Hopefully, in coming years, we will see more practically designed EVs that are more affordable. A practical car doesn't need neck-snapping acceleration, every bell-and-whistle and room for a family of six with a dog. I'd like to believe that as batteries cost drop, the incentive to justify the extra cost will drop. Then we can get back to "just basic transportation" rather than a luxury product for the rich. While $31k isn't exactly cheap, the base new Leaf is heading the right direction.
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Affordable EVs exist and are widely available in some countries. They're effectively banned in North America, though.
This has always been true of gas vehicles as well. They're banned for not having some safety feature or otherwise complying with FMVSS or some other regularity body, not because they are "affordable".
I think it's more likely that Chinese EVs are banned in the US because they would absolutely obliterate the domestic car manufacturing industry.
To be fair, a big part of why is the magnitude of subsidies China has given its domestic EV suppliers.
It's less than the $7500 per car the US gave until very recently.
That is insane. Smaller vehicles are safer at a social level because they do less damage when they hit something - especially a pedestrian. Regulatory bodies should be encouraging them for that reason alone (let alone all the others).
Think the cybertruck effectively shows that noone cares about the safety of those outside of the vehicle too much
Manufacturers might prioritise the safety of their customers, and people are likely to care more about their own safety than that of others, but regulators should be looking at overall public safety which is definitely improved by encouraging small cars.
That’s hogwash - affordable EVs from one country are effectively banned, but we have affordable EVs. It’s just that nobody wants to buy them.
This is likely confounded by the dealership model. Dealers have practically zero incentive to sell affordable cars, and especially not EVs that they’ll make almost no servicing money on. Some dealers also stock only a handful of EVs (or none) so they may not even have them to sell in the first place.
It’d be nice if affordable EV models were available from direct to consumer companies. If one could go online and buy a $22k electric hatchback that shows up in your driveway with zero haggling, it’s difficult to imagine it not selling well.
Have you seen the BYD Dolphins? Pretty nifty.
> doesn't need neck-snapping acceleration
I thought this was mostly* a side-effect of electric motors inherently behaving differently than combustion motors.
* Not that it can't be deliberately turned off since everything goes through a computer.
There are two different factors here.
One, as you noted, is that electric motors can apply full torque from a stop, increasing perceived acceleration.
The other, and more impactful, is that electric motor power scales with cost much more cheaply than gas motors, so vehicles will oversize their electric motors.
There's a third factor. Ev's need to support fast charging. So they need to do support super high voltages and currents. That's much of the expense of a powerful EV. A powerful motor is relatively inexpensive in comparison.
If you can charge a car in 20 minutes, the battery and some other circuitry can support discharging in 20 minutes, which is an insane power level.
At this point most EVs are exactly the way you describe and Tesla is an outlier.
Look at Hyundai/Kia’s lineup. The Niro, EV6, and EV9 are essentially the three major segments of American car preferences. They aren’t particularly fast or exotic.
They don’t really cost a whole lot more to buy/own than alternatives in the same segment especially on a monthly payment or buying one used, they just aren’t chosen at a high rate compared to gas powered alternatives.
Tesla just used the neck-snapping acceleration to market EVs by cool factor rather than by economics. And that was a smart idea to get people in showrooms.
I always drive my EV6 in eco mode because normal and sport feel dangerously fast. I think my 0-60 in sport mode is 4 seconds?
The Niro however is spot on.
The only ev6 that will do 0-60 that fast is the GT, the standard one is in the 6-7s range which is the same as a typical gas crossover.
Important to note that this article is geared toward Fleet Managers, so terms like “average service life” may not apply. For example the average car in the us survives 12.6 years before being junked, totaled, etc. which is far longer than a car would be in fleet service at a company.
You're misreading that stat. The average car in the US is 12.6 years old. At 12.6 years they're only about half way to being scrapped.
Tesla does their own with real world data. It’s a non-issue. Save the planet. Stop making excuses and get an EV.
While buying an EV is a greener choice than buying an ICE, a better option still is to use the vehicle you already have for as long as reasonable. This also overlooks the fact that EVs are prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of the population. It isn't the case that people aren't buying them because of preference. Nearly everyone would buy a car that's cheaper to run and maintain if they could afford it.
That's absolutely untrue. The majority of the environmental damage is from the ongoing use of it, not from production.
Every time you fill up on 20 gallons of gas, that is 400 pounds of CO2 that will be dumped into the air.
Used EVs are apparently very cheap. Most new cars are prohibitively expensive, the average new car cost is something like $50k now in the US. If anybody is concerned about cost of new cars, they are buying used anyway.
It is true though, in some cases. The embodied carbon of a Rivian for example is never paid back by operations. So you do have to exercise good judgement in which EV you choose. The category doesn't always win.
In my case I already own a hybrid that I only drive 2000 mi/yr and there is not yet an EV that I could buy with so little embodied carbon that it would make sense to do so. At the rate China is decarbonizing, presumably the embodied carbon of their EVs will soon be minimal, but not yet.
Thanks for linking that Rivian document later, but I think it doesn't support this claim. I'll stick with it's weird 155,000 mile lifetime for the comparison.
Rivian: 60,140 kg carbon per lifetime.
F150, at 20mpg: 78,740 kg carbon, for fuel alone.
So even ignoring the embodied carbon in an ICE vehicle, and paying comparatively high embodied CO2 cost of a new Rivian, it's better to switch immediately, (if CO2 were the sole concern, which it never is.)
An F150 is also a poor choice, so I don't think of it as a point of comparison. As an approximation, the mass of any object is related to its embodied carbon, so smaller vehicles embody less of it. Massive vehicles embody current emissions and that is worth considering.
> The embodied carbon of a Rivian for example is never paid back by operations
Really? I could imagine it being significantly longer than an average EV, but never? Regardless of driving pattern? Got a link or can you show your math?
According to the company itself, their bloated truck-like luxury object has double the emissions of a normal hybrid car.
To add to this, almost nobody statistically keeps their vehicle very long. People keeping a car for 20-30 years is extremely rare.
The median length of car ownership is something like 7 years. Even if you are switching between used cars, most people are switching vehicles at some point.
From what I understand even considering battery mining and using dirty electrical generation, you’re still at breakeven within a couple years of driving with an EV.
Yeah lithium mining is bad, but don’t forget that oil is also extracted and “mine.” And your gas car uses a LOT of it.
I wouldn’t think too much about then average new car cost of $50k. That average is skewed by:
1. Expensive new car purchases (average != median)
2. Lower income people don’t buy new cars at all.
Still, some of the best new car deals are EVs because dealers can’t get rid of them due to the sudden expiration of federal incentives. Plus the used ones depreciate like crazy despite having better maintenance and lower miles. The lease deals you might get on an Ioniq are insane, good luck getting a gas car lease with that kind of value.
Let’s also not forget that the majority of housing units in the USA are single family homes where charging at home is likely to be an option.
The EU average passenger car fleet age is 12.5 years.
> From what I understand even considering battery mining and using dirty electrical generation, you’re still at breakeven within a couple years of driving with an EV.
Only when compared to buying a new ICE, as it takes 1-2 years average mileage in the US and 2-4 years in the EU for a new EV to reach emissions parity with a new ICE. It takes well over a decade in the EU for a new EV to recover it's production emissions va driving an existing used ICE. It's never environmentally friendly to scrap an ICE for a new EV.
Average car age is not related to how long an individual keeps said car…
The average length of ownership is a pretty warped statistic, though. It is dependent on when in the car's life cycle someone buys it. At one end of the market are new car buyers who keep them longer than average, at the other end are people who constantly buy end-of-life junkers for $500.
Bike > walk == public transit > used EV > new EV > used ICE > new ICE
That's pretty much the order of "greenness" in personal transport.
New EVs will pay off their added carbon footprint in roughly 1 or 2 years in most locations. The ultimate determining factor of how fast that is the energy mix of your local power generation.
The only time it'd probably be better to continue using an ICE is if that ICE is a moped or you live in West Virginia and drive a hybrid. For pretty much all other vehicle choices, switching to an EV will be greener.
How is biking better than walking?
New EV vs used ICE will depend on how much you drive and in what conditions. I would guess what I do (in the UK) is uncommon in the US but it must be possible but working from home plus living in a town rather than a city means I only do low single digit thousands of miles a year and that almost entirely on clear roads.
People in much of the UK commute by public transport and use their cars lightly (e.g. for shopping on the weekend, trips, etc).
> How is biking better than walking?
Glad you asked.
Biking has an energy efficiency of around 99%. Very little of the effort you put into biking ends up as waste heat. Walking, on the other hand, has a much lower energy efficiency. You are putting much more effort overcoming and generating friction as you move your legs. You are also doing it for a longer period of time since you are going slower.
It's one of my favorite counterintuitive facts.
> I would guess what I do (in the UK) is uncommon in the US
And that's for sure. In almost every US city if you want to do anything, you are driving. Where I'm at, everything is at least 10mi from my home. That racks up the miles pretty quickly.
Bike is the most efficient form of transportation, even walking doesn’t compare.
I want to get more exercise. Therefore I should walk rather than bike.
This type of thinking is flawed. Me buying a new EV does not take my old ICE out of circulation, it just puts it in the hands of someone else. Buying less, whether that's cars or anything else, is the baseline to aim for.
My small car does 3,000 miles a year, or 300 litres of petrol a year, or about 1 ton of co2 a year.
How many co2 tons are generated in making a new Nissan leaf?
Buy a used Nissan Leaf, then?
The sunk cost fallacy applies not only to dollars, but also to any quantitative phenomenon. The important thing to evaluate is the cost going forward. When you look at the cost of that new Nissan Leaf, you need to amortize the initial carbon cost over the rest of its lifetime, not just the few years you have it!
From an old forum post in 2013, the best I can find is about 15 tons.
I suspect it's much lower than that number now-a-days. Primarily because the energy going into batteries production will both use less power and likely comes from greener power sources.
If nissan is to be believed, since then they've cut the CO2 emissions from production by 40%. So maybe in the range of 9T?
How on earth is Bike > Walk? Walk is > Bike.
Bike is the most efficient form of transportation, period.
Shoes have a lower environmental impact and cost than than steel, plastic, rubber tyres (which AFAIK use at least some synthetic rubber made from oil), etc. Walking does not use fuel so efficiency is not really relevant. It requires less physical extortion so is more efficient that way, but another way to phrase that is that it is less exercise.
Bikes require very little steel and the rubber tires end up lasting longer (typically) than the shoes you do.
> Walking does not use fuel so efficiency is not really relevant.
Ah, it is. You eat food, that's fuel. It's the major source of CO2 for both activities. Now, it can be insignificant. If the only food you eat is like oatmeal and beans that you grow yourself, then yeah it's going to have a non-existent impact.
However, if you have any sort of meat or imported foods, that CO2 budget can go up pretty quickly.
The actual energy for making the steel for a bike, which will outlast your children, isn't significant.
> Ah, it is. You eat food, that's fuel. It's the major source of CO2 for both activities.
That implies all exercise is a bad thing. i think you will find very few people are sufficiently keen to reduce CO2 that they will deliberately get less exercise and damage their health. I am certainly not doing that. At the moment I am trying to get more exercise.
> Bikes require very little steel
Compared to a car, certainly. Compared to shoes, an awful lot.
> a bike, which will outlast your children
The typical life span of a bike seems to be about five and ten year years. I really hope my kids last a reasonable multiple of the top end! The level of sales of cycles in the UK (well over 1 million a year) vs the number of people who cycle at least once a week (less seven million) implies a life of about five years. About half of that is leisure cyclists so not really comparable to people using transport to get somewhere.
Leisure cyclists want to get more exercise so by your argument about that being a bad thing they (and therefore half of all UK cyclists) are actively harmful.
Those must be US estimates involving huge mileage, because - taking your existing ICE car's production emissions as an already sunk cost - replacing an existing ICE with a new EV would over a decade of driving the average EU mileage (~10k km) before reaching emissions parity.
It takes 2-4 years of that mileage alone for a new EV to reach lifetime emissions parity with a new ICE in the EU (which I know is longer than the US due to the vast differences in average emissions per vehicle between the two continents).
For most of the world, the GP is correct. Driving whatever car you have will always be more environmentally friendly than buying a new EV. Reduce and reuse are environmental cornerstones for a reason.
People keep their cars for longer than 2 to 4 years and an EV sold in 2 to 4 years will likely be driven by someone else.
Which is why I put a used EV as being better for the environment vs a new one.
But both will be better for the environment in their lifetime than keeping a used ICE on the road.
It's more economical to keep your current car until it starts seeing major mechanical issues. However, environmentally an EV will (almost) always beat an ICE, the sooner you get one the better. Especially in a place like the EU where you can get even more environmentally friendly EVs due to the lower amounts of driving. You can, for example, grab the BYD seagull which has a 30kWh battery pack. That alone significantly reduces the new EV environmental impact beyond what some of the older numbers would have shown.
> However, environmentally an EV will (almost) always beat an ICE, the sooner you get one the better. Especially in a place like the EU where you can get even more environmentally friendly EVs due to the lower amounts of driving.
This is simply not true. A new EV will not reach emissions parity with a used ICE car in its average useful lifetime (12.5 years).
This isn't close or controversial, so I wonder what the basis for your mistaken belief otherwise is? Not even EV companies make this claim.
The payoff period for an EV is anywhere from 15,000 to 25,000mi. The moment any EV crosses that threshold, it becomes better for the environment than the ICE vehicle that you'd otherwise buy.
If your used ICE vehicle has 15 to 25,000mi in it, then yeah, replacing it with an EV today is the better choice. It's more a matter of when it will be the better choice.
This is only not true if you have very low yearly milages or a particularly efficient ICE. Which, maybe you do.
> The payoff period for an EV is anywhere from 15,000 to 25,000mi. The moment any EV crosses that threshold, it becomes better for the environment than the ICE vehicle that you'd otherwise buy.
That's the payoff period for the carbon differential between a new EV and a new ICE, not a new EV and your existing ICE, where the carbon cost of production is already sunk. Hence why the GP commented that keeping your ICE is environmentally better than buying a new EV.
Also note that 15-25k miles is 24-40k km, or 2.4-4 years of the average annual mileage in the EU. That's to break even with a new ICE. To break even with a second hand ICE, it's on the order or 15-20 years, or effectively longer than the useful life of the EV.
> If your used ICE vehicle has 15 to 25,000mi in it, then yeah, replacing it with an EV today is the better choice. It's more a matter of when it will be the better choice.
This claim is simply false. There is no point in the lifetime of a used ICE where replacing it with a new EV will result in reduce overall emissions.
Surely the composition of one’s local power grid factors in? There are areas where the share of renewables is much higher than the average.
It does, but single digit percentages.
I've now heard three different carbon payback estimates for an EV in the last week, and one year is by far the most optimistic of the lot.
My wife might be able to do it with the amount she commutes, but for me, working from home, it's utterly laughable.
> a better option still is to use the vehicle you already have for as long as reasonable
I've gone back and forth on this. When you buy an EV your old ICE vehicle is not destroyed, it continues it's lifecycle when it goes to someone else. Moreover, there's value in sending a market signal in buying an EV, which is important at this stage of transition.
Maybe the argument is about average age of the road fleet? That a used ICE vehicle should be replaced with a used EV?
Plenty of people that can afford them and that would likely benefit are not buying them because of preference.
In many cases, this is rational. Yeah, a used Model 3 with a great rate plan is probably worth it as a commuter, but what if you are an outlier? Even a low battery failure rate can be a risk, and extended warranties are expensive.
But also, some of it is irrational, as the FB comments effectively feed many false fear driven narratives.
All the oil and gas is killing the planet. Even the gas fumes are killing you when you fill up. The sooner the better. There are lots of low cost EVs out there, especially when you factor in there’s no maintenance.
The maintenance factor seems to often be overlooked. The amount of time I've put into EV maintenance in the last decade is about the same as I've put into my two ICE cars, but I drive them 1/10th as much. It's really, really nice, and I don't think dealer service departments are ready for a massive switch to EV.
Mostly agree but own an EV. "No" maintenance is an exaggeration and it's not necessary to make your point.
My car's first set of tires were very bald at 25,000 miles. That's not unusual on new cars in general as they seem to come from the factory with low longevity tires, but it's still quite a short tire life.
Yes anything in a gasoline engine is gone, and brakes get less use.
But there are still maintenance items.
When discussing vehicles it’s common to separate “wear” items and “maintenance” items. Brake pads and tires are “wear” items. Replacing your engine oil every 5-7000 miles is “maintenance”.
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> How long do electric car batteries last?
The article never answers the question. But if you assume 70% end-of-life threshold with 2.3% loss per year - then we're looking at 13 years.
It’s great seeing the numbers continue to hold after a decent period of time.
We’ve noticed after 6 years out Tesla, the battery seems to charge slower than it used to, but otherwise all is well. I just love the convenience of charging at home, gas stations seem so odd and antiquated now.
Why is 70% a end of life threshold? Considering that most major models are sold with configurations where the entry level begins under 70% compared to the "Long Range" model, clearly 70% is a perfectly fine level of battery for some users.
I myself have a 11 year old Nissan Leaf with pretty significant battery degradation (the guessometer says 70 mi range but I wouldn't count on more than 35-40) and it's fine for probably 95% of my driving.
If I were to buy an electric car with 300-350 miles of range today, I could easily see myself finding a ton of value in it in 20 or even 30 years. It's still more range than my current one! Lol.
Battery degradation is non-linear, and when it reaches a certain point of degradation it can be become unstable. This has lead to 80% being the traditionally considered point for EOL of a Li-Ion pack. However, this is a rule of thumb and the data is evolving with the technology.
"When the battery degrades to a certain point, for instance, if a battery can only retain 80% of its initial capacity,9, 10, 11 the battery should be retired to ensure the safety and reliability of the battery-powered systems."
81% of original capacity for many cars means when driving at highway speeds you will get like 250 miles or less range per charge. Still dramatically less than gas cars.
While true, this either matters for you or it doesn’t. Classic Innovator’s Dilemma.
My EV gets only 230mi range at max, and I only charge to 85% which is like 190mi. But I do it at home and never have any range anxiety.
The trajectories for battery improvements indicate it is just a matter of time before those with larger range needs are addressed satisfactorily.
If you cannot slow charge at home or work, it’s a tough story, EV’s aren’t right for you yet, and that’s ok. Roll out of slow charging is less clear that it will be solved in a scaled way. I am not one that believes that 5-10m EV charging is a good goal, it’s very high power and likely not a good price trade off for the time saved. Current 20-30m will likely be the broad solution for those that want EV and cannot charge at home, though I think that’s not a very good solution.
While true, an important factor that I didn’t realize until I had one is if you charge at home you wake up with a full tank of”of gas” every day. So yes, you have to stop for a charge on exceptional trips but every other day you aren’t late for work because you need gas or have to stop on the way home. And it’s not just the time to pump, but to get to the station and wait perhaps (costco gas). Your car always “has gas” and all that time is returned to your life.
Sure but it's also more than enough for what many use their car for. Especially if you can charge at home.
People are so worried about the 1% of driving. 99% of the driving is in town, and in that case, it's super convenient. Yeah, you might have to stop an extra time on a road trip, so what? The car is also driving itself 99% of the trip. Plus, the kids have to pee.
If you have to drive 250 miles every day for work, or you don't have kids and can do 3 hour legs on trips without stopping, then get a gas car.
Oh no, it won’t do the thing drastically few Americans do ever and the rest do once a year at best. Meanwhile i go to bed and have a full tank of gas the next day for close to free.
Hopefully, in coming years, we will see more practically designed EVs that are more affordable. A practical car doesn't need neck-snapping acceleration, every bell-and-whistle and room for a family of six with a dog. I'd like to believe that as batteries cost drop, the incentive to justify the extra cost will drop. Then we can get back to "just basic transportation" rather than a luxury product for the rich. While $31k isn't exactly cheap, the base new Leaf is heading the right direction.
Affordable EVs exist and are widely available in some countries. They're effectively banned in North America, though.
This has always been true of gas vehicles as well. They're banned for not having some safety feature or otherwise complying with FMVSS or some other regularity body, not because they are "affordable".
I think it's more likely that Chinese EVs are banned in the US because they would absolutely obliterate the domestic car manufacturing industry.
To be fair, a big part of why is the magnitude of subsidies China has given its domestic EV suppliers.
It's less than the $7500 per car the US gave until very recently.
That is insane. Smaller vehicles are safer at a social level because they do less damage when they hit something - especially a pedestrian. Regulatory bodies should be encouraging them for that reason alone (let alone all the others).
Think the cybertruck effectively shows that noone cares about the safety of those outside of the vehicle too much
Manufacturers might prioritise the safety of their customers, and people are likely to care more about their own safety than that of others, but regulators should be looking at overall public safety which is definitely improved by encouraging small cars.
That’s hogwash - affordable EVs from one country are effectively banned, but we have affordable EVs. It’s just that nobody wants to buy them.
This is likely confounded by the dealership model. Dealers have practically zero incentive to sell affordable cars, and especially not EVs that they’ll make almost no servicing money on. Some dealers also stock only a handful of EVs (or none) so they may not even have them to sell in the first place.
It’d be nice if affordable EV models were available from direct to consumer companies. If one could go online and buy a $22k electric hatchback that shows up in your driveway with zero haggling, it’s difficult to imagine it not selling well.
Have you seen the BYD Dolphins? Pretty nifty.
> doesn't need neck-snapping acceleration
I thought this was mostly* a side-effect of electric motors inherently behaving differently than combustion motors.
* Not that it can't be deliberately turned off since everything goes through a computer.
There are two different factors here.
One, as you noted, is that electric motors can apply full torque from a stop, increasing perceived acceleration.
The other, and more impactful, is that electric motor power scales with cost much more cheaply than gas motors, so vehicles will oversize their electric motors.
There's a third factor. Ev's need to support fast charging. So they need to do support super high voltages and currents. That's much of the expense of a powerful EV. A powerful motor is relatively inexpensive in comparison.
If you can charge a car in 20 minutes, the battery and some other circuitry can support discharging in 20 minutes, which is an insane power level.
At this point most EVs are exactly the way you describe and Tesla is an outlier.
Look at Hyundai/Kia’s lineup. The Niro, EV6, and EV9 are essentially the three major segments of American car preferences. They aren’t particularly fast or exotic.
They don’t really cost a whole lot more to buy/own than alternatives in the same segment especially on a monthly payment or buying one used, they just aren’t chosen at a high rate compared to gas powered alternatives.
Tesla just used the neck-snapping acceleration to market EVs by cool factor rather than by economics. And that was a smart idea to get people in showrooms.
I always drive my EV6 in eco mode because normal and sport feel dangerously fast. I think my 0-60 in sport mode is 4 seconds?
The Niro however is spot on.
The only ev6 that will do 0-60 that fast is the GT, the standard one is in the 6-7s range which is the same as a typical gas crossover.
Important to note that this article is geared toward Fleet Managers, so terms like “average service life” may not apply. For example the average car in the us survives 12.6 years before being junked, totaled, etc. which is far longer than a car would be in fleet service at a company.
You're misreading that stat. The average car in the US is 12.6 years old. At 12.6 years they're only about half way to being scrapped.
Tesla does their own with real world data. It’s a non-issue. Save the planet. Stop making excuses and get an EV.
While buying an EV is a greener choice than buying an ICE, a better option still is to use the vehicle you already have for as long as reasonable. This also overlooks the fact that EVs are prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of the population. It isn't the case that people aren't buying them because of preference. Nearly everyone would buy a car that's cheaper to run and maintain if they could afford it.
That's absolutely untrue. The majority of the environmental damage is from the ongoing use of it, not from production.
Every time you fill up on 20 gallons of gas, that is 400 pounds of CO2 that will be dumped into the air.
Used EVs are apparently very cheap. Most new cars are prohibitively expensive, the average new car cost is something like $50k now in the US. If anybody is concerned about cost of new cars, they are buying used anyway.
It is true though, in some cases. The embodied carbon of a Rivian for example is never paid back by operations. So you do have to exercise good judgement in which EV you choose. The category doesn't always win.
In my case I already own a hybrid that I only drive 2000 mi/yr and there is not yet an EV that I could buy with so little embodied carbon that it would make sense to do so. At the rate China is decarbonizing, presumably the embodied carbon of their EVs will soon be minimal, but not yet.
Thanks for linking that Rivian document later, but I think it doesn't support this claim. I'll stick with it's weird 155,000 mile lifetime for the comparison.
Rivian: 60,140 kg carbon per lifetime.
F150, at 20mpg: 78,740 kg carbon, for fuel alone.
So even ignoring the embodied carbon in an ICE vehicle, and paying comparatively high embodied CO2 cost of a new Rivian, it's better to switch immediately, (if CO2 were the sole concern, which it never is.)
An F150 is also a poor choice, so I don't think of it as a point of comparison. As an approximation, the mass of any object is related to its embodied carbon, so smaller vehicles embody less of it. Massive vehicles embody current emissions and that is worth considering.
> The embodied carbon of a Rivian for example is never paid back by operations
Really? I could imagine it being significantly longer than an average EV, but never? Regardless of driving pattern? Got a link or can you show your math?
https://assets.rivian.com/2md5qhoeajym/4wuFZHyC16SDwjbJN7a6j...
According to the company itself, their bloated truck-like luxury object has double the emissions of a normal hybrid car.
To add to this, almost nobody statistically keeps their vehicle very long. People keeping a car for 20-30 years is extremely rare.
The median length of car ownership is something like 7 years. Even if you are switching between used cars, most people are switching vehicles at some point.
From what I understand even considering battery mining and using dirty electrical generation, you’re still at breakeven within a couple years of driving with an EV.
Yeah lithium mining is bad, but don’t forget that oil is also extracted and “mine.” And your gas car uses a LOT of it.
I wouldn’t think too much about then average new car cost of $50k. That average is skewed by:
1. Expensive new car purchases (average != median)
2. Lower income people don’t buy new cars at all.
Still, some of the best new car deals are EVs because dealers can’t get rid of them due to the sudden expiration of federal incentives. Plus the used ones depreciate like crazy despite having better maintenance and lower miles. The lease deals you might get on an Ioniq are insane, good luck getting a gas car lease with that kind of value.
Let’s also not forget that the majority of housing units in the USA are single family homes where charging at home is likely to be an option.
The EU average passenger car fleet age is 12.5 years.
> From what I understand even considering battery mining and using dirty electrical generation, you’re still at breakeven within a couple years of driving with an EV.
Only when compared to buying a new ICE, as it takes 1-2 years average mileage in the US and 2-4 years in the EU for a new EV to reach emissions parity with a new ICE. It takes well over a decade in the EU for a new EV to recover it's production emissions va driving an existing used ICE. It's never environmentally friendly to scrap an ICE for a new EV.
Average car age is not related to how long an individual keeps said car…
The average length of ownership is a pretty warped statistic, though. It is dependent on when in the car's life cycle someone buys it. At one end of the market are new car buyers who keep them longer than average, at the other end are people who constantly buy end-of-life junkers for $500.
Bike > walk == public transit > used EV > new EV > used ICE > new ICE
That's pretty much the order of "greenness" in personal transport.
New EVs will pay off their added carbon footprint in roughly 1 or 2 years in most locations. The ultimate determining factor of how fast that is the energy mix of your local power generation.
The only time it'd probably be better to continue using an ICE is if that ICE is a moped or you live in West Virginia and drive a hybrid. For pretty much all other vehicle choices, switching to an EV will be greener.
How is biking better than walking?
New EV vs used ICE will depend on how much you drive and in what conditions. I would guess what I do (in the UK) is uncommon in the US but it must be possible but working from home plus living in a town rather than a city means I only do low single digit thousands of miles a year and that almost entirely on clear roads.
People in much of the UK commute by public transport and use their cars lightly (e.g. for shopping on the weekend, trips, etc).
> How is biking better than walking?
Glad you asked.
Biking has an energy efficiency of around 99%. Very little of the effort you put into biking ends up as waste heat. Walking, on the other hand, has a much lower energy efficiency. You are putting much more effort overcoming and generating friction as you move your legs. You are also doing it for a longer period of time since you are going slower.
It's one of my favorite counterintuitive facts.
> I would guess what I do (in the UK) is uncommon in the US
And that's for sure. In almost every US city if you want to do anything, you are driving. Where I'm at, everything is at least 10mi from my home. That racks up the miles pretty quickly.
Bike is the most efficient form of transportation, even walking doesn’t compare.
I want to get more exercise. Therefore I should walk rather than bike.
This type of thinking is flawed. Me buying a new EV does not take my old ICE out of circulation, it just puts it in the hands of someone else. Buying less, whether that's cars or anything else, is the baseline to aim for.
My small car does 3,000 miles a year, or 300 litres of petrol a year, or about 1 ton of co2 a year.
How many co2 tons are generated in making a new Nissan leaf?
Buy a used Nissan Leaf, then?
The sunk cost fallacy applies not only to dollars, but also to any quantitative phenomenon. The important thing to evaluate is the cost going forward. When you look at the cost of that new Nissan Leaf, you need to amortize the initial carbon cost over the rest of its lifetime, not just the few years you have it!
From an old forum post in 2013, the best I can find is about 15 tons.
I suspect it's much lower than that number now-a-days. Primarily because the energy going into batteries production will both use less power and likely comes from greener power sources.
If nissan is to be believed, since then they've cut the CO2 emissions from production by 40%. So maybe in the range of 9T?
How on earth is Bike > Walk? Walk is > Bike.
Bike is the most efficient form of transportation, period.
Shoes have a lower environmental impact and cost than than steel, plastic, rubber tyres (which AFAIK use at least some synthetic rubber made from oil), etc. Walking does not use fuel so efficiency is not really relevant. It requires less physical extortion so is more efficient that way, but another way to phrase that is that it is less exercise.
Bikes require very little steel and the rubber tires end up lasting longer (typically) than the shoes you do.
> Walking does not use fuel so efficiency is not really relevant.
Ah, it is. You eat food, that's fuel. It's the major source of CO2 for both activities. Now, it can be insignificant. If the only food you eat is like oatmeal and beans that you grow yourself, then yeah it's going to have a non-existent impact.
However, if you have any sort of meat or imported foods, that CO2 budget can go up pretty quickly.
The actual energy for making the steel for a bike, which will outlast your children, isn't significant.
> Ah, it is. You eat food, that's fuel. It's the major source of CO2 for both activities.
That implies all exercise is a bad thing. i think you will find very few people are sufficiently keen to reduce CO2 that they will deliberately get less exercise and damage their health. I am certainly not doing that. At the moment I am trying to get more exercise.
> Bikes require very little steel
Compared to a car, certainly. Compared to shoes, an awful lot.
> a bike, which will outlast your children
The typical life span of a bike seems to be about five and ten year years. I really hope my kids last a reasonable multiple of the top end! The level of sales of cycles in the UK (well over 1 million a year) vs the number of people who cycle at least once a week (less seven million) implies a life of about five years. About half of that is leisure cyclists so not really comparable to people using transport to get somewhere.
Leisure cyclists want to get more exercise so by your argument about that being a bad thing they (and therefore half of all UK cyclists) are actively harmful.
https://road.cc/content/news/uk-cycle-sales-plummet-early-19...
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64e71a4f20ae8...
Those must be US estimates involving huge mileage, because - taking your existing ICE car's production emissions as an already sunk cost - replacing an existing ICE with a new EV would over a decade of driving the average EU mileage (~10k km) before reaching emissions parity.
It takes 2-4 years of that mileage alone for a new EV to reach lifetime emissions parity with a new ICE in the EU (which I know is longer than the US due to the vast differences in average emissions per vehicle between the two continents).
For most of the world, the GP is correct. Driving whatever car you have will always be more environmentally friendly than buying a new EV. Reduce and reuse are environmental cornerstones for a reason.
People keep their cars for longer than 2 to 4 years and an EV sold in 2 to 4 years will likely be driven by someone else.
Which is why I put a used EV as being better for the environment vs a new one.
But both will be better for the environment in their lifetime than keeping a used ICE on the road.
It's more economical to keep your current car until it starts seeing major mechanical issues. However, environmentally an EV will (almost) always beat an ICE, the sooner you get one the better. Especially in a place like the EU where you can get even more environmentally friendly EVs due to the lower amounts of driving. You can, for example, grab the BYD seagull which has a 30kWh battery pack. That alone significantly reduces the new EV environmental impact beyond what some of the older numbers would have shown.
> However, environmentally an EV will (almost) always beat an ICE, the sooner you get one the better. Especially in a place like the EU where you can get even more environmentally friendly EVs due to the lower amounts of driving.
This is simply not true. A new EV will not reach emissions parity with a used ICE car in its average useful lifetime (12.5 years).
This isn't close or controversial, so I wonder what the basis for your mistaken belief otherwise is? Not even EV companies make this claim.
The payoff period for an EV is anywhere from 15,000 to 25,000mi. The moment any EV crosses that threshold, it becomes better for the environment than the ICE vehicle that you'd otherwise buy.
If your used ICE vehicle has 15 to 25,000mi in it, then yeah, replacing it with an EV today is the better choice. It's more a matter of when it will be the better choice.
This is only not true if you have very low yearly milages or a particularly efficient ICE. Which, maybe you do.
[1] https://www.politifact.com/article/2022/dec/06/carbon-dioxid...
> The payoff period for an EV is anywhere from 15,000 to 25,000mi. The moment any EV crosses that threshold, it becomes better for the environment than the ICE vehicle that you'd otherwise buy.
That's the payoff period for the carbon differential between a new EV and a new ICE, not a new EV and your existing ICE, where the carbon cost of production is already sunk. Hence why the GP commented that keeping your ICE is environmentally better than buying a new EV.
Also note that 15-25k miles is 24-40k km, or 2.4-4 years of the average annual mileage in the EU. That's to break even with a new ICE. To break even with a second hand ICE, it's on the order or 15-20 years, or effectively longer than the useful life of the EV.
> If your used ICE vehicle has 15 to 25,000mi in it, then yeah, replacing it with an EV today is the better choice. It's more a matter of when it will be the better choice.
This claim is simply false. There is no point in the lifetime of a used ICE where replacing it with a new EV will result in reduce overall emissions.
Surely the composition of one’s local power grid factors in? There are areas where the share of renewables is much higher than the average.
It does, but single digit percentages.
I've now heard three different carbon payback estimates for an EV in the last week, and one year is by far the most optimistic of the lot.
My wife might be able to do it with the amount she commutes, but for me, working from home, it's utterly laughable.
> a better option still is to use the vehicle you already have for as long as reasonable
I've gone back and forth on this. When you buy an EV your old ICE vehicle is not destroyed, it continues it's lifecycle when it goes to someone else. Moreover, there's value in sending a market signal in buying an EV, which is important at this stage of transition.
Maybe the argument is about average age of the road fleet? That a used ICE vehicle should be replaced with a used EV?
Plenty of people that can afford them and that would likely benefit are not buying them because of preference.
In many cases, this is rational. Yeah, a used Model 3 with a great rate plan is probably worth it as a commuter, but what if you are an outlier? Even a low battery failure rate can be a risk, and extended warranties are expensive.
But also, some of it is irrational, as the FB comments effectively feed many false fear driven narratives.
All the oil and gas is killing the planet. Even the gas fumes are killing you when you fill up. The sooner the better. There are lots of low cost EVs out there, especially when you factor in there’s no maintenance.
The maintenance factor seems to often be overlooked. The amount of time I've put into EV maintenance in the last decade is about the same as I've put into my two ICE cars, but I drive them 1/10th as much. It's really, really nice, and I don't think dealer service departments are ready for a massive switch to EV.
Mostly agree but own an EV. "No" maintenance is an exaggeration and it's not necessary to make your point.
My car's first set of tires were very bald at 25,000 miles. That's not unusual on new cars in general as they seem to come from the factory with low longevity tires, but it's still quite a short tire life.
Yes anything in a gasoline engine is gone, and brakes get less use.
But there are still maintenance items.
When discussing vehicles it’s common to separate “wear” items and “maintenance” items. Brake pads and tires are “wear” items. Replacing your engine oil every 5-7000 miles is “maintenance”.
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> How long do electric car batteries last?
The article never answers the question. But if you assume 70% end-of-life threshold with 2.3% loss per year - then we're looking at 13 years.
It’s great seeing the numbers continue to hold after a decent period of time.
We’ve noticed after 6 years out Tesla, the battery seems to charge slower than it used to, but otherwise all is well. I just love the convenience of charging at home, gas stations seem so odd and antiquated now.
Why is 70% a end of life threshold? Considering that most major models are sold with configurations where the entry level begins under 70% compared to the "Long Range" model, clearly 70% is a perfectly fine level of battery for some users.
I myself have a 11 year old Nissan Leaf with pretty significant battery degradation (the guessometer says 70 mi range but I wouldn't count on more than 35-40) and it's fine for probably 95% of my driving.
If I were to buy an electric car with 300-350 miles of range today, I could easily see myself finding a ton of value in it in 20 or even 30 years. It's still more range than my current one! Lol.
Battery degradation is non-linear, and when it reaches a certain point of degradation it can be become unstable. This has lead to 80% being the traditionally considered point for EOL of a Li-Ion pack. However, this is a rule of thumb and the data is evolving with the technology.
"When the battery degrades to a certain point, for instance, if a battery can only retain 80% of its initial capacity,9, 10, 11 the battery should be retired to ensure the safety and reliability of the battery-powered systems."
Xiaosong Hu, Le Xu, Xianke Lin, Michael Pecht, Battery Lifetime Prognostics, Joule, Volume 4, Issue 2, 2020, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511...
81% of original capacity for many cars means when driving at highway speeds you will get like 250 miles or less range per charge. Still dramatically less than gas cars.
While true, this either matters for you or it doesn’t. Classic Innovator’s Dilemma.
My EV gets only 230mi range at max, and I only charge to 85% which is like 190mi. But I do it at home and never have any range anxiety.
The trajectories for battery improvements indicate it is just a matter of time before those with larger range needs are addressed satisfactorily.
If you cannot slow charge at home or work, it’s a tough story, EV’s aren’t right for you yet, and that’s ok. Roll out of slow charging is less clear that it will be solved in a scaled way. I am not one that believes that 5-10m EV charging is a good goal, it’s very high power and likely not a good price trade off for the time saved. Current 20-30m will likely be the broad solution for those that want EV and cannot charge at home, though I think that’s not a very good solution.
While true, an important factor that I didn’t realize until I had one is if you charge at home you wake up with a full tank of”of gas” every day. So yes, you have to stop for a charge on exceptional trips but every other day you aren’t late for work because you need gas or have to stop on the way home. And it’s not just the time to pump, but to get to the station and wait perhaps (costco gas). Your car always “has gas” and all that time is returned to your life.
Sure but it's also more than enough for what many use their car for. Especially if you can charge at home.
People are so worried about the 1% of driving. 99% of the driving is in town, and in that case, it's super convenient. Yeah, you might have to stop an extra time on a road trip, so what? The car is also driving itself 99% of the trip. Plus, the kids have to pee.
If you have to drive 250 miles every day for work, or you don't have kids and can do 3 hour legs on trips without stopping, then get a gas car.
Oh no, it won’t do the thing drastically few Americans do ever and the rest do once a year at best. Meanwhile i go to bed and have a full tank of gas the next day for close to free.