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:
I asked this question when I first heard about electric cars in elementary school. It was mostly in the context of power generation and not “manufacturing is worse”, but here are other questions from around that time to contextualize.
So.
I’ve become increasingly irritated that we keep having studies to prove EVs are better, but I guess when we complain about battery material shortages while also making over-9000 lb Hummer EVs, we manage to blur the line.
All I ask is that people outsmart a ~7-12 year old who hates school given repeated opportunities.
#4 is so awesome, as soon as we get a sky hook or a real space elevator space travel is going to be so much more economical.
I don’t think it will happen in my lifetime but honestly I never thought that reusable 1st stage rockets would be a thing either.
I’d love a space elevator, but you have to anchor on the equator of a planetary body with negligible atmosphere/wind load and fast enough rotation that a synchronous orbit isn’t impossibly far away from. Is there a non tidally locked airless moon we want to get back and forth from orbit to surface enough to build one?
Eventually Mars, with either a reverse elevator from Phobos, or from the Martian surface but you would have to destroy Phobos for that one.
With enough willpower we could make the moon spin faster too, but the term “biggest project in human history” hardly even comes close to describing the effort that would take, a working dyson swarm would make it easy though!
Would be helpful to know who sponsored the study. That’s usually a good indicator of the integrity of the study and the authors
My thoughts exactly. Nice call out
Certainly not the oil and gas industry, right?
This is great and all, but it still misses a ton of environmental impact from both ICE and EVs since it focuses on GHG. There’s no mention of the ever present lithium mining and battery disposal. EV tires cause 25-35% more non-emission particulate matter (microplastics and rubber) than standard tires due to wear from the extra weight, and take more energy to produce. EVs use regenerative braking saving on brake wear vs ICE, etc.
I’m no scientist, and I’m all for EVs, though I believe Hybrids to be a better overall choice for consumers, but I still haven’t seen a direct comparison between 2 vehicles in the same segment with a true “cradle to grave” metric with raw material extraction, manufacturing, vehicle use, and end-of-life disposal or recycling. I’m sure an EV would win, but I’d still like to see all the metrics in one place so you don’t have to comb through a bunch of dense journals for info.
Put a battery in front of you. And put a gallon of gas in front of you. Light the gas on fire. What happens? It’s gone forever. You have to keep engaging in environmental damage pumping more and more. That battery? You can recycle it. No new environmental extraction needed. It’s pretty simple.
The key point here is that Nevada has some big motherflapping counties.
only 3 of the top 10 by land area in the contiguous USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_counties_in_the_United_States_by_area
Arizona has 3, California has 2, Wyoming and Oregon each have 1.
Yeah but they’re ALL big; a state of similar size has more–and in some cases, WAY more–counties. I’ve often been impressed when driving through my county by how vast it is (King County, Washington), but I’m peering pretty hard to see it, and our neighboring counties are too small to identify.
Like, I don’t know from what altitude one could see the entire contiguous nation like in those maps up there, but if NV’s counties were delineated by a wide/dark enough border, you could see them all from space!
Sometimes it nice and sometimes it sucks. I had to inspect a county job here and it was a 290 miles of driving that day.
Luckily my gas was paid for.
first article added to the Glovebox for referencing!
Question, if I have an ICE vehicle, how long should I keep it before switching to a New BEV is worth it from the emissions standpoint? The only argument that still seems to exist is keeping my decently good fuel econ ICE car for as long as possible still keeps less emissions than building a new BEV car. but I imagine that will hit a tipping point eventually as well.
If you have access to renewable gasoline, then you could probably keep the ICE indefinitely. If not, since it practically non-existent at this point, then the answer is probably as soon as practical.
I looked into this years ago before buying a Bolt, and based on the best info I could find at the time, with installing solar on the roof, the CO2 payback for the battery manufacturing was ~15,000 miles, and the entire car about double that vs. continuing to drive my 30+ mpg car. If you were to do something silly, say replace a 50 mpg hybrid with a Hummer EV though, sounds like the Hummer would be ~35 tons of CO2 for manufacturing, or ~3000 gallons of gas burned equivalent, so 150,000 miles of driving the hybrid just for the manufacturing. Small efficient cars are good. All sorts of funny math can be done, that’s for sure.
Thanks for the breakdown. It’s largely what I have calculated as well, that as long as I move to a smaller EV and not a huge truck/suv than it really will be better to make the EV jump sooner rather than later. They said, my little ice car getting mid 30s MPG is paid off and lower miles so the financial argument doesn’t work as well,” for me specifically right now, but good to know when I jump to a small to midsize EV it will be for the better rather quickly. As you pointed out, it does matter that you compare similar size ice to EVs, as a Ram TRX is basically terrible for the ever compared to any EV, (fun though it may be to drive), while my little car compared to that Hummer EV is a slightly different story.
I don’t understand the map.
Let’s take Pennsylvania which shows that a BEV isn’t as good at reducing emissions as say Oklahoma.
PA gets 59% of their power from natural gas and 5% from coal. So, 64% comes from burning something.
OK gets 50% of their power from natural gas and 10% from coal. So, 60% comes from burning something.
Doesn’t seem like a huge difference that would make such a difference in the graph. Moving On…
MS gets 76% of their power from natural gas and 5% from coal. So, 81% comes from burning something.
Yet the green house gas reduction from switching from an ICE to a BEV is better in Mississippi than Pennsylvania.
I suspect that the graph is skewed. Nuclear and Hydro power is not an CO2 emitting power source, but it is not in considered “non-CO2 emitting” in some things. It seems like the states with a significant mix of hydroelectric or Nuclear power sources are not getting credit for these sources being green house gas emission free.
I’ve seen it before. I lived in Washington State and had to pay a carbon tax on my power. When 95% was from a dam and a nuclear plant. I only got it waved on wind power.
I was more confused by the map showing regional differences for mild hybrids vs icev. ? Gas vs less gas; did they include regional traffic and terrain to get differences in regions between cars that get all of their energy from gas?
I’m sure this will end the debate!
The best way I have seen these numbers presented is as the miles needed for EVs to have released fewer emissions than ICE, PHEVs, and hybrid models. The strange thing about this report is that they select the total miles and then give the reduction as a number. It makes it harder to relate, given that most people buying a new car don’t hold on to it for its entire life of around 200k miles. Showing that the break-even point is well within the ownership of the original buyer might be more relatable.
There are also a couple of numbers in the study that, on the surface, don’t make sense.
Am I missing something?
The “life of the car” argument doesn’t hold up to me. Let’s say I buy a car new and drive it for 3 years. The payoff of lower emissions doesn’t come to enough to pay for the energy it took to build it.
But I don’t scrap the car. I sell it to someone else. Who sells it to someone else and so-on. Eventually it ends up in a bad part with 2 temporary spares. Might be pushing 30 years old and 300k miles.
Now somewhere along the way, the payoff absolutely happened.
I agree. I was just saying that using the breakeven mileage is easy to understand and direct, rather than needing to explain how they got to the expected life expectancy of different vehicle types.
The big question I have about this chart is the replacement time. I know that a well cared for ICE will last 20+ years. I also know that HEVs will also a similar time because I see even 1st gen Priuses driving around fairly regularly.
What I don’t know is the life time of BEVs. Because there aren’t many BEVs that were being made 20 years ago.
If BEVs need replacement more often, than it might be better to go with HEVs. We will start to see the math results in a couple years.
That is a lot of math and science. I think I will just stick to the opinion I was given by Fox News (/sarcasm).
Unfortunately this is why we find ourselves in this current predicament.
I understand they looked at new vehicles only. Which is not a question I find interesting as this has been studied to death several times over.
What I would find interesting is: is it better to scrap a perfectly functional ICE car now and buy a new BEV to replace it, or is it better to just drive the ICE car until it falls apart and only then replace it with a BEV?
I don’t know if that’s quite a reasonable question, unless you’re a government looking at a cash-for-clunkers style program. Otherwise, it’s more the case where the ICE car becomes a used car when replaced by a new BEV, not scrapped. It’s more of a study for those looking at what to buy to minimize their impact, or for a government looking at future carbon regulation.
If I sell my ICE car on, that’s obviously not good as it will continue running and polluting. That’s why I assumed it would be scrapped. I think this is totally legitimate question.
there’s natural attrition for vehicles. There’s only so much we can worry about.
Probably too many variables to consider for people to want to study it. Like the above, you have all the categories plus maintenance quality and ownership time. Would be interesting to see. Especially if you include the emissions from production and end of life too.
I view this as information to consider next time I get a new car, not as a reason to scrap the perfectly good ones I have currently. As long as my current cars are properly maintained, scrapping them would be incredibly wasteful.
“What I would find interesting is: is it better to scrap a perfectly functional ICE car now and buy a new BEV to replace it”
Many people, such as myself, when replacing a car, they are doing so because their current car is NOT perfectly functional… regardless of whether it’s an ICE.
And even in cases where a ‘perfectly functional’ ICE vehicle is being replaced, the person was gonna get a new vehicle regardless. And the old vehicle isn’t being scrapped. It’s being traded in and sold used to someone else.
So the whole “scrap a perfectly functional ICE vehicle” is false logic used by the anti-BEV crowd.
There’s a German expression which is “Machts Nicht” It literally means “It makes nothing”. I like it better than “it doesn’t mean anything” which is the American expression for this case.
Let’s say you buy a car and drive it until it drops 25 years later (e.g. I think I’m married to your sister). The car emits what it emits over the course of this 25 year life.
Now let’s say you sell the car after 3 years and it is eventually scrapped after 25 years with dozen owners. Guess what? Assuming similar miles, it will emit similar amounts as a car that was a one owner for all 25 years..
If you hold onto a 10 year old car and keep driving it, you will save on the emissions it takes to make a replacement. But it doesn’t mean that it is emitting anything less than if you sold it to someone else.
For YOU and your emissions, hanging on to a car is likely a lower emission choice than buying a replacement. But as a society, there is a high enough turn over of vehicles that this impact is not measurable. E.g. “it makes nothing”.
Now if we made cars that lasted 50 years instead of 25 and changed society to hold on to things and not replace them willy-nilly, we could have a big impact, but that’s a different subject.
Ultimately, this question doesn’t matter.
Let’s say you drive a car until it must be scrapped and then go and get a new car. How is that different than if I drive a car until it is scraped and go a used car so someone else can get a new car?
A 20 year old one owner car took the same energy to make and to go for 250k miles as a 20 year old 6 owner car with the same miles.
Now if we (as a society) kept stuff longer and demanding that stuff lasted longer, it would have an impact. But the realistic impact that can be done with in our society is to have a change where a smaller car that has less emissions over its total life becomes more and more the choice for consumers.
Planned obsolescence/failure and anti-repair design has graciously offered an alternative to this question.
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.
And figure one of that study claims: Electric vehicles today produce 46% fewer GHG than their comparable gasoline vehicles on a life cycle basis, with even deeper reductions (76%) by 2035.
So is this study which says:
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).
comparing ICE of today against the hopes and dreams of BEVs and power grids of 10 years from now?
“comparing ICE of today against the hopes and dreams of BEVs and power grids of 10 years from now?”
You’ve missed the point.
The point is even with the grid of today, BEVs are cleaner. And as the grid itself gets cleaner with more solar, wind, etc, BEVs by extension will get cleaner.
The same GREET 23 model shows a 48% reduction using ethanol compared to using gasoline, and the last time I checked 48% > 46%
A 48% reduction of what? It’s not a 48% reduction of CO2 emissions, that’s for sure.
Hold on, is that still ethanol from corn, which has been established as cartoonishly inefficient? I’ve heard ethanol from corn effectively uses more oil than it replaces, in part because corn is not particularly good at photosynthesis. Was that wrong information, or am I missing something else?
Those claims corn ethanol uses more energy than is gained are usually bad faith arguments based on numbers from the 1970s. Ethanol production efficiency has improved tremendously since then:
“February 19, 2016
A new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “2015 Energy Balance for the Corn-Ethanol Industry,” examines the energy efficiency of corn ethanol production. According to the findings, the energy balance of ethanol has improved significantly over the past two decades. It has made a “transition from an energy sink to a moderate net energy gain in the 1990s, to a substantial net energy gain in the present.” In some areas of the Midwest, ethanol production creates more energy than it consumes by a factor of 4 to 1. Nationally, the average ratio of energy outputs to inputs for ethanol production is 2 to 1.”
https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/usda-energy-efficiency-of-corn-ethanol-production-has-improved-significantl
Thank you so much! That’s dispelling some persistent misinfo I’ve had for a while.
Likely correct info, just outdated. I saw a presentation a year or two ago that said 20+ years ago, ethanol was just as carbon intensive as gasoline if not worse, but recently was ~1/2 that as gasoline with improvements made over the years. (so that E15 stuff, with ethanol ~2/3 the energy density as gasoline would be ~10% ethanol by energy, and maybe 5% improvement in CO2 over straight gasoline, something but pretty minimal)
Something I see more than I’d like is comparing X technology from 2015 to Y technology projection in 2030, without recognizing that X technology will continue to improve as well. Usually Y technology is ICE. Things are changing, and in some cases quite quickly, so what was true even a few years ago might no longer be the case today.
I still have a problem with good farm land being used for grow food, when we are seeing a blanket reduction of topsoil everywhere. That land may be the difference between people eating or starving.
As a longer-term use of natural resources issue, I do also question the use of farmland…though I would sooner examine more inefficient food-producing agriculture. I assume Ethanol corn could be distributed as corn if needed, with the nutritional efficiency of corn.
I’ve herd bad things about meat and dairy, but I could be misteaken.
The point was this study claims BEVs are cleaner than ICE TODAY even if the power for those BEVs comes from coal yet they appear to be basing that claim on the assumed power grid of tomorrow.
“The point was this study claims BEVs are cleaner than ICE TODAY “
And it is.
“yet they appear to be basing that claim on the assumed power grid of tomorrow.”
They are not.
They are saying it IS cleaner today… and will get MORE clean in the future.
The funniest thing about the comment section here is that people are rightly pointing out that this is just the umpteenth study to find the exact same result, because it’s the truth. Meanwhile The Drive’s comment section on the same topic resorted to everyone trying to poke holes in the study and usher in bad-faith arguments that try to tear down the conclusions of the study over minor arguments with methodology. It’s the classis “do your own research” mentality that cherry picks a few flawed studies, then tries to poke holes in the much larger mountain of evidence they don’t like. The studies however are clear, even with todays dirty energy mix and wanting levels of battery recycling, EVs are already cleaner, and by continuing to clean up the grid and recycle Li-ion packs effectively, it’s going to be impossible to dispute on any front.
Thanks!
So what you’re saying is the readership here at the Autopian is more intelligent than the doofuses over at The Drive, correct?
All day long
The whole EVs are coal powered and are actually worse for the environment was always a bad faith argument. The people making that argument never actually cared if they were worse or not.
Exactly, and on top of that, no amount of real data is ever going to convince them otherwise.
Totally. There is nothing but FUD in this misinformation campaign and almost all of it comes from the lunatics in right wing media.
They clutch their pearls and cry over whatever mining is needed to get materials for EV batteries, but then these same ‘tards roll coal in the face of cyclists they see riding the side of the road.
There is zero point in arguing with these people because all they want to do is waste your time, not have a reasonable discussion. Like flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, or supporters of our pedo-president.
I object to your use of ‘tards. People with mental disabilities are still smarter than coal-rollers.
You are correct.
I mean it makes sense. A giant immobile emissions system would be easier to make it more effective than a bunch of small mobile emission systems.
More efficient and easier to control certain emission components with scrubbers and the like.
Suspect (but am to lazy to confirm) this study factors in the energy consumed producing and distributing gasoline.
‘What? Are you telling me that gasoline does not just come out of the ground ready to put into my car, at the locations where I purchase it?!?’
Of course it doesn’t. That’s why there are pumps.
Next you’ll be saying gas pumps require electrical infrastructure to function at all. Madness. There’s a little man in the pump who turns a crank, he’s the one who checks your credit card.
Luckily it does factor in the harvesting, refining, transporting and pumping emissions.
This is nothing new. Several years ago, the Union of Concerned Scientists did a similar study and came to the same/similar conclusions.
Though in spite of this, I fully expect the BEV naysayers to continue to make bogus arguments against BEVs.
As others have said, this finding could be inferred from data presented in previous studies. And also from anyone who has a basic understanding of the economy of scale principle. One big dirty powerplant is still more efficient than thousands or millions of small dirty ones (internal-combustion vehicles).
deleted
“One big dirty powerplant is still more efficient than thousands or millions of small dirty ones (internal-combustion vehicles).”
Not necessarily:
“Coal-fired plants in the U.S. have a fleetwide average thermal efficiency that hovers around 32.5% high heating value (HHV), according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That figure has undetermined uncertainty because of disparate data sources, but the figure is nonetheless useful for discussion purposes. The World Coal Institute estimates that the average global efficiency of coal-fired plants is 28%. State-of-the-art ultrasupercritical (USC) plants continue to push beyond the 40% thermal efficiency barrier.”
https://www.powermag.com/plant-efficiency-begin-with-the-right-definitions/
Vs:
“The bane of the internal combustion engine (ICE) has always been that from a thermodynamic view…the ICE is very inefficient. For example, Toyota today has reportedly achieved motors with a 41% thermal efficiency—which is a significant achievement when most gasoline engines have efficiencies of roughly 25-33%”
https://www.torquenews.com/14093/toyota-s-dynamic-force-engine-explained
Luckily coal plants are on life support. They simply can’t compete with ever cheaper renewables. Eventually, investors will be done with lack of ROI and the losses.
On behalf of all HMV Freeway owners, thank you for using an electric HMV Freeway in the lede image. (The tell is the uninterrupted lower panel behind the door.)
Old news. Here’s an article that cites similar studies with similar results from as far back as 2021: https://www.motortrend.com/features/truth-about-electric-cars-ad-why-you-are-being-lied-to
But it’s good to keep letting people know this.
But that takes away the typical EV haters standard line along with the mining of the materials. The rural people in my overlanding group think EVs are emasculating cultural genocide. Their entire rural lifestyle is gas powered They froth at the mouth in abject rage at EVs, solar and wind power
I suspect a lot of them are just shills who are either paid by or make their living in the oil industry.
The specific people I an talking about knowing personally are not working for the oil industry they are rural underemployed, undereducated, and constantly trying to prove their fragile masculinity with gas powered toys.
Hmmm, so just super insecure people? Count me out.
I don’t even think they’re paid shills, just people with a negative view on any sort of change whatsoever and will grasp at all straws to validate their opinion.
Reminds me of when we had solar installed and our neighbor asked skeptically “do those actually work?”
Me: “I mean, yes they work, according to their specifications, about as well as you’d expect given the relatively high shading we have, but the DC-DC optimizers on each panel help with overall array efficiency. (His eyes start to glaze over)… The payback period is probably going to be over a decade and who knows if there’s any real payback when factoring in the opportunity cost… but yeah, they’re, uh, making electricity…”
EVs are kinda the same. I think people that are really anti-EV assume they’re snake oil that’s being sold to people on the promise they’ll change your life/cure your cancer/get your kids into Harvard/get you laid/etc.
Our first EV hasn’t done any of that (YET…) but we’re still happy with the purchase, especially with “fuel” costs at a little over $0.02 / mile.
Would buying a 200k mile minivan and keeping it on the road for another decade have been a more financially sound decision? Yes, of course, but like most
peopleconsumer whores (and how!) shopping for new/lightly used cars, we probably weren’t going to do that.Thanks for that. I really like the.
26 Nissan leaf especially under 30K new.
For a moment I thought I e never owned a Nissan then I remembered the Mercury minivan. So memorable I can’t be bothered to remember or
Look up its’ name
Have they ever been challenged with the point that gas requires a massive network of infrastructure and support, often from urban centers and large companies, while electricity can be made off-grid from literally anything? If it can turn a generator, or heat water, which can then turn a generator…
The world got a lot easier to understand when I realized that most people are cosplaying their lives. The actual true off-grid types had solar and electric vehicles 30 years ago and were fermenting biodiesel a quarter century before that.
How lovely! And I still don’t care, until an EV is just as convenient for MY use case for a car, AND a company makes one that I find remotely desirable (the biggest killer of all), AND I need another car (I have five now, don’t hold your breath), I have no interest in buying one.
If anybody made a 30-mile PHEV I could stand to be in at a price that isn’t stupid (side-eye at the Volvo V60 Recharge, close, but the price was moronic), one would be a near perfect fit for me.
But the rest of y’all, please, be my guest. More gas for me (not that I use all that much to start with)! In the meantime I have done my part for Mother Earth already by not breeding.
It’s bigger than a V60, but we just got a Mazda CX-90 PHEV thanks to the massive promos Mazda has had. Not sure what you’d consider a reasonable price, but the incentives brought the sale price for a fully loaded one down below $45k, and it feels like a lot of car (both in size and equipment) for that price.
I find Mazdas hateful in general (excepting the Miata) and I don’t do CUVs, period. $50-60K would be fine. $72K for a Volvo wagon was just stupid when the sedan equivalent was ~$50K.
Buying an EV/PHEV would take my fueling cost down to about a third of what it is on gasoline. That’s a decent economic argument, but being somewhere where about 65% of the power is natural gas, it’s not particularly clean (see the light blue for most of the Southeast, which I’m guessing are the areas most widely served by NatGas — and to a much lesser degree, coal — but don’t have the diversification of wind power that the Plains have).
But it’s not really a major economic argument for me on the fueling side. That’s more about insurance and depreciation, which can be astronomical depending on the car.
On the ecology side, I’m also still hung up on the idea of how to allocate resources, which Toyota has mentioned a lot. Yes, on a car-by-car basis, the EV wins easily. But in the aggregate, what’s the best choice? Clearly getting 90% of people into hybrids is better than 20% EVs. It’s not a zero-sum game, but you never know when the resources are going to be constrained. We as a modern society, especially in the US, are not that great about long-term thinking and planning…and some people call collective well-being “socialism” and the conversation ends there.
The insurance part of it is no joke. I leased a 2015 Fiat 500e and to this day it’s the most expensive car I’ve ever insured by a pretty good margin. This is compared to a 2011 Z4, 2016 M4, and 2020 X3M40i, all with the same coverage through the same company the 500e had. With California electricity rates the savings vs fueling were there but even considering that about half of it was done at work for free, it wasn’t nearly as much as I’d hoped.
Though I don’t know the reason(s) why, when I traded my VW Atlas VR6 for my Honda Prologue Touring EV, my insurance actually went down! It was not the result I was expecting, but I’ll take it. Unfortunately, I had to upgrade my home’s electrical service and in the process discovered the meter was pulling away from the exterior wall and rusting from the inside. So… savings lost with a LOT of electrical work. Others results may vary.
Honestly, I’ve heard from multiple sources that if there aren’t enough actuarial samples for a specific car (Prologue sounds like one of those), then they’ll use the rest of the brand as a proxy — and Hondas are generally cheap to insure. I’d be curious to see how much Blazer EV insurance is in comparison.
I just added my 2022 X3 (near-base model, B48) and it cost more than our other two cars combined. My BIL’s Tesla is more than twice as much.
I made a point not to call the insurance company ahead of time since I would probably talk myself out of it. But it reminded me that “insurance band” or “relatively insurance cost” needed to be on a Monroney Sticker like yesterday. It really helps people shop.
“My BIL’s Tesla is more than twice as much.”
A while after I nixed the Model S purchase for myself, I researched why Teslas are expensive to insure.
And it seems that Teslas attract a disproportionate amount of drivers best described as ‘hooligans’… these are drivers that not only have a higher rate of collisions/claims, but also a higher rate of incidents like speeding tickets.
The only other brand that was worse was Ram… and Tesla was a close 2nd.
So it comes down to how certain vehicles/brands certain types of drivers/owners.
It’s also why Priuses and C-maxes are cheap to insure. A big factor is the type of driver they attract.
“Buying an EV/PHEV would take my fueling cost down to about a third of what it is on gasoline.”
In my case, my 2017 Ford C-Max Energi, when compared to my previous car (manual 2008 Honda Fit), has reduced my fuel consumption by about 47%. Part of that big reduction is due to the fact I live in the city and do a good amount of city driving. And part of that is due to me making full use of the plug in capability and the EV mode.
And in practical terms, it’s saving me around CAD$1200/year in fuel.
“But in the aggregate, what’s the best choice? “
Depends on the use case, what the owner can afford and what you want out of the vehicle.
In my case, I was geared up to buy a used 2014 Tesla Model S in excellent condition last year (before Elon lost his mind)… until I got the insurance quote of CAD$4500/year
The C-Max, by comparison, costs only around $1500/year to insure
The Model S has way better performance and style and has more trunk space too.
But for me, the c-Max is ‘good enough’ in these areas and I’m not willing to the pay extra insurance premium for ‘more’ to get extra capability I didn’t really need.
And it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because had I bought the Model S, by now I would have rebadged it as something like a “Mazda 6” or a “Pontiac G8”
Now others may value the vastly better performance and style more than I do… and would be fine with paying extra to get it.
Now having said that, it’s likely my next car will be a BEV as by that time, BEVs will likely be cheaper to buy, much more common and there will likely be BEVs out there that meet my needs that are cheaper to insure.
Why limit to hybrids or EVs? If society had invested more the past couple decades, we could have way more EVs, and basically everything else hybrids at this point.
I have zero respect for Toyota at this point, their claims of “we can make 90-100 hybrids for 1 EV” would indicate that hybridizing the ~3million vehicles they sell in the US every year would only require the resources of ~33,000 EVs, which isn’t much. If that was true, they should have been selling 90+% hybrids in the US (and worldwide) years ago. It ignores different battery chemistries for hybrid (power dense) vs EV (energy dense). It ignores that their typical FWD hybrid has 2 electric motor/generators, vs. 1 for a typical FWD EV. They didn’t invest, they didn’t bother, they just decided instead to put their energy towards poo-pooing a technology they didn’t develop.
Not the first such study to make this claim, but thanks for printing all the cool charts and graphs.
When I saw LDV I thought of the now defunct van company LDV (Leyland Daf Vans) which was originally part of British Leyland / Austin Rover / Rover Group whatever they were called that week.
It’s Spanish for “the DV”.
I think people who want to promote EV adoption need to re-frame the reasoning for purchasing and EV (or better yet, an EREV or PHEV). I’m one of the (probably few) people who bought my EREV for mostly practical purposes. Gas is expensive while electricity is cheap here. I can get my 50 or so miles of daily commuting done with 8 cents a kwh electricity, versus the 20 mpg I got with my previous daily at $4.50 a gallon. It just makes sense.
I do also respect the environmental considerations, it does feel nice driving a car that doesn’t emit anything powered by hydroelectricity.
You’re not wrong, but a tricky thing about that argument is in the most ev-charging-friendly area, it’s often not true. Specifically: southern California. Where gas and electricity both are among the highest in the country. My point being, there isn’t really a reframing that works everywhere. Easy charging? Not necessarily all that cheaper. Way cheaper? If you don’t have a house, not necessarily easy charging.
The thing that this study tells us is true wherever you are: the emissions numbers are way better.
Smaller capacity batteries in a PHEV or EREV really help the charging problem. That, and they can always operate as a decent hybrid when charging is not available. My Volt is more than capable of charging off a regular 110 outlet overnight. I did that for the first year or so of onwership, until buying a proper charger for a 220 outlet that was inside my garage. 110 outlets are much easier to source if you don’t own a house. Might not work for strictly street parking, but the reality is many Americans park in a place that has access to some sort of power source.
Everyone seems to be a little too focused on the idea of being able to fully charge an EV overnight. With a PHEV this can be quite important, but on an EV if your daily range requirement isn’t crazy one of your garage’s 120V outlets can be plenty! We’re averaging around 3 mi/kWh in our ID.buzz, so if we conservatively figure a 1 kW charge rate, that means 10 hours of overnight charging on that plain ol’ 15A outlet gets us at least 30 miles of range… and it’s even better on EVs that don’t look like a giant cinder block! Realize things are a lot more of a pain for apartment-dwellers.
Also, having a level 2 charger with a PHEV can be a game-changer in limiting hybrid mode operation. With our Pacifica in the winter we’d often be too low on juice by the afternoon to do a full day’s worth of errands on one overnight charge, but an hour or two mid-day with the level 2 charger would get us plenty of extra range.
Yes! I have the factory EVSE for my Bolt, and it is plugged into a 15a 120v outlet in my driveway. I have more than enough overnight charge to drive the ~40mi/day, plus another ~80mi each weekend without ever visiting a fast charger.
Agreed! But I have a feeling many people won’t be bothered to structure trips/commutes/etc around their charging time. I used to, before I got too lazy, charge to about 50% at the free chargers across the street from my work, which was more than enough to get home on. But I was saving like…50 cents, and putting up with a fair amount of hassle. I purchased a cheap level 2 charger, which can recharge me from completely flat to 100% in about 4ish hours. Typically it’s less, as I won’t have a completely flat battery unless its winter.
Sure but I thought we were talking BEVs and how your 8 cents/ kwh is super cheap.
Fair enough, I suppose I sort of went off on a tangent I hear from ev-skeptics on how difficult charging is. I don’t think about public charging ever really, it’s stupid expensive compared to plugging in when parked overnight. The re-framing argument certainly isn’t universal, but it does apply to lots of people and places in this country.
I’m currently shopping for an EV primarily because the most convenient gas station to my house NEVER has any paper in the darn receipt printers! Saving the environment is cool too, I guess.
Hah! I’ve heard from EV drivers how much they appreciate not going to the gas station anymore, but I actually really like convenience stores. I just appreciate not having to go to the gas station.