

      I haven’t seen any data pointing to BEV batteries being actually recycled to a significant degree any time soon. I’d love to be proven wrong on that but I have my doubts.

      I have seen some pretty bad numbers usually from fossil fuel powered publications against EVs. Usually they’ll take the absolute worst case scenarios for an EV “Imagine all your power is coming from coal that’s being transmitted 6000 miles and from 1000 year old plants with 5% efficiency. See, EVs are just as dirty as ICE!”

      See the paper linked in my other reply. It assumes the 2020 power mix in Germany which is quite terrible (only 55% low-emission) but not nearly as terrible as the US (40% low-emission according to your link). I could see the US getting closer to the 2020 DE power mix within the next decade or so though, so those numbers should be pretty representative of the future US. As mentioned in the other reply, the paper also contains an estimation for 2030 DE power mix.

      Note that the article concludes that BEVs are not the future of transport but not that we should therefore use ICEs. In its conclusion it basically says that BEVs offer a good improvement over the status quo but we should really really have fewer cars instead. The focus of future transport should therefore lie on viable alternatives to cars such as walkable cities, cycling and public transport.