If you’ve ever been unfortunate enough to be trapped in a tedious argument about whether or not electric vehicles are genuinely, holistically, and completely better for the environment, then I suppose I either have good news or bad news for you, depending on which side you were arguing on.
The basic question has always been this: are EVs actually better for the environment, even in areas where electricity comes from some decidedly non-environmentally-friendly sources like coal? Are EV drivers, as they can be accused of in these debates, actually driving coal-powered cars, just with more steps? Or are EVs actually as good as they purport to be, and, even when factoring in the environmental tolls of sourcing their battery chemicals and rare earth elements and all that, still better, cumulatively?
The question seems to have at least a bit more of an answer now, as a study published in Environmental Science & Technology’s annual Swimsuit Issue (I’m kidding, they do that bi-monthly) titled Greenhouse Gas Reductions Driven by Vehicle Electrification across Powertrains, Classes, Locations, and Use Patterns, which is a study that, significantly, created a full womb-to-tomb life-cycle model for light duty vehicles (LDV, which I have to admit, is an initialism I’ve never used before, nor wish to use) including cars of varying sizes and body styles and pickups. The model looked at data that factored in a lot of use case variables, like location, climate variations (both seasonal and regional), charging patterns for the EVs, driver types based on usage (commuting, road trips, hauling up to 2,500 pounds of whatever), and so on, all to get as nuanced and complete a view of just how much greenhouse gas emissions these vehicles produced.
Here’s the abstract of the study, from the authors, who let’s shout out right now: Elizabeth Smith, Maxwell Woody, Timothy J. Wallington, Christian Hitt, Hyung Chul Kim, Alan I. Taub, and Gregory A. Keoleian.
“We assess the cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of current (2025) light-duty vehicles (LDV) across powertrains, vehicle classes, and locations. We create driver archetypes (commuters, occasional long-distance travelers, contractors), simulate different use patterns (drive cycles, utility factors, cargo loads) and characterize GHG emissions using an attributional approach. Driven by grid decarbonization and improved electric vehicle efficiency, we are first to report electric vehicles have lower GHG emissions than gasoline vehicles in every county across the contiguous United States. On average, a 300-mile range battery electric vehicle (BEV) has emissions which are 31–36% lower than a 50-mile range plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), 63–65% lower than a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV), and 71–73% lower than an internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV). Downsizing also reduces emissions, with a compact ICEV having 34% lower emissions than an ICEV pickup. We present the first evaluation of LDV emissions while hauling cargo, showing that carrying 2500 lbs. in a pickup increases BEV emissions by 13% (134 to 152 g CO2e/mile) compared to 22% (486 to 592 g CO2e/mile) for an ICEV. Emissions maps and vehicle powertrain/class matrices highlight the interplay between vehicle classes, powertrains, locations, and use patterns, and provide insights for consumers, manufacturers, and policymakers.”
In case you’re one of those strange people who doesn’t want to slog through every published study they encounter on the internet, I’ll try to hit some of the big highlights for you here, so, you know, spoiler alert. Here’s the big one:
Battery electric vehicles have significantly and consistently less output of greenhouse gas emissions than combustion vehicles or hybrid vehicles (even plug-in ones), even in locations where the electricity comes from filthy, filthy coal. On a county-by-county basis in America, battery-powered EVs outperformed combustion vehicles in every single county. All of them.
If we break this down into percentages, we find that BEVs – they specify the average here are ones that have at least a 300 mile range, which definitely isn’t all EVs, though testing factored in 200, 300, and 400-mile range cars – produced 31 to 36% fewer greenhouse emissions than even a plug-in hybrid car, 63 to 65% fewer (I want to say less here so badly) than a conventional hybrid, and a staggering 71 to 73% less than a gasoline-powered combustion car.
The study also notes that smaller combustion cars produce fewer emissions (duh, and 34% less), towing or hauling 2,500 pounds produces more emissions (duh again, 13% more for EVs, 22% more for combustion cars), and while none of these results are exactly shocking, it’s notable to see them so well-supported as in this study.
When it comes to materials, especially battery materials for EVs, and manufacturing emissions, the study used a specific model, which you can learn more about here. Battery replacements were not factored in:
“Vehicle cycle emissions (materials, manufacturing, and endof-life) are calculated using the GREET 2023 model from Argonne National Laboratory. We modified battery size and curb weight for each of the corresponding Car, SUV and Pickup options using vehicle parameters for model year 2025 (SI Note 2). Vehicle cycle emissions include production of components and fluids over the vehicle lifetime along with assembly and disposal of the vehicle. We do not include Li-ion battery replacements during the vehicle lifetime. The latest data shows that for new models, batteries tend to outlast the vehicle’s useful life. We assumed a battery chemistry of NMC811 for BEV, PHEV, and HEV as an example of a high nickel chemistry, the most common chemistry in the current U.S. EV market. For completeness, the impact of assuming NMC111, NMC622, or LFP battery chemistry is also explored and discussed in SI Note 7. The total emissions for vehicles with these other battery chemistries differ by less than 2.5% from those with NMC811.”
There’s a lot of other interesting details in the study; for example, their “use phase” calculations, which give their lifetime mileage estimates for different vehicle classes: sedans are considered to have a lifespan of 191,386 miles (that feels low to me?), SUVs last for 211,197 miles, and trucks at 244,179 miles. I’m not entirely clear how those estimates were calculated, but it’s interesting to see that the baseline amount of lifetime miles for a car has effectively doubled from the roughly 100,000-mile number that seemed to be the accepted standard of the past.
Here’s the equations used for calculating emissions for those lifetime miles, for combustion cars/hybrids and for BEVs:
Look at that, there’s a big sigma there! That’s some real math going on!
The study didn’t go into anything like ease of charging or frequency or made any assessments about the national charging network, or anything like that. It was undertaken just to get an answer to the question of what sort of vehicle drivetrain produces the fewest greenhouse emissions, and, even after factoring in manufacturing, transport, materials, and where and how electricity is produced, it does appear that battery electric vehicles don’t just produce less emissions at their non-existent tailpipes, but also across the board.
I know bringing up coal plants was a satisfying way to get impossibly smug EV-advocates to maybe shut up for five glorious minutes during an argument, but it looks like we’re all going to just have to let that one go. EVs produce fewer emissions, period, across the board. I think if this knowledge is making you feel uncomfortable in some way, perhaps it’s best to just avoid these sorts of tedious debates.
I know that’s what I’m going to do.
Top photo:
As it turns out, it is still better for the environment to turn coal into electricity in a giant plant where you can appropriately deal with the emissions than it is to burn gasoline inside a car where you have, at most, 15 feet of pipe to deal with all of the engine’s byproducts.
Somewhat vindicating, to me at least.
Tremendous. Now make one I actually want to drive, wait 5-10 years for me to be able to afford it, and I’ll give a damn.
Ultimately this just comes down to any process being more efficient at scale, power generation included.
Flipping the usual conversation on its head, larger machines are more efficient in terms of mechanical work completed (joules) per kw of input.
A 300hp pickup truck may be socially wasteful to drive around *with a single occupant* compared to a 150hp compact car, but performing at its full capacity, the truck is the more efficient system. It may consume 2X the energy…. but with a GVWR 4x that of the car.
This continues to scale up to a 500hp highway tractor moving 80,000lb, to a 6000hp locomotive pulling 3,000,000lb, etc. Both machines tout fuel consumption numbers that would make you wince, but you have to look at what is actually being accomplished for that input.
When it comes to turning hydrocarbons into energy, larger engines are simply more efficient and cleaner. This is why you can drive 400miles in your car, and pollute less than mowing your lawn. ICE engines are just hilariously inefficient at small scale. Plus, a fixed installation like a power plant offers all kinds of opportunities for utilizing waste heat, and elaborate air-scrubbing and carbon-capture equipment that would be impractical on a mobile installation.
Modern coal & natural gas plants are actually very impressive, much, much cleaner than the belching black stacks we imagine. I’m not endorsing coal here- I’m just saying that it should be fairly easy to see how even the worst input for an EV is cleaner and more efficient than a small gasoline engine.
Oh yeah- And then there is the fact that EVs aren’t locked in to coal. They ‘upgrade’ constantly along with the grid.
How dare you bring woke “facts” and “logic” and “engineering”, vibes are where it’s at now commie! To paraphrase my ex-brother in law (“if FWD cars were better they’d be on the banks of Talladega!”, absolutely brilliant, in 1995) “if individual power generation (in the form of a car engine) was better, we would have our own electrical generators on our homes”. Spoiler alert, grid power is around 15 cents per KW/Hr while a generator is around 60 cents.
Where I live (Tacoma, WA), residential energy and delivery is less than nine cents per KWH. My condo is relatively energy efficient and many months, the monthly “customer charge” ($28.30) that covers the base overhead for the utility is higher than the actual energy and delivery costs.
Most of my trips are short and a PHEV with 30+ miles of EV range would be perfect. On the rare occasions that I go further than that, it’s usually 500+ miles, where recharging a BEV would be a real time suck.
But with <70K miles on a fully paid off ’17 Honda, it’s going to be a while before it pencils out for buying a PHEV to be something resembling economic sense.
Look here Zwarte Piet, it took me a whole 5 minutes of Googling to find those numbers. So much work I had to lay down afterwards.
It’s kinda funny watching this site lionize aging microcars with barely any emissions controls as the solution to our transportation woes- Ignoring the intense localized pollution in the cities where such vehicles dominate the roads.
Yes, big trucks as personal transport are not ideal, but there is some more subtlety to it that small = clean.
Hey, careful, I might be old, but still capable of shipping you off to Spain.
Lmao, this will piss people off. Who’d’ve thought (and except those who considered it rationally for more than about five minutes) this could be the case?
(Puts on flame suit and evacuates the building)
Why am I not surprised that this comment section is full of people who think they’re smarter than actual scientists?
God could literally descend from the heavens and proclaim that EVs are objectively better for the environment than ICE vehicles and you’d still have car-site dudes coming up with lists of factors the study didn’t take into account (which it absolutely did, but of course they didn’t read or even skim it).
Car site dudebros calculating the emissions of a burning bush to perform an almighty gotcha.
Isn’t it the most American thing in the world to believe that a new car will solve everything? If you drive long distances and lots of miles per year, an EV might be worthwhile. If you don’t, EVs don’t pencil out. You just become a lithium hoarder.
The numerical analysis I’d like to see is the relative environmental benefit of owning an EV vs. investing the same cost into renewable energy production. Solar PV panels work all day, unlike private automobiles. It’s not a glamorous investment- no chrome, no widescreen, no snappy acceleration, but it just sits there working and producing electricity since 2007. That’s my contribution…
False premise. Just like the “half ton of extra weight” or the common “they don’t actually have ZERO emissions”. No one reasonably believes that “a new car will solve everything” or that “EVs have ZERO emissions”.
But if people are buying cars, anyway, many (not all) of them might as well buy EVs and get an objectively better vehicle for their use case and have lower lifetime emissions, too.
Sure, if the cost was 100% on people buying said new cars. But there’s the insane amount of money that’s been spent on chargers that will be obsolete in 5 years, on rebates for people who drove so little they were barely contributing anything with their gas cars, etc.
If all the at money was spent on tackling the 80% of emissions that aren’t transportation, it would have been a much more worthwhile venture.
Incentive discussion has no bearing on the fact that his claim is false.
That claim is false regardless of whether there are incentives or not.
Now, we can have a separate discussion about whether the incentives make sense or not, or whether chargers being built, now, will be obsolete in 5 years (they won’t) and such, but my claim is that people believe that EVs will “solve everything” and no meaningful number of people believe that.
What cave did you crawl out of? Every green movement ever wont shut the fuck up about cars. Every single time climate change is mentioned, the first thing anyone complains about is cars.
I’m not saying EV’s are bad, I’m saying it’s obnoxious how much focus has been put on personal transportation.
The vast majority of emissions are from big companies that lobby/bribe the government to ignore it or buy fake-ass “carbon credits” and pretend they aren’t polluting because someone else isn’t. A whole lot of people swallowed the kool-aid those companies pump out.
Your rant doesn’t include links to all the people claiming that “new cars will solve everything,” which should be easy since you haven’t been living in a cave like I have.
Your statement of “no meaningful number of people believe that.” is equally unproven. You are yelling at me for not having a link to something this isn’t a quantifiable fact while providing absolutely zero sources for your own claim. In my experience, there are way too many people that think personal cars are the biggest problem.
All I’m saying is I want more attention on industrial pollution. You have to be a special kind of stupid to disagree with that.
Can’t prove a negative, but you and the OP haven’t provided even a single reputable person who claims that “EVs will solve everything”… because it’s a nonsense claim.
Cool. That doesn’t mean that I’m wrong that no one really believes “EVs will solve everything.”
That’s fine, because I didn’t disagree with that. It’s just irrelevant to whether or not the claim that “America thinks EVs will solve everything,” is a true statement or not.
“ Every green movement ever wont shut the fuck up about cars.”
Citation needed. The Recycling movement was focused primarily on consumer containers. Clean water efforts were focused on industrial waste and human excrement. The ozone layer restoration was focused on propellants and refrigerators. Anti-extinction efforts focus on pesticides and habitats.
Yes sorry, green was the wrong word. I meant in regards to CO₂ emissions.
“every green movement ever wont shut the fuck up about cars” is entirely in your own head, because the only green reporting you ever hear about is from sites about your hobbies (cars) or in wider news, where they only focus on things that get clicks. “New method of powering ocean freight” is not exactly a revenue generator for CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC, unless they can turn it into some scaremongering horror show to parade around for 24 hours.
If you actually followed “every green movement ever” (which I can be certain you do not) then you’d know that is just straight up nonsense.
Transport, which makes up 28% of US carbon emissions is the largest source single source.
“Single source” That means 72% isn’t transport (how much of those sources are owned by the same company though?). Not to mention how much of that transportation is heavy trucks, trains, planes, ships, etc. Or just old cars/cars without functioning emissions equipment.
Then when you consider that we share an atmosphere with a bunch of countries that are doing fuck-all about their emissions, modern emissions compliant cars are a small part.
The US is the second largest contributor of carbon pollution in the world. We need to do our share.
Your “72%” argument is brain dead because we actually ARE (or maybe “were”) working on reducing carbon production in those areas too. Every area INCLUDING transport needs to reduce the carbon it produces.
I didn’t say we should do nothing, I said modern personal gas cars aren’t the priority.
Please tell me, with the percentage of global emissions that is the US, the percentage of that which is transportation, the percentage of that which is personal cars, the percentage of that that is the number of cars we can even build and sell regardless of powertrain, what do EVs actually do? Like seriously someone give me a number in relation to the total emissions. No one breaks down personal cars, all the studies just say “transportation” No shit it’s the single biggest contributor when you lump a bunch of different kinds of transportation together.
I’m not comparing EVs to a 1970 Cadillac Eldorado, I mean compared to something like a brand new hybrid.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58861
Even if we take the full 83% of transportation, that still makes it less than power generation. EVs still have a lot of problems to solve to work for everyone, and people just don’t replace cars all that quickly.
Power generation is a solved issue. We’ve had viable green energy production for decades, a century even. The fact that we still have oil and coal plants is nothing but outright bribery.
Yeah building solar plant or wind turbines is expensive, but still cheaper than installing a zillion chargers for 2% of the cars on the road.
Yes… and 58% of the 83% was personal vehicles. So moving personal vehicles to electric you are tackling the largest component (personal vehicles) of the subset (personal and commercial vehicles) of the largest contributor (transport) of the world’s second largest (USA) creator of carbon pollution.
Power generation IS being greened. Solar and Wind are the largest contributor of new supply to the grid.
Just say “I don’t like EVs”. Because your rational boils down to “let’s work on everything else other than the largest component of the largest contributor of the largest source of carbon pollution”.
EVs most certainly do NOT “have a lot of problems to solve to work for everyone”. The literally work for a huge percentage of people as they are right now.
So you know the math and still refuse to do it. 58% of 83% of 38% (of 12%)
Seems like personal vehicles are 8% of US emissions, per the numbers you provided. Doesn’t sound largest to me. I’m really trying to figure where I fucked up the math, because I really don’t understand why people can’t understand what I’m saying. I’m not saying get rid of all EVS, I’m saying they are absolutely not priority #1.
For the record I like EVs and would absolutely buy one if I had the money. But their ability to “save the planet” is massively overblown. We can’t build them fast enough and people don’t buy new cars fast enough to make a worthwhile difference.
Oh, please.
“I’m not saying get rid of all EVS, I’m saying they are absolutely not priority #1.”
You are arguing that the largest component of the largest contributor of carbon pollution should be ignored until everything else is explored which is just total nonsense. EVERYTHING needs to be explored, especially the largest contributor of the largest percentage of carbon pollution. If literally no stone is unturned in reducing carbon pollution, life will be worse off for every person currently living on this planet.
Since you chose to ignore the parts of my comment that actually make my point, I’ll narrow it down to just that.
Personal cars aren’t the largest of the whole, and replacing them takes forever. I didn’t say ignore, you said that.
You seem to be arguing with someone who is saying ban EVs and delete all catalytic converters. That person isn’t here.
“EVs are not nearly as much of a solution as people think they are” shouldn’t be such a hard concept to acknowledge.
Stop saying largest, it’s not true. 8% is not the largest. Stop ignoring that a percent of a percent means a smaller part of the whole.
For better or worse, the car is everything in America.
It would be great if that wasn’t the case, but it is, and it won’t be changing anytime soon.
Seeing as people seem intent on driving the things into the ground and buying new ones, it seems logical that we would offer better ones for sale.
America also wants their auto manufacturers and manufacturing in the US to be competitive, also, so those are some major reasons why EVs are a focus even though no one really thinks that “EVs will solve everything.”
Combustion cars emit much CO2, but nobody seems to care HOW much really:
I would like to see a study with numbers factored in for all the fuel production too, not just the final burning of it: So the drilling and extracting, including production of those tools, refinement including building and running the refineries, transport and running the gas stations. All of it of course including the workforce required for the whole thing and their CO2 prodction.
That could come out to some certain number per litre/gallon (maybe different from gasoline to diesel, and might differ geographically), we could then add to the WLTP numbers..
The study DOES include the fuel production emissions. Direct quote from the study, linked in the article:
I know this wasn’t germane to their study, but I’m most curious about the effect of BEVs on the roads due to their above average weight compared to ICE vehicles (i.e. wear and tear, frequency of resurfacing and the costs associated with that, etc.).
I’m reasonably certain that road wear increases with the square of the vehicle mass, or at the very least, is nonlinear (ie a 5000lb vehicle produces more than twice the road wear of a 2500lb vehicle). It also depends on stuff like load factor – a heavy vehicle with lots of contact patches like a semi truck, vs vehicles like the new Hummer EV that weigh like 9000lb with only four contact patches.
There’s definitely a discussion to be had about the overall fleet of the US and how vehicle mass may be increasing on average. I don’t know if commercial vehicles are getting heavier, but I’d venture to guess that personal vehicles are. I don’t know what the largest contributor to that is – if it’s EVs or drivers’ preference for trucks, or what combination of both we’re looking at.
Some fun studies looking at road wear and tire particulate emissions though:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590162121000216 (looks at personal vehicles, study undertaken in the US)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590162121000216 (commercial vehicles, study from NZ)
Road wear is approximately scaled to weight over the axle of raised to the fourth power. Is the average EV more damaging to the compared to an equivalent class vehicle? Yes, slightly. But any medium or heavy duty commercial vehicle is several times more damaging. EVs are on average 10-15% heavier. Comparing the most common vehicle on the road, the f150 in it’s lightest (4021lbs, ecoboost) and heaviest (6893, lightning), the lightning does about seven times more damage to the road, which sounds like a lot until you look at commercial traffic. Compare the lightest f150 to an average semi at 35000 lbs, and the semi is about 5700 times worse.
Great points.
I bet the difference isn’t even that much- That 4000lb F150 has got to be the most basic regular-cab short box fleet truck, not really a 1-1 comparison with the Lightning. I think you’re looking at closer to 5000lb for a crew cab ICE f150.
This is what I’m here for, thank you!
So road wear is basically, a
subsidyexternality to the trucking companies that we pay for as a public good because passing it onto the trucking companies would likely make the direct cost of everything that moves by truck (read: just about everything) much higher.Yes and no. The wear itself is an externality but the choice to allow it is a subsidy (likely underfunded based on the state of the roads, lol).
It is an explicit policy choice by the state not to charge commercial users their usage rate, that’s what makes it a subsidy vs just an externality.
I think we’re on the same page. I was poorly expressing my point by being glib whereas you explained it very well 😉
Ah, yeah, tone is hard in text form
If you live near rare element mining site, EV not so great for environment.
Catalytic converters on ICE cars also rely on rare earth minerals.
There’s no free lunch. Even bicycles use extractive materials for their tires. Only walking is mostly emission neutral (not entirely https://time.com/7299648/what-is-fart-walk/ ).
If you live on the planet earth, fossil fuel burning cars, trucks, ships, aircraft, etc not so great for environment.
Very tired of this argument. Mining for and extracting enormous volumes of fossil fuels, transporting them, and refining them are all fine, but mining relatively tiny amounts of metals is a problem? You are straining at gnats and swallowing camels.
Kudos to anyone who does the work to put valid numbers to this technical issue, but this study doesn’t fully address the environmental costs of EVs. It’s widely documented that EV tires cost more and wear out quicker. The weight of an extra half-ton of EV battery is the main cause of this.
There’s also an opportunity cost to the large batteries in pure EVs. These figures indicate that EVs have twice the CO2 benefit of PHEVs, but they require 4-8x more battery materials. There’s an environmental cost to mining and refining these elements, and an opportunity cost to devoting them to auto production rather than other industrial or utility applications that have a better utilization factor. The average car sits parked 95% of its life, creating no benefit to anyone.
That’s because the scope of the study is about fuel savings.
You talk next about the cost of mining while conveniently ignoring the (environmental) cost of mining coal, gas and oil. Remember the Exxon Valdez (1989)? The BP Deep Water Horizon spills in the Gulf (2010)? The impact of fracking on aquifers? Again – this study is about fuel savings. EV battery chemistry is changing rapidly, with sodium-ion a very promising one which could remove the need for Lithium.
The Model 3 weight is right between the 4-cylinder Genesis G70 and the 6-cylinder G70.
The weight increase for EVs is often highly exaggerated.
I discount the weight argument. It’s an issue in an ever decreasing window of time. Battery density improvements, which are constant and ongoing, will see to it you need half the batteries to do the same job in a few short years. The detractors will have to find a new imagined problem to bitch about.
The prospect of greatly improved batteries is a factor that deters me from buying today’s EVs. I’ll keep driving my PHEV instead.
Agreed. And even *right now*, for the most common EVs in the US (Model 3 and Model Y), the weight difference is FAR less than “half a ton” when compared to similar gas models.
It’s basically ZERO, already, for Model 3 vs Genesis G70, as noted, for instance.
The Hummer EV and giant-battery Silverados and such are monstrously heavy, of course, but they’re a tiny percentage of EV sales.
I’m so tired of people using vehicle weight and high torque of EVs and that corresponding tire/road wear as an argument against them. If this is something that the people really cared about they would be arguing for weight and torque limits on all cars we drive regardless of what powers them. If it’s bad when an EV gets too heavy and that’s enough reason to hate them then we should hate every single car and truck built in 2025 for bloat. If we want to tackle this issue we can but it’s a BS argument against EVs if you don’t also care about applying it to ICE vehicles too.
PS I want ICE forever in sports cars and motorcycles but outside of that every segment is better for the environment, a better car and a better driving experience as EV, EREV or PHEV.
We recently put over 1000 miles on a Camry hybrid rental, averaging a real 47 mpg mostly in the fast lane. Nothing wrong with that, especially given it’s quick acceleration and no need to search out EV charging stations. Camry is much cheaper than most EV’s, so you start way ahead dollar-wise.
Seems like a solid study. Can’t say I’m shocked by the findings, I’ve always figured majority electric is where we are going, just the last few years we did a real bad job with the how we get there, a more gradual approach with aggressive hybridization and then more EREVs followed by EVs (with some EVs always available for those for whom they work) along with consistent expansion of the charging networks would’ve been the way to go. Instead we tried to move too fast and scared people which made the whole concept into an easy political football.
So if we get everyone into mild hybrids and PHEV we can cut emissions by half or more, not strain the power grid, and have vehicles around the same price.
Cool. I’ll take a GMC Express PHEV used in 10 years.
We just got done dispelling one piece of false information, and now you throw in another one, that the grid is strained. Simply not the case. Not everyone will ever be charging at the same time. Ever.
The grid strain is from AI intended data centers.
Can we just not with AI I’m so sick of everying Ai these days such a waste.
Ah, its just the latest tech bro VC cash grab. It will go away with flying cars, quantum computers, and self-driving cars shortly.
You are the one who brought up staining the grid…..
Correct. Much of the newly added grid capacity, a double digit figure, is going to run massive server banks. I have no words to describe this waste.
Well hopefully the whole AI scam will collapse and leave us with extra capacity for our new EVs!
It isn’t now (most of the time) and won’t be in the future if we implement good charging standards and time of use.
Is there anything better than someone worrying about EV “straining the power grid” on the internet, as if electricity sucking huge data centers don’t make the internet possible?
I think by law every time someone posts on the internet their concern trolls about EVs “straining the grid”, they should be required to follow it us with “like I am doing right now”….
Using the internet on a mobile device (without using Ai) is barely even a couple of watts of power all sides considered.
The grid is a real issue and not just because of EVs. It all comes down to money and time really, grid upgrades requires both someone will have to pay for it and I propose the AI data centers pay for it.
I’m a little upset about the whole thing because guess who is paying for it night now? Me and millions of residential customers where I live, for about 4 years now we have had an extra fee tacked on just for the upgrades (reliability and matainence are already seperate charges).
It isn’t the mobile device using the power, it is the back end servers at the data centers.
sedans are considered to have a lifespan of 191,386 miles?
Honestly this seems high. For us Autopians I’m sure we have many vehicles that routinely exceed that, but for a normie? No way!
Those people dump their car at 50-100k and the 2nd owner doesn’t care as much and the BHPH owner doesn’t care at all.
I have 2/4 with over that many, and one at 177k. Crap, my average across all 4 is 174k.
And we are Autopian readers (avg 120k here) I feel like there numbers are too high especially if you factor in cars totaled by accidents too.
This study is looking at emissions for the car’s lifetime. Given an accurate lifetime is a predicate for an accurate outcome I’m sure some care was spent in selecting those numbers.
Fine, I went through the article to figure out why. because I never stop at “just trust us” when it comes to data (the mantra for statistics and science should alway be double check it twice)
First I found some sources that disagree with the +190k miles figure.
Autorecyclingworld.com tracks vehicle miles from scrapped cars and gives 156k as thier average. They don’t give the raw data so let’s take it with a grain of salt. However that number is significantly different than this study taking into account that that includes trucks and SUV’s which this study says last even longer.
OK let’s check a reputable source now, in the NHTSA “VEHICLE Survivability AND TRAVEL MILEAGE Schedules” they give a lifetime mileage of 152,000.
Thats two sources that are relatively close to each other but more than 25% different than this study.
OK let’s delve into this study and see where they got their data from. In it they say they get their mileage data from source 30 “Final Rulemaking for Model Years 2024-2026 Light-Duty Vehicle Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards March 2022.
You may notice a potential issue already that this is a study for cars made 1-4 years in the future, not disqualifying in of itself. There is actually some really cool data in here but I think I found two key areas (and maybe a 3rd) that might explain the difference.
The 2022 study assumes a linear increase in vehicle durability based of a 1996-2005 estimation of vehicles(Trends in Fixed Effects for Preferred Car Specification)
Living through 1996-2005 I would have agreed at the time, vehicles were getting more reliable over time. I don’t the data to say that this trend hasn’t stayed linear but anecdotally I think we can all agree vehicle durability has not increased linearly from 2005 to now. I would argue durability has decreased over many of those years.
The 2022 study tables mileage based on years and total miles driven per year using 2016 data. Has the rise of WFH and the pandemic changed the amount of miles driven enough to account for the 50,000 mile difference between the study and real world scrappage data? Maybe somewhat.
Finally their data is based on mileage from cars in states where vehicles are inspected. This might slightly increase the reliability of a vehicle due to better maintenance.
I can’t give a definitive answer to why the real world numbers and this study don’t match but they don’t match by a significant margin. Maybe someone with more time can go through this study further to get where they got their numbers from but I’m not convinced, it’s not even close.
Shopping used cars makes that number feel low. The number of people who sell cars with 200k miles for several thousand dollars would suggest that the buyers of those cars expect to get a fair amount of use out of them.
Averages are interesting, since the outliers (the very few million mile vehicles and those totaled within the first few thousand miles) feel like they would have significant effect, but are probably not affecting the average that much (and the data may remove the extreme outliers).
My personal experience differs. The lessee for the first three years doesn’t care beyond taking it in at the maintenance interval. The buyer who keeps it 4 years and trades in before it’s paid off isn’t abusing it, but not babying it. But the second buyer of both? That’s a person who wants something relatively new, but isn’t shopping new cars. It’s a person who is going to care for that car, maybe because they’ve been waiting a few years to find one they could afford or maybe because it’s the nicest, newest car they could afford. And the BHPH buyers are kind of split between the people who won’t care and the people who will really care, because that was the only place they could get a car. Also, a lot of those are up around 200k, so we’re talking about extending this average at that point.
FWIW a typical US coal plant as of now(ish) emits between 740-1689 g CO2e/kWh. From that we can see a Tesla 3 that uses 26 kWh/100 mi is at best putting out 19.2kg/100 miles and at worst 43.9kg/100 miles using just coal sourced electricity. This does not include the emissions produced in the mining, transporting coal to the plant, transmission and charging losses, cold weather performance, etc which will increase those numbers.
https://www.cowi.com/news-and-press/news/2023/comparing-co2-emissions-from-different-energy-sources/
A Corolla OTOH uses 2.9 gallons of regular to go 100 miles and the hybrid uses 2.1 gallons to go the same distance
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=49154&id=48490&id=48494
If we use 8,887 grams CO2/ gallon that puts the sin of driving a gasser Corolla at 25.7kg/100 miles and a hybrid Corolla at 18.7kg/100 miles.
https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle
That does not include the emissions of oil pumping, refining, and distribution.
So by these numbers the hybrid Corolla is the winner likely followed by hybrid Corolla with the Tesla BEV last.
With your math the hybrid Corolla is twice as good as a BEV yet they say the BEV is better. That means oil pumping, refining, and distribution accounts for significantly more half of the emissions of a hybrid.
Or they messed up something in their data, like a sample bias.
“That means oil pumping, refining, and distribution accounts for significantly more half of the emissions of a hybrid.”
I don’t think so:
“I sat down and read the GM/Argonne National Laboratories well to tank and well to wheels studies to figure this out, as part of an effort to do accurate calculations for my own converted EV’s energy and GHG performance.
https://greet.es.anl.gov/publication-wft2tv3v
The GM/ANL study and the resulting GREET model are very complex, as you would expect given that oil refineries produce a lot of different fuels-gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, home heating oil and bunker fuel for ships, propane etc. But refineries produce a host of other products, and also internally recycle a lot of material and energy, often sharing energy and materials across the fence with numerous petrochemical plants which don’t even count as part of the refinery itself, and with the greater electrical grid.
The end result of a very careful and well-documented analysis via the GREET model which takes all of this complexity into account, is that from well to gas tank, gasoline is about 81 to 83% source energy efficient.”
Which means that even if only gasoline were being burned to get the energy need to get from oil well to gas tank you’d only increase the emissions about 17-19%
Compare that to the additional losses getting energy from mine to battery. I can’t find good numbers on how much energy it takes to dig out the coal and transport it to the power plant but I do have some numbers on what happens to the electricity:
“EV charging loss due to the on-board charger:
Sadly, the on-board chargers are the ones to blame the most when it comes to energy loss as they are usually between 75 and 95 percent efficient.”
https://go-e.com/en/magazine/ev-charging-losses
“The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that annual electricity transmission and distribution (T&D) losses averaged about 5% of the electricity transmitted and distributed in the United States in 2018 through 2022.”
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3
So right there coal loses between 10-30% of the energy between the power plant and the battery.
“Or they messed up something in their data, like a sample bias.”
Maybe. Or perhaps it is I who messed up. I’m not an expert in this field and it’s a complicated topic with lots of devilish detail. But for now my crude envelope numbers aren’t looking good for coal powered EVs.
When driving ICE cars still emit tons of emissions. The EV car does not.
It doesn’t matter if ICE cars are 100%, 50% or 10% energy efficient ; they’re burning fossil fuels which are polluting the world. Our world. Air you like to breathe in, without the need for filters. Air you would like to be be clean so the crops aren’t covered with soot from the trucks driving past it.
First the study shows there are fuel savings. The study is pretty clear about that. Next we can argue where the electricity comes from or should come from. The more people complain that coal is ‘just as dirty’ the more it makes sense to get rid of coal, quickly.
Once we have tons of wind turbines, solar, more tidal and geothermal, then pollution from cars can be reduced to the absolute minimum.
But look at his first post, a hybrid Corolla is emitting less greenhouse gasses per mile then the Tesla, which means less emissions, and if we consider that a coal plant also emits soot into the air there is a good chance it also emits less particulates into the air too. There isn’t anything magical about ICE that means it’s automatically worse for the air.
The problem seems to be coal, it was only good in the past because it was cheap, it’s time to move on.
Coal is already moving on, Natural Gas is eating it’s lunch. It’s cheaper to extract and cleaner to burn.
The EV isn’t emitting any greenhouse gasses. The production facility does. This isn’t the fault of the EV. The OP blames the EV for being worse than an ICE car.
From his own source:
If EVs aren’t charging from a 100% coal (or oil) power plant then the emissions drop DRASTICALLY from the ‘max’ 1689 to 41 or even 4 grams CO2 per generated kWh.
Blaming EVs for not being environmental friendly because COAL powerplants are not friendly is just a dumbass way to convince people to keep driving ICE cars.
But I hear you (or the OP) say ; “Yeah but NOW the Model 3 is emitting more greenhouse gases per mile than the (Hybrid) Corolla”. No ; that is an assumption where a) all electricity for charging the Model 3 actually came from a coal fired power plant AND the power plant has the worst emissions per kWh generated.
If you look at this 2023 map you will see that actually in many states MOST electricity doesn’t even come from Coal fired powerplants.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/biggest-sources-of-electricity-by-state-and-province/
I am actually very impressed by the researching you’ve done and commend you for it. Have you looked into the efficiencies of gas/diesel powered vehicles however? They’re weird, neither can idle anything close to efficient, and where they become most efficient is so narrow of a load and RPM range yet crazily tunable. You can probably get away with high 30% – 40% in a gas car, 40’s – 50’s in a diesel if they’re trying, but in most cases expect almost half. I feel like it was about 10 years ago that a prius hit 40% fuel efficiency at the same time a hybrid F1 car finally hit 50% thermodynamic efficiency.
Thanks!
“Have you looked into the efficiencies of gas/diesel powered vehicles however? They’re weird, neither can idle anything close to efficient, and where they become most efficient is so narrow of a load and RPM range yet crazily tunable”
I have. I think that cylinder deactivation, hit and miss operation, 2,6,8 stroke cycles are strategies that may allow engines to widen their efficiency zones, a subject I think is ripe for another Autopian deep dive.
“I feel like it was about 10 years ago that a prius hit 40% fuel efficiency at the same time a hybrid F1 car finally hit 50% thermodynamic efficiency.”
The Toyota announcement was about 2018 while the Merc F1 was 2017. I’ve been seeing rumors the Gen6 Prints will hit 53% TE:
https://priuschat.com/threads/gen-6-prius-engine-will-be-a-%E2%80%9Cgame-changer-%E2%80%9D-achieve-a-53-thermal-efficiency.249167/
Will this pan out or be another dissapointing Skyactiv3 nothingburger? I dunno.
Now imagine that electricity is coming from hydro, wind, solar, tidal or geothermal…
Your comment shows we have to get rid of coal, fast.
The nice thing about coal though is it works when the sun isn’t shining, the air is still, where the ground is parched, far from the sea and where the local geology is dull….
…Of course so does natural gas. Better even. And renewably. And of course there’s nuclear.
Tidal always works, geothermal always works, nuclear always works. We don’t need to burn things anymore to make power, our caveman days are behind us.
Tidal doesn’t work in the midwest. Geothermal is only viable in specific areas too:
https://www.edengeothermal.com/about/geothermal-energy/worldwide-potential/
Nuclear CAN work anywhere but isn’t allowed to. Thanks NIMBYS!
“our caveman days are behind us.”
Username checks out.
China has high voltage power lines up to 3000 kilometers or near 1900 miles. From LA to the middle of Kansas is just 1200 miles. If those pesky cheap low quality Chinese can build high voltage power lines (which reduce loss) then I am sure the US can do the same or better.
Nothing stands in our way to stop polluting our air and ground by burning fossil fuels.
But actual smarter solutions is just to use V2G ; vehicle to grid ; allowing stationary cars to supply electricity to the grid when it is needed. For example EVs in the Midwest which were topped up at day time, with solar panels, because they weren’t used for driving (the whole day) which then can help to charge someone elses EV when it is dark. More cars are stationary than driving when it is light. So dozens of fully charged EVs can help charge that one EV which wasn’t able to charge using solar (or wind) by giving up 5 or 10% of their reserves. This not only helps to balance the grid, it actually offloads the existing grid because electricity stays where it is needed – in the neighborhood.
And we didn’t even discuss the option of building battery storage to have plenty of electricity on demand during days with less sunshine or nights. And this could be done using sodium-ion which does not require extensive mining.
“If those pesky cheap low quality Chinese can build high voltage power lines (which reduce loss) then I am sure the US can do the same or better”
They also have a commercial thorium reactor with more on the way, thorium powered container shipping in development, high speed rail and ghost cities. We need those things too damnit!
You are aware that the energy captured by solar and wind is stored in batteries for later use, right? So even if if the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, energy is still available for use. It’s also not like they put up solar arrays and windmills just anywhere. They do research to make sure that solar arrays are going in places where it’s likely to be sunny almost every day and windmills go in places that naturally have a lot of wind. If it were really true that solar stopped working completely when it was nighttime or cloudy and windmills stopped working completely when there wasn’t any wind blowing, then neither of these technologies would have been adopted as widely as they have been.
Dunkelflaute!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkelflaute
Any chance the Corolla and 3 aren’t the same size /class of sedan? Did they get that granular?
I don’t think it matters that much.
So, is the question who made a math error and did not get it checked, or do you think they’re leaning on the data too hard? Maybe they’re averaging in all those bs alternator and lead acid “hybrids” with the “real” ones??
I dunno, maybe their idea of ICE is a 1975 Lincoln MkIV and their idea of a hybrid is a Corvette E-Ray.
I have 2 guesses
It might come down to the fact that most real world EV’s right now are optimized for aerodynamic efficiency, while some ICE are and some aren’t.
If you took the exact same car with the 4 different sources of propulsion you would get different numbers than the averages they present.
The other is I think they are overestimating the lifetime miles of a car, it’s hard to get an exact estimate but ~153k miles seems like the average excluding totaled vehicles, they seem to assume future cars will last longer (hah, not with all this new tech), which will give an advantage to the EV.
Hey now, my 3 car fleet average is around 143000 with 2 at or above your #. DON’T JINX IT!!!
I have a vw, a Toyota and a Chevy all over 150k. Just got the younger a 130k Toyota. 190k is very realistic. Shitbox Showdown anybody?
Well yes.
But you are putting the worst case for an EV against a pretty good case for the non-EV.
A hybrid corolla is a really efficient HEV.
Now look at https://app.electricitymaps.com/. You will find that only the WAPA Rocky Mountains is at this moment over 740 g CO2/kwh at 741. Every other grid is lower. Even where coal is used a lot. Most plases in US are significantly lower, like ERCOT (Texas), which is at 368 g CO2/kwh.
Once again, the exception proves the rule. Or in this case, the truth in the article.
The challenge was whether an EV that is EXCLUSIVELY powered by coal today is cleaner than an ICE vehicle or hybrid, not powered by a mix of sources. Which is almost the worst case (see below). The choice of hybrid Corolla was because it’s a common enough vehicle currently on the market with an ICE only version for a more honest comparison but there are many hybrids that offer similar performance.
I should also point out this was not quite the worst case as I only compared fair weather performance. The real worst case would be cold weather performance where the battery capacity drops due to the cold and the energy needed for heat.
Meanwhile the ICE efficiency goes up using cogen math. The waste heat generated by ICE becomes advantageous.
Sure one could argue coal plants can use cogen operation too but I don’t think its very common. Most such systems I’m aware of are generators incorporated into large commercial buildings and AFAIK those don’t burn coal but natural gas.
There’s not actually anywhere in the article that says “EXCLUSIVELY” coal or “not powered by a mix of sources”.
Based on the link provided by they guy above (https://app.electricitymaps.com/), the worst real-life regions in the US are in the very low end of the “coal” numbers you provided (because they’re not *purely* coal, in reality).
That being said, even by the numbers in the link above, if you’re in a couple specific locations in the US (tiny location near Louisville or South Dakota/Wyoming/Nebraska/Colorado that all account for a tiny percentage of Americans, combined), you may be right that a Corolla Hybrid has lower emissions than a Model 3 (ignoring all the other things you noted).
I think it’s fine to have nuance for people who can handle nuance and say: For the vast, vast majority of cases, EVs are cleaner, so much so that it’s generally correct to claim simply “EVs are cleaner for virtually everyone”, but for a small percentage of people in certain locations, buying a Corolla Hybrid may be cleaner than a Model 3.
It’s in Jason’s Title:
“New Study Proves EVs Are Better For The Environment Wherever You Live, Even If Your Power Comes From Coal”
That’s the challenge. Not “mostly from coal”, not ” some from coal” but “comes from coal”. That to me implies all the power comes from coal. And Jason wouldn’t base his title on anything but his careful, educated review of the paper, right?
But yeah, in general I don’t disagree BEVs will be cleaner, especially when the power comes from renewables. My disagreement is for a very specific, hopefully hypothetical situation only.
Yes, that’s why I specified “the article”, not the necessarily-shortened headline, but we’re generally in agreement. In some hypothetical situation where a car is always charged solely by coal, there are scenarios where an EV is less green. But because there aren’t any regions that are charged completely by coal (at least according to that link/map), it’s only a very specific combination that will result in EVs being less green, which is fair nuance to make, but probably too much nuance for a headline in 2025. haha
Assuming that that car stays connected to that power plant for its life and we as a society never upgrade or clean up that power grid. I always think this point is missing from coal power EV vs ICE car. If you buy ICE due to wear and tear it’s mpg and CO2/mile will almost always increase with age, depending on the owner maybe significantly and will probably be out there for over 10 years. Buy an EV and if your grid changes the car gets cleaner. I think it’s safe to say that over 10 years no power plant will get significantly dirtier and most grids will probably get cleaner, some may even get significantly cleaner.
My cars are much older than 10 years yet their MPG hasn’t gotten any worse and they pass CA smog each and every time. So I don’t think that’s much of an issue over that timeline. One might as well point out battery packs degrade with time.
Blah blah blah seems like they selected a best case scenario for the EV and still used scientific lingo to confuse.
You know the old saying I read on a T-shirt while camping on Asategue island that my parents would not let me have “if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance baffle them with bullshit.” But Jason if you state you understand that survey and believe it is 100% accurate I’m onboard.
Uh
Scientific papers aren’t communication, they’re proof of work in a standardized format designed to provide the details and background for other people in that speciality to peer review, criticize, and replicate. Think of it like a set of architectural drawings, a metallurgy report, or any other industry-specific document: packed with specialty jargon and language.
That is (part) of what makes good journalism so important: it acts as a translation layer, providing information and putting it in context. So you do right by finding a journalist you trust.
Were there any specifics of the study’s methodology or results that you took issue with? Or are you just mad about everything that disagrees with your uninformed worldview?
I’ve avoided the GHG argument by asking which middle east terrorist organizations are supported by the challenger’s gas money. Not really fair, but they stop and think for a second and, especially if they see my veteran license plate, they go away. An EV won’t fit every use case, but there’s no point in either side dunking on the other for their choices.
Saw this bumper sticker: Help defund oil country terrorists. Drive an EV.
The joke’s on everyone as the Saudis and others in that area are investing heavily in EVs and solar tech, because they’re not dumb.
But it’s fun to dunk on people for their choices. I thought choices and actions were what you were supposed to judge by?