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The greenest car in America isn't an EV

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The greenest car in America isn't an EV

#21

Post by fancyfredbot »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #18
fancyfredbot wrote: post #3

The less you drive an EV the harder it is to offset the embodied carbon involved in manufacturing it. There will be a point where, if you don't drive much, an EV emits more carbon than a internal combustion engine car. If you drive a bit more, the EV is more efficient than an ICE but less efficient than a hybrid with a smaller battery. If you drive a bit more the EV will be more efficient than either. The article pic…

I have unresolved questions surrounding this concept. I agree with you that for the X number of years that you own the vehicle, the less you drive the harder it is to offset the manufacturing-related carbon emitted. Once you are done with ownership, that vehicle is going to be owned by someone else, and probably at least one or two people after that. How do we account for that? Do we assume that all vehicles will be…

For a vehicle which has multiple owners it's easy - it's the average usage over all owners which will matter.

My first comment was about emissions over a fixed amount of time. You could instead assume all vehicles lasted for a fixed number of miles instead of a fixed amount of time. If you do that (and you assume the vehicle lasts say 100k miles) then I suspect the EV would always be the greenest over its life. However, since we know that both the age of a car as well as it's mileage influence how usable it is I think my main point still stands. There's a range of levels of greenness which will depend on how you use and maintain your car.

Re: The greenest car in America isn't an EV

#22

Post by marssaxman »

dsalzman wrote: post #8

During this energy transition phase more emphasis should be on PHEVs since 1. We have the infrastructure to build PHEVs faster than EVs. Since they are mostly modifications of current vehicles. 2. With the same amount of battery material to make 1 EV we can make ~10 PHEVs and adding that to the fact that most people drive less than 40 miles per day, the effective electric range of a typical PHEV, you are utilizing th…

While that's true now, I think the incentives were still a good idea, because nothing is cheap when it's being manufactured at low volume. Somebody had to stump up the cash to build the battery factories, and the tax breaks helped get that process started.

Re: The greenest car in America isn't an EV

#23

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #3

The less you drive an EV the harder it is to offset the embodied carbon involved in manufacturing it. There will be a point where, if you don't drive much, an EV emits more carbon than a internal combustion engine car. If you drive a bit more, the EV is more efficient than an ICE but less efficient than a hybrid with a smaller battery. If you drive a bit more the EV will be more efficient than either. The article pic…

we need a different word.

EV is more efficient than ICE and hybrids, that seems clear. but the context is day to day driving, not "Total Carbon Footprint" (TCF?).

Re: The greenest car in America isn't an EV

#24

Post by _yb2s »

I strongly suspect the most environmentally friendly car a person can drive nowadays is, ironically, the Volkswagen dieselgate scandal recall vehicles.

For example, a manual transmission 2015 VW Golf TDI gets an EPA rated 44mpg highway, and can run on renewable diesel (now available at most fuel stations in California) which has roughly only 1/4 the carbon footprint of petroleum diesel. With the VW post-recall fixes, it also has extremely low diesel soot and NOx emissions, like it was claiming to have before the scandal.

I suspect the total carbon footprint and emissions are much lower than EVs or plug-in hybrids. Now if only VW hadn't messed everything up, we'd probably have plug in hybrid diesels on the market that would beat everything else out.

That said, Aptera Motors is about to release a true practical solar car that requires neither power grid energy, or fuel... which will surely beat just about anything else.

Re: The greenest car in America isn't an EV

#25

Post by e2e8 »

vel0city wrote: post #14
audunw wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good points. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think the CO2 emissions associated with EVs matter at all. Is our goal for to cut emissions by 10%? No. It’s to cut emissions by 100%. To reach that goal, we need all vehicles to be pure BEVs (approximately.. some ICE on biofuels/e-fuel could work, but it’s not sustainable on a large scale), materials must be near 100% recycled, and whatever mining is done most be d…

> Is our goal for to cut emissions by 10%? No. It’s to cut emissions by 100%. I don't think most people would want to live in the world where you've cut emissions by 100% . Even making a bicycle emits some amount of emissions. Making a PV panel emits GHG emissions. Having a pet emits GHG emissions.

As the parent says, the goal is to have NET 0 emissions. Certainly some emissions will still occur but they need to be small enough to be offset by CO2 removal. Because it is almost always much easier to prevent emissions rather than remove CO2, preventing 100% emission from cars and their production is likely to be best path to NET 0.

Re: The greenest car in America isn't an EV

#26

Post by tshannon »

vel0city wrote: post #14
audunw wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good points. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think the CO2 emissions associated with EVs matter at all. Is our goal for to cut emissions by 10%? No. It’s to cut emissions by 100%. To reach that goal, we need all vehicles to be pure BEVs (approximately.. some ICE on biofuels/e-fuel could work, but it’s not sustainable on a large scale), materials must be near 100% recycled, and whatever mining is done most be d…

> Is our goal for to cut emissions by 10%? No. It’s to cut emissions by 100%. I don't think most people would want to live in the world where you've cut emissions by 100% . Even making a bicycle emits some amount of emissions. Making a PV panel emits GHG emissions. Having a pet emits GHG emissions.

Isn't the real goal negative emissions? We're well past safe levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Re: The greenest car in America isn't an EV

#27

Post by LUmBULtERA »

Aromasin wrote: post #16
LUmBULtERA wrote: post #12

Anyone know why they don't seem to have looked at Tesla at all? Weird to omit the largest EV seller in America by far.

They did. Have a look at the spreadsheet from the report. The Tesla Model 3 Long Range has a Green Score of 64. Not sure where they pulled the chart from in the NYT article, but it would still fall at 11; just off the list. The actual data if sorted by "Green Score" (tried to look up the scoring methodology but the website is down: https://greenercars.org/news/2024-methodology-update ) looks like this before you hit…

Thanks! Interesting. Yeah, when I clicked to look into what was going on it seemed the website was down for me too. Whatever the methodology, it must not have to be efficiency, because "2021 Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Plus RWD" tops everything according to Fueleconomy.gov. Makes me wonder how something like the BZ4X scored higher.

Re: The greenest car in America isn't an EV

#28

Post by fancyfredbot »

_yb2s wrote: post #24

I strongly suspect the most environmentally friendly car a person can drive nowadays is, ironically, the Volkswagen dieselgate scandal recall vehicles. For example, a manual transmission 2015 VW Golf TDI gets an EPA rated 44mpg highway, and can run on renewable diesel (now available at most fuel stations in California) which has roughly only 1/4 the carbon footprint of petroleum diesel. With the VW post-recall fixes,…

I don't think there's any reason to think those VW cars are the most environmentally friendly. There are diesel vehicles which get more than 44mpg highway (for example Chevy Cruz gets more than 50). They certainly are above average though

Re: The greenest car in America isn't an EV

#29

Post by _yb2s »

fancyfredbot wrote: post #28
_yb2s wrote: post #24

I strongly suspect the most environmentally friendly car a person can drive nowadays is, ironically, the Volkswagen dieselgate scandal recall vehicles. For example, a manual transmission 2015 VW Golf TDI gets an EPA rated 44mpg highway, and can run on renewable diesel (now available at most fuel stations in California) which has roughly only 1/4 the carbon footprint of petroleum diesel. With the VW post-recall fixes,…

I don't think there's any reason to think those VW cars are the most environmentally friendly. There are diesel vehicles which get more than 44mpg highway (for example Chevy Cruz gets more than 50). They certainly are above average though

I actually wasn't aware there were any other small economy diesel cars with modern emissions tech in the US market, not alone from a US company, but the same point would likely apply to the Cruz.

Other diesel cars I am aware of from BMW, Mercedes, and Jaguar are much bigger and less fuel efficient vehicles, or much older models with very poor emissions.

Re: The greenest car in America isn't an EV

#30

Post by vel0city »

e2e8 wrote: post #25
vel0city wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is our goal for to cut emissions by 10%? No. It’s to cut emissions by 100%. I don't think most people would want to live in the world where you've cut emissions by 100% . Even making a bicycle emits some amount of emissions. Making a PV panel emits GHG emissions. Having a pet emits GHG emissions.

As the parent says, the goal is to have NET 0 emissions. Certainly some emissions will still occur but they need to be small enough to be offset by CO2 removal. Because it is almost always much easier to prevent emissions rather than remove CO2, preventing 100% emission from cars and their production is likely to be best path to NET 0.

Cutting emissions by 100% and being net zero are two different things. Emitting a bunch of GHG and then buying carbon offsets is radically different from never actually emitting GHG. And the parent never says "net", it says cut emissions 100%. You're reading words that aren't there.

If you wanted to cut emissions 100%, you would stop making cars. You would stop making busses. You would stop building roads. You would stop building trains. You would ground every plane. You would stop every boat. You would no longer have AC, you would no longer have refrigerators.

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