Are Electric Vehicles Better or Worse for the Environment?
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Are Electric Vehicles Better or Worse for the Environment?
1–10 of 36 posts
Re: Are Electric Vehicles Better or Worse for the Environment?
#2Wrong question, the right one is: How to make 10 billion people live with decent life standards and comfort without destroying the planet?
Re: Are Electric Vehicles Better or Worse for the Environment?
#3I read those three reasons and see: weight, weight, and weight!
Of course a 9000lb hummer EV is going to require more raw materials and work to build, more energy to move down the road, and more effort to dispose of... But all that diminishes in favor of the EV if the EV is built less like a Decepticon land yacht and more like a minimalistic car.
Combustion cars have more of a static mass from the drivetrain they have to haul around with a pretty light gas tank (hence manufacturers have loaded them with luxury stuff without blowing up the drivetrain's mass), but EVs scale down very nicely because the battery dominates the car's weight. Its like the tyranny of the rocket equation: the more weight they carry, they more weight they need to carry that weight around, and so on.
Re: Are Electric Vehicles Better or Worse for the Environment?
#4Apart from anything else, it's great for the environment the EVs are operated in. I live in Ireland, and shittily maintained cars constantly spew awful pollution into the air around me as I walk around Dublin.
Re: Are Electric Vehicles Better or Worse for the Environment?
#5I copied this from a climatologist's twitter last year but can no longer find the source, I suspect they've deleted their account:
> All other things being identical, if an EV made from metals that were processed with green electricity only has one (1) order of magnitude less emissions than a petrol engined vehicle of the same size over the vehicle's lifetime, the equivalent EV where the metals were smelted with coal is one order of magnitude worse.
I don't know if the claim is correct but I hope the industry can do better than that.
Re: Are Electric Vehicles Better or Worse for the Environment?
#6Wrong question, the right one is: How to make 10 billion people live with decent life standards and comfort without destroying the planet?
The standards probably have to be really lowered...
If we believe this data[1], one would have to live like a resident of Sri Lanka, Jamaica or Myanmar so that 1 earth is enough per year (other countries are available).
Pessimistically, with the planet we currently have, not all 10 billion can live decently, and the minority who control the weapons would probably rather resort to violence rather than share things equally (just look at the borders of the EU and USA - and yeah even left-leaning governments are probably "helpless", they know if they let in too many refugees, they'll be voted out of office as soon as possible).
[1] https://www.overshootday.org/how-many-earths-or-countries-do...
Re: Are Electric Vehicles Better or Worse for the Environment?
#7Apart from anything else, it's great for the environment the EVs are operated in. I live in Ireland, and shittily maintained cars constantly spew awful pollution into the air around me as I walk around Dublin.
As someone whos lived in Dublin and a more car centric city like Barcelona the air in Dublin is hundreds of times cleaner than the air in Barcelona.
Re: Are Electric Vehicles Better or Worse for the Environment?
#8Apart from anything else, it's great for the environment the EVs are operated in. I live in Ireland, and shittily maintained cars constantly spew awful pollution into the air around me as I walk around Dublin.
As someone whos lived in Dublin and a more car centric city like Barcelona the air in Dublin is hundreds of times cleaner than the air in Barcelona.
Barcelona is a car-centric city? I guess it’s all relative.
Re: Are Electric Vehicles Better or Worse for the Environment?
#9[flagged]
Re: Are Electric Vehicles Better or Worse for the Environment?
#10I read those three reasons and see: weight, weight, and weight! Of course a 9000lb hummer EV is going to require more raw materials and work to build, more energy to move down the road, and more effort to dispose of... But all that diminishes in favor of the EV if the EV is built less like a Decepticon land yacht and more like a minimalistic car. Combustion cars have more of a static mass from the drivetrain they hav…
Fossil fuel lobbyists are really smart: for EV everyone is talking about weight and no one is talking about energy efficiency aka joule per distance.