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.
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.