Clarkson and others always ask the question, ‘where does the electricity come from?’
There are other stats that say it’s only better after a certain amount of miles driven or that the Lithium quarries produce significant amount of pollution.
What and where do these claims come from, how true are they and how false are they?
In: Engineering
If you compared a brand new EV to a brand new gasoline then yes! But if you’re comparing a brand new EV to a used gasoline car, then it’s a mixed case where the gasoline car is probably better since it’s already produced and not generating “new” emissions in the production cycle of the vehicle.
They are also far simpler, and more efficient, fewer moving parts and electric motors are over 90% efficient.
This is a massive question known in engineering as life cycle analysis. How much carbon fossil was burnt by the guy to deliver coffee to the person who was in charge of choosing the cars’ colour offerings and how is he most likely to be buried when he eventually passes (divided by his time providing coffee presumably and the value of that coffee) or some shit like that.
It’s a complex issue and properly trained engineers will quickly dismiss the coffee getters contribution if it’s appropriate to do so. It’s also an easy thing to mock using disingenuous language. It’s also a valid question, just make sure you know what you’re asking and be ready to sort through potential answers.
If you burned one unit of fuel in a car you can travel some distance. If you took that same unit of fuel and burned it in a power plant and used that power to charge a modern electric car you could travel a greater distance. Industrial power generation is a fair bit more efficient than internal combustion engines and because it’s not inside a moving vehicle you can tack on loads of other technology to reduce the impact of the combustion of that unit of fuel such as NOx scrubbers and the like.
This is an incredibly well studied topic. When brand new, the total environmental impact of producing an EV is a slight negative when compared to a typical ICE. This deficit is attributed almost entirely to the battery.
However, in the span of a few months, an EV will overcome this deficit and rapidly leave the ICE in the dust, because the ICE also has problems like, “Where does it’s fuel come from?” Not only do ICEs produce emissions during operation, but the extraction and refinement of petroleum products is also dirty.
The disingenuous part about the anti-EV argument is that they load up the EV with all the environmental baggage of lithium battery production, then they stack the deck against them by considering only coal sourced electrical power. Meanwhile, when the topic turns to ICEs, they only want to consider tailpipe emissions. It’s just dishonest.
And I am a massive car and motorsports enthusiast. Most of my childhood memories are of working on cars with my dad. I worked as a mechanic right out of high-school. I love cars, I love big V8 engines, and I love automotive racing.
The things is, I’m not a damn dirty liar, and I am capable of accepting that these things I love probably won’t exist forever. I’m just glad for the time that I’ve had with them, and I look for ways to be excited about EVs as well. The more I learn about electric drivetrains, the more fascinated I am by them. Electromagnetic propulsion is cool too!
Latest Answers