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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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.
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