how are electric vehicles better for the environment when they pollute so much to make and still have to have the power created by polluting, and they pollute majorly when the massive battery has to be disposed of? I know it sounds loaded but I recently had my other big objection explained away by one of these and so want to revisit this.
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They’re not particularly worse to produce than any other car. Keep in mind that cars already have pretty big batteries to begin with.
The power they use can pollute if it’s made with non-green sources (as a lot of power is). But power plants are considerably more efficient than car engines at capturing that power (a quick economic proof: if they weren’t, charging your car would be more expensive than buying gas for it). Power plants also have sophisticated equipment to capture a lot of the worst pollutants, but that equipment would be quite expensive and heavy to tack onto a car. That means less pollution per mile driven. And of course that power often *can* be pulled from renewable sources where they’re available.
the energy needed to power an electric vehicle comes from a plant which can deal with biproduct/pollutants much better than just spiting it out the back of your moving vehicle
ideally that power comes from wind, solar or hydro, even nuclear
The best thing you can do for the environment is to keep the car you have, regardless of what it runs on. Apples to apples electric cars are currently only slightly better for the environment. However, if there is a bigger push for them, technologies will improve etc etc. So, if you are in a position where you need a new car, electric is better for the environment long term.
Electric cars do create more carbon emissions when they are being produced than a gas car. But electric cars pollute less when you drive them and the difference is made up within a few years and the reduction is enough that Electric cars reduce emissions overall. Electric cars run off the electric grid…so how efficient they are is tied to the grid. Places that use more coal and fossil fuels to make electricity leads to electric cars being less efficient than if they are charged on a more renewable energy grid. But either ways, even electricity from a coal fired power plant is more efficient and controllable than millions of individual gasoline engines. Having one giant power plant is easier to make efficient than all those individual polluting engines.
I’m not an engineer, so I’m not going to comment on the mechanics. But I can comment from an economic perspective.
Whether we’re there or not, we have, or eventually will have, the capability of generating clean renewable energy. But companies, especially in the US, will not invest in risky R&D and product development without a market force. By purchasing EV’s, solar panels, wind power, and other green technologies, you (the consumer) signal to organizations there is a market. As the market segment grows, so does production. With increased production comes better more efficient technology and economies of scale. Eventually EV’s will be cleaner and better even from a lifecycle perspective.
No matter what technology we use to produce a car it will pollute. So the question is not If they pollute, but how much they produce compared to one another.
If you look only at the carbon production from manufacturing and driving the car, you see that EV produce more carbon emission during manufacturing, but less during driving. It will take a certain amount of time before an EV end up producing less carbon over their lifetime than a internal combustion engine. It depend on several factor.
[Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RhtiPefVzM) a good video explaining the situation. A small EV would take between 0.5 and 3.5 years of average driving to become less polluting (depend on what numbers you use), while a bigger one might take between 2 and 5.5 years. It also depend on where you live since not every region produce electricity the same way. In this video he show that if you use the upper estimate of pollution for EV, buy a larger EV and live in a coal heavy state like West Virginia, it could take up to 17 years to offset the pollution of your EV.
In that last example, an EV would be worst than a standard ICE car. But this was a very specific example, the vast majority of situation, the EV pollution would be offset in between 1 and 5 years of driving.
We are not 100% sure of what is exactly the real lifespan of battery pack. Most warranty are not at 8 years, but the real lifespan is most likely between 10 and 20years. Remember they don’t give warranty if they are not sure that this is the lower limit. The average age of cars in the US is 12years and only 25% of car stay on the road after 16 years. Even if we can’t say it with 100% confidence right now, most EV battery pack most likely will last as long or close to the longevity of standard car.
Like any relatively new technology, improve come at much greater speed than with mature technology like ICE. Longevity of battery pack increase over time, new type of batteries are tested to replaced our current technology, new method of recycling are improving, etc. EV right now are less polluting than ICE car in most situation, but not all. And it can only improve as the technology improve and the electricity used for those car become less polluting.
In terms of powering the vehicle itself, by using electricity we are able to use a combination of green power sources like solar, wind and hydro power, and where our power is generated with fossil fuels, it is created at a power plant level. Power plants have been designed to be as efficient as possible, so they waste less of the energy contained within the fuel to things like heat, and convert more of it directly into electricity.
The engine in a car is much less efficient in operation than a power plant, so wastes more of that energy.
We also gain other benefits like the ability to charge slowly overnight – because it takes time to adjust the output of a large power station, this means during off peak hours we can often be generating more electricity than we are using, and by charging using this surplus electricity we can make use of what would otherwise be waste.
In terms of the production of the vehicles themselves, the question is whether it is more environmentally friendly to produce a traditional engine and drivetrain, or an electric motor and batteries. Here traditionally the electric vehicle has been the worst option thanks to some of the (harder to produce) materials required to make the batteries, however there is still a significant environmental cost in producing a car using an internal combustion engine.
The gap has been narrowing as the electric market has grown and technology improved, and any loss during the production stage is normally recouped through the better (environmental and monetary) operating costs over the lifespan of the vehicle.
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