Study Shows Which Vehicles Pollute the Least In Every US County (arstechnica.com) 186
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Greenhouse gas reduction is no longer a priority for the US government, but if you're looking for a new vehicle and want to buy something with the lowest life cycle carbon emissions, you're best off looking for a compact with a small battery. That's one of the findings from a group at the University of Michigan of a comprehensive study that calculates the overall cradle-to-grave carbon impact for different types of vehicles, including factors like powertrain options, location (within the country), and use patterns. Even better, they built a tool you can use yourself. The study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, compares internal combustion engine powertrains with hybrid, 35- and 50-mile range plug-in hybrids, and 200-mile, 300-mile, and 400-mile battery electric powertrains across compact and midsize sedans, small and midsize SUVs, and pickup trucks, using a life cycle assessment model developed by Argonne National Laboratory and data of model year 2025 vehicles from the Environmental Protection Agency. If you expected that a gas-powered pickup truck would have the biggest carbon footprint, you'd be right. With a driving profile of 43 percent city driving and the rest highways (no cargo), a pickup will emit about 486 g CO2e per mile. Compared to that, a compact electric sedan with a 200-mile battery has just 17 percent of the life cycle emissions and is responsible for just 81 g CO2e per mile.
A short-range electric pickup -- maybe that Slate that so many are salivating over -- is nearly as good, with a footprint that's only 25 percent the size of the gas pickup truck. On the other hand, hybrid powertrains (the kind that don't plug in) only reduce life cycle carbon compared to internal combustion alone by a modest amount -- between 11 and 13 percent, depending on the vehicle class. Plug-in hybrids with 35 miles of range can reduce emissions compared to plain combustion by 53-56 percent; with 50-mile batteries the reduction is 56-60 percent, assuming the PHEVs were driven in electric mode for 58 percent and 69 percent of the time, respectively. When it comes to BEVs, the smallest battery pack always has the least environmental impact. BEV powertrains with 400 miles of range have lifecycle emissions that are 67-69 percent lower than an ICE powertrain in the same vehicle. For 300-mile BEVs, this is an 81-83 percent reduction. A 200-mile BEV can be expected to contribute just 25-26 percent as much CO2e as an equivalent gas-burning vehicle would.
That's not because EVs with big batteries are inefficient -- far from it -- but because making a battery for an EV is a very energy-intensive process. Most emissions from internal combustion engine (92 percent) and hybrid (89 percent) vehicles come from their use on the roads. But this changes once you start adding significant kWh-worth of battery. For PHEVs, the use phase is more like 73-80 percent, and for BEVs, it's just 48-60 percent, depending on the size of the batteries. The researchers also modeled different driving behaviors, including the use cases of someone who uses their vehicle just to commute and run errands; the "occasional road-tripper," most of whose needs are met by a small battery; and a contractor or someone else who has to drive a lot for work, with varying amounts of cargo onboard. As we've known for some time, where you get your energy from affects how clean your EV will be, and switching from gasoline to an EV has more of an impact in Seattle (which relies on hydropower) versus Cincinnati (where the electricity comes from burning coal), for both PHEVs and BEVs.
A short-range electric pickup -- maybe that Slate that so many are salivating over -- is nearly as good, with a footprint that's only 25 percent the size of the gas pickup truck. On the other hand, hybrid powertrains (the kind that don't plug in) only reduce life cycle carbon compared to internal combustion alone by a modest amount -- between 11 and 13 percent, depending on the vehicle class. Plug-in hybrids with 35 miles of range can reduce emissions compared to plain combustion by 53-56 percent; with 50-mile batteries the reduction is 56-60 percent, assuming the PHEVs were driven in electric mode for 58 percent and 69 percent of the time, respectively. When it comes to BEVs, the smallest battery pack always has the least environmental impact. BEV powertrains with 400 miles of range have lifecycle emissions that are 67-69 percent lower than an ICE powertrain in the same vehicle. For 300-mile BEVs, this is an 81-83 percent reduction. A 200-mile BEV can be expected to contribute just 25-26 percent as much CO2e as an equivalent gas-burning vehicle would.
That's not because EVs with big batteries are inefficient -- far from it -- but because making a battery for an EV is a very energy-intensive process. Most emissions from internal combustion engine (92 percent) and hybrid (89 percent) vehicles come from their use on the roads. But this changes once you start adding significant kWh-worth of battery. For PHEVs, the use phase is more like 73-80 percent, and for BEVs, it's just 48-60 percent, depending on the size of the batteries. The researchers also modeled different driving behaviors, including the use cases of someone who uses their vehicle just to commute and run errands; the "occasional road-tripper," most of whose needs are met by a small battery; and a contractor or someone else who has to drive a lot for work, with varying amounts of cargo onboard. As we've known for some time, where you get your energy from affects how clean your EV will be, and switching from gasoline to an EV has more of an impact in Seattle (which relies on hydropower) versus Cincinnati (where the electricity comes from burning coal), for both PHEVs and BEVs.
But Fox News told me that... (Score:5, Funny)
But Fox News told me that my Hummer is more environmentally friendly than my neighbor's Prius, and that his new Tesla is the most environmentally destructive vehicle ever. Cobalt in Africa!
Waiting for somebody to say that the greatest source of automotive emissions is the tires.
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Waiting for someone to explain that ACTUALLY mining is not the same thing as 1970s hippies playing drums in a park, because if you're not into drinking raw petroleum with every meal you must necessarily be opposed to people living in houses and the use of electricity.
Waiting for them to never respond when someone asks why they want to force us all to buy coal when we could just buy solar panels and batteries.
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I don't understand why I can't walk to work, walk to buy fresh vegetables after work and walk home to cook a good meal - or walk to a good restaurant.
That was basically Walt's vision for EPCOT. Kind of hilarious to imagine if it had really turned out like that and people actually were living at Disney. Of course, what actually got built was a science-y educational park that ultimately turned into yet another movie IP theme park with relatively decent (albeit overpriced) booze and snackadoos.
Rsilvergun frequently brings up the whole walkable cities thing every time he gets the chance, too. The problem is, it's not the end-all-be-all solution for everyo
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I don't think it was ever supposed to be for everyone... The idea that someone would try to turn every rural center into a suburbanite caricature features a lot in these kinds of complaints, and it's really several levels of contrivance. Nobody is going to force a farmer to drink a latte and do all the farming on an electric scooter.
The 15 minute city thing is supposed to be intended for dealing with extremely dense population centers that people expect to get more dense, and primarily in Europe... not even
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That was basically Walt's vision for EPCOT.
No, it's called "Europe".
I live in London, so it's a little big for that dream precisely, so I bike to work. I can walk to buy fresh vegetables and I can walk to good restaurants.
Rsilvergun frequently brings up the whole walkable cities thing every time he gets the chance, too. The problem is, it's not the end-all-be-all solution for everyone.
They're the solution for many people.
Some of us really do want some space between us and our neighbors, and if you haven't l
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You're trying to tell someone who lives in a way you say is bad that he doesn't get it. Also, I don't live in an apartment.
Thing is, affordable high density housing in the US tends to be those apartments with paper-thin walls. That's a tough sell to people who don't want to live like that, and it's what gets built without fail when the rent-seekers have the ear of the city planning commission.
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The US is a VERY large country.....there are already cities very much like how YOU want....but, thankfully, there is enough land here to have it all. If you want to live urban, have at it...if you want to live suburban, you are more than welcome and hey, you can live rural too if you wish.
There is no need to try to fit everyone into YOUR vision of Utopia.
At least it isn't in the USA. You have
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The US is a VERY large country.
Ah this old canard. Basically, no. Here's a video by a Canadian (Canada is bigger than the contiguous 48) about why that's a bad excuse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
You have fully choice here how you want to live
You don't because you have passed laws almost everywhere that prevent it.
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The space with neighbours thing is something we could really do with though. Terraces and semis are a terrible idea.
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I'm all for mixed types of dwelling. Just not crap ones.
Part of the problem is that the design of the standard British terrace is bad, and they are built as cheaply as possible in many cases. There is no way to solve the quality issue because it's Britain and houses are already too expensive, so other measures are required.
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What I mean is that the way to fix quality is to build houses at a factory and assemble them on-site. It's hard to screw up a shower room if most if it comes as a pre-assembled fibreglass insert of a standard size, only requiring the standard fittings to be added.
You can do it with terraces and semis, but it works far better with detached buildings.
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You can do it with terraces and semis, but it works far better with detached buildings.
Isn't that how Ibis hotels are made? Those are towerblocks, and I've seen them craning in what I thought was prefab bathroom units.
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Maybe, I don't know. They do it like that in Japan, and it's very convenient. If you want to DIY anything it's all standard sizes and fittings. If you want to refresh a room it's much easier and cheaper.
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Many of us understand this very well. But the solutions to these issues of poverty are structural, political and profound. Decent and affordable public transport that runs 24/7, for example, is an enormous leveller-up for people living in poverty.
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Cheap energy is probably the biggest thing that lowers poverty.
Citation needed. If you are just looking at graphs of income level as a function of energy use, you have correlation and causation backwards: people with more money use more energy. Because they have more money. More affluent people also buy more teddy bears, but nobody concludes that access to teddy bears lowers poverty.
Public transit that's too expensive to take,
Indeed: this is your argument for increasing public subsidy for public transportation: it reduces poverty. In particular, it decreases poverty because it allows people who can't afford a ca
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You are conflating what you would like to believe to be true with what is actually true. Cheap energy is a second-order factor. It’s important, but nowhere near as important as education, healthcare, employment, or cash transfers.
In developed economies, public transport is never too expensive to take because of high energy costs, and rides don’t take two hours due to high energy costs. Those bad outcomes are the result of political choices to prioritise private transport at the expense of public
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In developed economies, public transport is never too expensive to take because of high energy costs, and rides don’t take two hours due to high energy costs. Those bad outcomes are the result of political choices to prioritise private transport at the expense of public transport.
In the US, bus rides take far more time than driving because of the very frequent stops. Where I live, many urban bus lines stop every two blocks, suggesting that there's some underlying requirement that a passenger need not walk more than a block to the bus, which I find to be an absurdly low bar. Frequent stops not only make the bus ride take longer, they shatter any hope of the vehicle being efficient, importantly including the metric of particulate emissions from brakes and tires.
The subway, where I l
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This is one great example of what I meant when I said the issues are structural, political and profound. The reason there’s so many bus stops in the US along routes is for the exact reason you say: to ensure passengers don’t have to walk too far. But the reason behind that is what matters: it’s because walking is relatively dangerous in the US, because street design is vehicle-centric and hostile for pedestrians. And fixing that is hard.
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I thankfully don't live in America
But as a resident of a former coal producing nation, and now one of the major natural gas exploiters... I'd say that energy companies should at least consider paying taxes. Apropos of nothing.
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I think I'd prefer industrial coal to be used for industrial processes where it can make permanent state changes to total energy production capacity, instead of having it expended as fuel. It probably wont make it cheaper to produce or obtain, but it will make the total energy production larger for the same volume of energy expended.
I think when endorsing fission you should consider the lead time and the cleanup costs.
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Who are you talking to...?
Re:Confused (Re:But Fox News told me that...) (Score:4)
Re:But Fox News told me that... (Score:4, Funny)
Waiting for somebody to say that the greatest source of automotive emissions is the tires.
That's why I took off the tires and just drive on the rims everywhere.
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That's why I took off the tires and just drive on the rims everywhere.
I think I saw you on a Russian dashcam video once.
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Then the emissions come from the fires you start.
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Some people are just never satisfied!
Re: But Fox News told me that... (Score:2)
When did Fox News say that?
Re: But Fox News told me that... (Score:4)
Permanently befuddled face and Russian shill Tucker Carlson made the claim on Fox News as recently as 2022.
https://www.foxnews.com/video/... [foxnews.com]
By 2022 there wasn't any excuse for not knowing that his claims were bullshit.
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Not any more. He did back in 2022.
Remind me, wasn't he fired over sexual misconduct?
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Cobalt in Africa!
Is that Toto's lesser known song?
Re: But Fox News told me that... (Score:2)
Striking workers, protestors, and immigrants are the main causes of greenhouse gas according to latest government research.
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I can hear the tapping of keyboards already on how synthesized hydrocarbons are just an excuse for something something, or how they are never truly carbon neutral.
You've been told this before, but for whatever reason you've chosen to ignore it: synthetic fuels are not economically viable. The energy it takes to produce them could simply be sold directly as electricity, which can power BEVs, through existing electrical infrastructure, without any need to first convert it into a fuel and then truck it to its destination.
This isn't cryptocurrency or AI where you can just waste a bunch of electricity and the costs are externalized to where someone else foots the bill.
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but for whatever reason you've chosen to ignore it
The reason is that if they worked, synfuels would make nuclear make more sense, and he's a nuclear fanboy.
The counterargument to saying synfuels require all that stuff so they are bad, and let me make it clear up front that I do not believe it is a reasonable argument, is that for the electricity to run the car you have to make the expensive batteries. But they are still preferable now and they are continuing to get cheaper and easier to make, so of course that's not a valid argument.
Re:Economics (Re:But Fox News told me that...) (Score:5, Informative)
I believe you've been told this before, there's no viable means to power a transoceanic jet or a rocket to orbit with batteries.
Just because there's a need for something doesn't mean the market will magically find a way to produce it affordably. For example, look at housing prices.
We'd likely see the energy come from heat and steam, skipping over the conversion losses in using the steam to spin a turbine to get electricity.
Let's say you have a source of heat or steam and are looking for the most profitable way to turn it into something marketable. Time for some numbers:
The average price of a gallon of gasoline is approximately $3.16 per gallon, and a gallon of gasoline contains the equivalent energy of 33.7 kilowatt-hours, that makes its retail value roughly $0.094 per kWh. So, you could sell your heat/steam energy source for that, or... go ahead and look up the current average of retail electrical prices in the USA - I'll wait.
If synthetic fuels were profitable, there'd be companies churning 'em out by the barrel right now. Presently, you have to sell them at a loss compared to what you could make just generating electricity instead and just selling that. It's a scheme that will only work once fossil fuels become prohibitively expensive, and in the end it will still just be cheaper to drive a BEV instead. Because why would you even want a vehicle that wastes a little over half of its really expensive fuel as waste heat?
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I believe you've been told this before, there's no viable means to power a transoceanic jet or a rocket to orbit with batteries.
If you commute to work and fetch groceries regularly via "a transoceanic jet or a rocket to orbit" you are an extreme outlier.
This article/study/discussion is about normal everyday use for most people. Your attempts to introduce a red herring are laughable.
Re:But Fox News told me that... (Score:5, Informative)
Is the Hummer getting fueled up on carbon neutral fuel? Is the Prius burning petroleum based fuel and never plugged in for a charge? Or plugged in regularly but the electricity comes from burning coal? It's details like that which is the point of the exercise shown in the fine article.
Carbon neutral fuels are, at best, EVs with extra steps and much lower efficiency every step of the way. Even on coal plants, which are pretty hard to come by in the US these days because coal is such a shitty fuel, EVs are still more efficient.
I'd like more news stories that give data on how to reduce CO2 emissions than stories that just make everyone feel bad about the CO2 they emit. I prefer solutions than another restatement of the problem. This is a website that is supposed to appeal to the engineering type of person, the problem solvers than people that like to philosophize about a problem. To that end, could we have more stories on carbon neutral synthesized fuels?
Eat less meat. Drive a more efficient car. Put some insulation in your house. You need articles on these things?
I've started to see adverts on YouTube about how some petroleum company or another is investing in carbon neutral fuel. I can hear the tapping of keyboards already on how synthesized hydrocarbons are just an excuse for something something, or how they are never truly carbon neutral. Electric vehicles aren't carbon neutral either, even in the best case, but we can get it close enough to zero that it's no longer worth counting. The same applies to carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuel, we can get it close enough to zero there's no point in counting. The goal never was to get to absolutely no CO2 emissions, that's impossible. The goal is to get it close enough to zero that the natural carbon cycle can maintain equilibrium.
Carbon neutral fuels are an excuse for oil companies to remain the middlemen of energy. They're so fucking stupid, it hurts the brain. They're for internal combustion fetishists, and that is all.
I'm pretty sure that cobalt mining in Africa is a problem. Why mock that?
Because the history of dangerous mining and slavery in Africa is long and started long before EVs. If there were no EVs, it would still be going on, though perhaps less for cobalt. It's a stupid fucking complaint because it's not actually the fault of EVs. It's the fault of how shitty Africa is.
I'd guess such matters would be a concern based on the nature of the emissions. CO2 isn't a problem when taking any individual vehicle into account, the poison is in the dose and while CO2 adds to global warming and local air quality this is not likely a problem so long as we keep children from vehicle exhaust pipes. Brake dust and tire dust is a source of small particles that apparently cause some health issues, and heavy battery-electric vehicles produce plenty of both by the very nature of their mass.
I'm not hating on BEVs. I believe most any multiple vehicle household would be served well with at least one BEV. I'm simply not dismissing concerns that BEVs produce like conflict minerals and particulate matter. If we are to give a fair comparison on BEV vs. ICEV then we should take into account the best and worst scenarios than simply assume nothing can or will change on where we get our fuel. Carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuels are a thing, and there's been experiments out of the US Navy showing it is possible to make carbon neutral fuels that are a one-for-one replacement of the petroleum based fuels we burn today at a competitive price. The US Navy isn't alone in looking how to make this affordable and scaled to industrial levels.
This is again just a bunch of bullshit. Nobody complained about tire particulates until EVs came to town. Then it became comparing A 5000 lbs EV to a 3500 lbs sedan for tire particulates, even as most Americans drive around in 5000 lbs pickups. Live in reality for once.
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Less efficient in terms of converting a square meter of sunlight into kinetic energy? Show your work. Remember, fossil fuels all got their energy from photosynthesis, so you have to factor that into your calculations.
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How are transatlantic flights or rockets of any relevance to the fuel used in land-driven transportation? They are not even using the same fuel.
The claim was that carbon neutral fuels are just EVs with extra steps, that the only reason to use them is to keep "Big Oil" in business. Maye the exact words "Big Oil" weren't used but that is clearly the explanation.
The claim was that synthesized fuels are just EVs with an extra step. That's clearly not true and demonstrates ignorance on how there's more than one way to make the fuel. Maybe it's not the same fuel but it's close enough for the point. We could run trucks on the same fuel as that used fo
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The claim was that synthesized fuels are just EVs with an extra step. That's clearly not true and demonstrates ignorance on how there's more than one way to make the fuel. Maybe it's not the same fuel but it's close enough for the point. We could run trucks on the same fuel as that used for airplanes and rockets, the US military does exactly that. They standardized on kerosene type fuels for everything, and it works well for them.
But there is no point in doing that beside wasting energy. Which is the point raised in the thread above. Yes, military, aviation and space will likely require chemical fuels for a long time to go, but that's because their requirements are fundamentally different to regular road traffic. If you are unwilling to accept that, there is no point in further discussion.
There's been attempts to replace these diesel trucks with electric variants but that's not working out well. A typical diesel long haul truck might have tanks for 200 gallons of diesel fuel. This would be something like 1400 pounds of fuel and (coincidentally) give the truck about 1400 miles of range. The Tesla Semi would instead have a reported 6 ton battery pack that could get it to move 500 miles on a single charge. See a problem yet?
It's funny because we see exactly that in Europe -- regular diesel trucks slowly getting replaced by battery driven trucks. Why? Because there is
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But there is no point in doing that beside wasting energy. Which is the point raised in the thread above.
There's no point in lowering CO2 emissions for aircraft? I'm thinking too many people lost the script. The point of this all is to get rid of fossil fuels, not make every vehicle battery-electric. Converting to battery-electric is one option of many, we don't have to use the same solution for every case.
Yes, military, aviation and space will likely require chemical fuels for a long time to go, but that's because their requirements are fundamentally different to regular road traffic. If you are unwilling to accept that, there is no point in further discussion.
There isn't anything "fundamentally" different about military vehicles compared to civilian vehicles. They face nearly all the same problems. This is why there's been so much interest in the US Navy syn
Re:But Fox News told me that... (Score:4, Informative)
Brake dust and tire dust is a source of small particles that apparently cause some health issues, and heavy battery-electric vehicles produce plenty of both by the very nature of their mass.
Just to clarify this specific point. EVs generally produce a lot less brake dust because of regenerative braking. Most numbers say about 1/5 the wear.
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Brake dust and tire dust is a source of small particles that apparently cause some health issues, and heavy battery-electric vehicles produce plenty of both by the very nature of their mass.
Just to clarify this specific point. EVs generally produce a lot less brake dust because of regenerative braking. Most numbers say about 1/5 the wear.
To further clarify, the F150 (most popular vehicle in usa) and the model 3 both weigh about 4000 - 4200 lbs.
Re:But Fox News told me that... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, of course they do, you giant prick, and it would have taken you literally seconds to find this out. There is not a thing you could think of that they haven't taken into account. There's more than 100 pathways accounted for in the model, from feedstock to fuel. Every stage of the lifecycle is considered, otherwise it wouldn't be an LCOA, from raw material recovery (that's the mining you're oh-so-worried about despite not considering the orders of magnitude larger amounts of mining needed for fossil fuel cars) to vehicle disposal.
https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites... [itf-oecd.org]
You're busy complaining about a completely imaginary problem.
Second use and recycling (Score:2)
I'm sure that this study is directionally correct, but it's frustrating that Argonne don't make the core assumptions more readily available. It looks like you have a register as a user and dig your way through an Excel to get to them. In particular, for the BEVs, I'd like to know if the assumptions for secondary use, the expected lifetime of the battery in both primary and secondary usages, and how they included recycling in the analysis. For secondary use and recycling, what I'd like to know is how they've
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I had a look. I don’t think that’s the GREET analysis, is it? That paper discusses the LCA GHG emissions of recycling, but there’s several other key assumptions such as post-recycling usage, and it doesn’t show them, and I’m curious to know if GREET models them.
Here’s what I mean: let’s say total LCA GHG emissions including recycling emissions are 17.5 tons. The GREET analysis that this paper talks about translates that figure to a grams of CO2e per mile figure. But
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Yes, the point about production costs for EVs being the most significant element is well-taken. But you and I and many others on here know that as a baseline, despite the large number of idiots. I’m keen to get to the next level of detail, and also Honestly, for me, in answering your previous point, I had this giant revelatory moment when I started to think harder about the carbon intensity implications of re-use and recycling for traction batteries. The combination of decadal timescales, continued re
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Yes, and the cost is also reducing each year.
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Almost 4 tonnes of CO2 are released during the production process of a single electric car and, in order to break even, the vehicle must be used for at least 8 years to offset the initial emissions by 0.5 tonnes of prevented emissions annually. https://earth.org/environmenta... [earth.org]
Out the door, tonnes CO2e https://earth.org/wp-content/u... [earth.org]
5.6 ICE
6.5 hybrid
8.8 EV
How long will the battery last? If its 7 years, the EV never came out ahead.
This study came up with a lot closer figures, but used 150k KM as a lifetime. ICE should last more than double that.
(tonnes CO2e)
ICE 24
Hybrid 21
Plug in hybrid 19
EV 19
Based upon a 2015 vehicle in use for 150k KM using 10% ethanol blend and 500g/KWH grid electricity. https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
It would be nice to see the full s
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I know what the study was trying to do. Agree I’d like to see the numbers. If you’ve found a study showing the carbon payback period for an EV vs an ICE purchase is 7 years, you can safely ignore that. In the UK and across Europe, we’re down to 11k miles or 16 months.
Both an EV and ICE vehicle will last way longer than 150k km.
Not enough variables (Score:2)
Would be nice if they let you change the lifetime presets. 191,000 miles over 14 years? That's not my driving behaviour, so the whole thing is irrelevant to me.
Presumably they don't want it to ever show an ICE is cleaner than an EV.
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Why the fuck would mileage matter much for the calculations? You think that your 7000 lbs dually diesel truck is going to be better for the environment than a Model 3 because you only drive 2k miles a year?
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Because vehicle production and disposal is part of the calculation.
The number I quoted before was for a sedan.
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"Why the fuck would mileage matter much for the calculations?"
Emitted particulate caused by vehicle degradation over time, more specifically tires, bushings, hoses and wiring, etc.
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Presumably they don't want it to ever show an ICE is cleaner than an EV.
I can think of one example, but we're talking a truly Apples-to-Oranges comparison: the Toyota Camry Hybrid versus a Hummer EV (one of the least efficient EVs on the market). Other than that, the efficiency gap between what's still considered an ICE vehicle and most EVs, is rather wide.
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Even then it's a factor of scrapping mileage. Eventually the Hummer will pay back it's carbon cost and overtake the Camry. The exception to this is if you drive the Hummer of a bridge and write it off before it gets to that point.
OP missed that fact. People don't scrap cars based on time, they may sell cars to a next owner, but cars typically get scrapped when they fail and that is based on miles. Even if you barely drive your EV, over the life of that EV's existence it will still be better than if you boug
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You have to not only write off the Hummer, but write off all the materials in the traction battery such that they can’t be reused or recycled. That’s quite hard to do!
Re: Not enough variables (Score:2)
If the line doesn't intersect before the average ownership of a car, then it isn't really a win.
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Presumably they don't want it to ever show an ICE is cleaner than an EV.
Presumably you're looking for a scenario where this is a real thing, the reality is it's not. Even if you don't drive 191000 miles over 14 years, your car lasts a certain number of miles before it gets invariably scrapped. That means if you keep your EV for 10 years and only put 1000 miles on it, it doesn't matter, the next driver will drive it through its carbon payback period.
The only scenario where an ICE is cleaner than an EV is if the EV is completely written off in an accident before it's payback peri
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Under what circumstances would an ICE be cleaner than an EV? What change to mileage or lifetime would make that happen? Bear in mind that the calculation already does not account fully for second use (eg stationary applications) or post-recycling re-use of the traction battery materials (eg in a second or subsequent EV). All of those would hugely cut the relative carbon intensity of the EV from the study’s baseline
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Would be nice if they let you change the lifetime presets. 191,000 miles over 14 years? That's not my driving behaviour, so the whole thing is irrelevant to me.
If you drive more then ICE emissions will be even higher but unless you drive a new vehicle for less than one year before having it crushed (not sold) then an EV is always going to be the cleaner vehicle. That is not an exaggeration.
Take a look at the graph b (emissions excluding fuel) and graph b (emissions including fuel) on page S21: https://ndownloader.figstatic.... [figstatic.com]
It will show you how much ICE cars emit from merely being used.
University of Michigan? (Score:2)
Does Michigan still have a university, or rather now that they published this, will Michigan still have a university tomorrow?
Who want so start a countdown timer for when they just lose their government support for publishing woke fake car news that contradicts big beautiful bigly oil?
Re: University of Michigan? (Score:2)
Ann Arbor is a liberal city, so we can expect a few ICE raids to adjust their attitude
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Internal Combustion Engine raids. We're a couple of decades off from that I hope.
They can have my ICE when there's national charging infrastructure built.
Will still keep my gas-powered pickup truck.... (Score:2)
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Lacks variables beyond personal use. Useful? (Score:2)
Speaking as an American here.
I have questions. The calculator feels like a massive oversimplification, even if the model is complex. For instance, does it take into account how the electricity is generated? We're very proud of EVs "tailpipe emissions" but all we're really doing is concentrating the pollution at fossil power generation sites rn. Not good for the people living there, and have there been studies about concentrated carbon emissions?
An EV running entirely on coal produced electricity can't have
Love the "but the environmental cost of batteries (Score:2)
Really? And how does it play out when we KEEP our vehicles (like my PHEV minivan) for 10-15 years?
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Also buses. And if course bikes.
and e-scooters, until some people started tossing them into lakes and trees for reasons.
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And trams. I love trams, I wish we had more of them.
Looks like there's a mod war on, currently you're at +2 Troll for pointing out that despite saying "vehicles" the "least polluting vehicles" are limited to only the least polluting of the most polluting subset of vehicles.
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You forgot my 2009 Mazda MX-9 that guzzles 14.5l per 100km in that list... Or weren't you upholding me as an example to follow? ;)
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You are a fucking idiotic troll.
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Wait, are you commenting as a coward so you can mod here and comment?
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Electric cars if anything are going to make smog worse.
Let me guess, you read that in the scientific journal called The Daily Mail?
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Sweet vs. sour, light vs. heavy (Score:2)
The refineries in the USA were built to process "sour" crude, the kind with a high sulfur content. The kind of oil out of Alaska is "sweet" crude, the kind with low sulfur content. They can process that crude just fine in the USA. Where problems happen with processing crude is trying to put sour crude in refineries built only for sweet crude.
There's also "heavy" and "light" crude as a way to make a distinction on types of crude. The USA refineries can process heavy crude just fine, the problem is puttin
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Cobalt's accounted for in Greet, along with every other material you can find in the car, you dumbass
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The most popular battery chemistry today is LFP, and it doesn't use cobalt.
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Yes, a real problem with LFP batteries that ... don't use any cobalt. While your ICE vehicles do. As does the device you typed this on. You stupid hypocritical cock.
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Why would they? A compact EV is going to be lighter than everything besides a compact ICE car, and the weight difference between those two is immaterial from a tyre wear perspective. A 2.5 ton pickup is going to go through tyres much faster than a compact, whether it's an ICE weighing 1.2 tons or an EV weighing 1.5tons.
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I drive like a full fucking bat out of hell on some of the hardest mountain desert terrain out there, often with a full load of said mountain both inside and attached to my vehicle (trailer.) I do not go through tires nearly as fast as an EV.
Oh, and most EV drivers do drive like idiots. Bolts, Teslas, i-drives, etc. Almost all of them appear clueless as to even the location of their turn signals.
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Excuse me? I thought the fact they they are fast was a good thing, now we can't drive fast?
Sure, you can drive it fast, but there is nothing magical about EVs that make them eat tires in particular. It's just that any heavy high performance RWD car with lots of low end torque is gonna chew through tires if you avail yourself of its full performance envelope at every opportunity. It's just that BEVs have brought the performance of muscle cars down into the daily runabout sedan. Hence, don't drive like an idiot and you won't cycle through so many tires. Or do: it's your money.
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1. Fires and tires are different things, you dumb shit.
2. You are too stupid to do the basic research that would have enabled you to find out that, yes, ducky, Greet's modelling accounts for non-exhaust emissions including tire particulates, because the modellers who built it, unlike you, are not complete idiots and they've built a comprehensive model. Try looking again.
3. If you're going to whine about things that you presume aren't included but actually are, which you think biases the study against ICE ve