Everyone knows that electric vehicles are supposed to be better for the planet than gas cars. That’s the driving reason behind a global effort to transition toward batteries.
But what about the harms caused by mining for battery minerals? And coal-fired power plants for the electricity to charge the cars? And battery waste? Is it really true that EVs are better?
The answer is yes. But Americans are growing less convinced.
The net benefits of EVs have been frequently fact-checked, including by NPR. "No technology is perfect, but the electric vehicles are going to offer a significant benefit as compared to the internal combustion engine vehicles," Jessika Trancik, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told NPR this spring.
It’s important to ask these questions about EVs’ hidden costs, Trancik says. But they have been answered “exhaustively” — her word — and a widerange of organizations have confirmed that EVs still beat gas.
Over the longterm, and they also require a lot less maintenance because they don’t have to deal with mini-explosions from combustion generating excess heat and stress. The problem is in the battery, and the industry hasn’t even scratched the surface for solutions.
I see trucks carrying butane tanks all the time, where are the trucks carrying EV battery replacements? There aren’t because the industry wants to charge extra for fixed installation ones depending on capacity and charging capacity and there is absolutely no profit incentive that offsets other losses to standardize battery systems in a way they can be easily extensible or replaceable.
I see trucks carrying butane tanks all the time
That’s not the equivalent to battery replacements but to the power grid, which of course is yet another win for EV (since clearly distributing the energy source for vehicles over the power grid is safer and more environmentally friendly than needing huge trucks to carry it).
(I’d say battery replacements are closest to motor replacements in gas cars in terms of costs and effort. What about the environmental impact? -> That’s why it’s so costly. To mitigate environmental impact.)
Battery replacements really are not difficult, I’d seriously recommend not imagining obstacles where there are not.
Without special installations, charging takes several hours instead of a quicker battery swap (which you could take with you as extra weight). DC chargers cannot even be installed at how home due to their requirement. Swappable batteries are possible and would make EV cars adaptable to new and different battery technology, they are just not designed that way.
Some, like the XBus, talked about allowing it, and it is perfectly possible, it just isn’t going to come out of traditional car manufacturers who had to be dragged to develop anything EV or manufacturers like Tesla who want to make range a subscription feature. Let’s not even go into EV range extension trailer systems, which would be as effortless as swapping trailers.
This is already the present; we have power tools that already swap batteries on the fly. The problem is more complex as you add batteries and charge, but not insurmountable. I see the first application in truck fleets.
The problem is that in those cases it is still a proprietary market.
So, just so you know, the average EV battery weighs 1000lbs, and some all the way up to 2000lbs in something like the EV hummer. (Unnecessary I know). The cost to have a battery in an EV replaced currently sits around $5000 to $15000 off of warranty. So there are definitely obstacles. Along with letting the general public fry themselves trying to hook up a 400v battery. You’re not dealing with AA batteries. Battery technology is far away from something able to swap out yourself with the ease you may be thinking of.
So, just so you know, you can purchase 96V batteries that weigh less than 30 kg and can be connected in series to provide well over 400V, and if you want more range you can install bigger ones. EV ones weight that much because of the range, which is less of a factor if they can be swapped. They are made up of cells which are individually far below 400v, and there are standardized Anderson connectors that can safely connect and disconnect +600V and are used all the time. The cost of a battery is a non-factor is you are just renting them like you are sort of expected to do with butane tanks. 50V is the limit where you usually begin receiving a shock at, but 400V is not really considered high voltage and can be easily handled with the proper connectors and failsafes, like not swapping with a load.
It’s better than letting the general public fry themselves trying to fuel their cars with an ignitable combustible.You are not dealing with rubbing alcohol. /wildscaremongering
Battery technology is something I’m constantly swapping out for myself with ease, but that’s because I don’t make my own mental blocks. So do owners who retrofit gas cars to EVs. My goal is to retrofit an older EV car so that I don’t have to pay around $5000 to $15000 of overpriced proprietary batteries. It is a long-term goal, but be happy, it is not one that could be shared because the only way to do so would be in a society open to it.
Where are the trucks carrying the replacement petrol tanks for ICE cars?
You can get them at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=gas+tank
You aren’t making a point if you are trying to equate the distribution network for gas, which is so ubiquitous that there is no need for the sort of trucks that distribute butane tanks to EV batteries, which require specialized facilities for fast charging, which also deteriorates batteries faster, or otherwise take half a day of charging. EV battery swapping bans already exist for things like scooter rentals.
There are already standarized sizes, voltages, and ports using in autocaravans which could be connected in series ideally through BMS to provide the voltages EV cars would need and would even be simpler through already prepped trailer systems. Four 96V batteries (can go up to six) in series connected safely through Andersen connectors would be enough for a basic EV car, that’s less than 30kg LiFePO4 each, making it swappable on the spot, less dangerous than lithium, and open to a large market of providers.
I was always under the impression that the source of the electricity to charge electric vehicles matters greatly. Some areas use coal burning to generate power while others use hydroelectric.
Definitely better to charge an EV with clean energy. But it’s probably better to charge an EV with dirty electricity than it is to keep using a combustion vehicle.
IIRC a gas vehicle is something like 20% thermally efficient, whereas a coal/oil power plant can be up to 60%. So even if my EV is charging off oil or coal, I’m getting 3x the energy per unit of emissions compared to a gas vehicle (though who knows how that translates to miles of range).
It does matter in terms of how much less polluting it would be. Even in case of coal plant bonansa it reaches a point where it becomes less poluting than gasoline car . Alghtough much slower. Its also not realy important since renewables became so cheap that there is practicly no country that dosent have a fairly significant renewable share ( and by that i mean > 10 % ).
While true, it’s way better better for a power source to be inefficient than all consumers using inefficient/dirty appliances.
Once the aging coal plant is decommissioned in favor of a new nuclear reactor in a state like Wyoming, anyone using stuff like electric water heaters, heatpumps or electric bikes/buses/cars/scooters is instantly using 100% renewable power.
Even in screwed up states like Texas, there is so much load on the grid (and the fact they cannot buy power from other states) means that cheap solar panels, battery storage and wind are way faster to put up than expensive methane/natural gas generators.
I don’t consider nuclear as renewable, but they do reduce CO2 production.
If you got the most ridiculous EV (the Hummer) and drove it primarily in West Virginia (86% coal generated electricity), it would have worse lifetime CO2 emissions than an ICE.
Literally any other combination, and it’s better.
And it would still be worlds better than the worst ICE cars, it would only be worse than average.
can you really blame us?
let me run through the last 8 years of American history with four words, “we were lied to”. doesn’t matter from whom, doesn’t matter what. we’re constantly being lied to. truth is, it’s been true for longer than 8 years, but the last 8 have been especially transparent.
we’re learning that the upper echelon only trusts the American public to do three things; consume, produce, and die. if you can’t even do that for them, you’re removed as an undesirable.
so yeah, trust in the system is broken. it’s going to take at least a generation or two just to repair it ** if they work on it**.
I can’t fault anyone who’s untrusting of a system that continuously covers lie after lie with more lies.
8 Years?
How long did fossil fuel companies know about climate change?
How long did the fuel industry know about the effects of leaded petrol?
How long did cigarette companies know about links to cancer?
How long did pharma companies know about opioid addiction risk?
How long did social networking companies know about psychological manipulation?
How long did the sugar lobby know about their links to diabetes and obesity?
How long did the manufacturing companies know about PFAS and microplastics?I would say you have always been lied to.
Your forgot that plastic manufacturing knew it wasn’t recycled or recyclable.
I can’t fault anyone who’s untrusting of a system that continuously covers lie after lie with more lies
I can and will. Learn some basic critical thinking skills and apply them. Throwing your hands up and ranting about how “the system is broken” is mopey teenager shit.
Things are far more complicated than your whiny rant. They world is shades of gray rather than the simplistic “bad guy in black / good guy in white” situation that you characterize it as.
They all suck in their own unique ways. Automotive tires are a leading source of microplastics so EVs aren’t exactly a darling angel, but getting to work has become a 500 billion a year industry in America and framed in such a way that people are debating which car is better for the environment when they’re all horrible compared to mass transit. Because capitalism thrives on frivolity and consumption. That’s the real crux
Automotive tires are a leading source of microplastics so EVs aren’t exactly a darling angel
Could we not just make tires out of a different material?
By insisting on perfect, you are preventing incremental change.
You can buy an EV and have a country invest in transit. These do not need to be exclusive things
Sure. Or I can drive my old car very little and be pissed my country subsidizes a clearly inferior solution just to save the car industry instead of subsidizing way more efficient and environmentally friendly mass transit.
Edit- I think we’re agreeing now that I look at your other comments but I’ll leave this.
Incremental change would have been fine in the 1970s when the world should have instituted it, including incrementally reducing industry to absolute necessities like medical products, and individual developed world quality of life, to find homesotasis with our only habitat.
Now it’s smash the factories today, and accept the hundreds of millions dead breaking those poisonous supply chains, including possibly ourselves, for humanity to have any non-nightmarish future on a planet we terraformed to be hostile towards Human life for the next couple million yers.
But having absolutely failed to institute incremental change half a century ago despite warning, and absolutely failing to take drastic action now that we are just beginning to feel our irreversible fine work, our species clearly and resolutely chooses no future/nightmare susbsistance future, or at the very least there wouldn’t be a pop figure/pointless plastic crap factory left standing in the world. 🔥🤷♂️🔥
What I find the most ridiculous is what we’re doing: resolutely choosing death by actions, while still strangely preaching hope for a future. WuT a weird fucking species we were.
it’s not just capitalism, the US is a very spread out place compared to most other countries. if you want everyone to use mass transit you’re asking them to either 1) move into the city for similar commute times, or 2) spend an inordinate amount of time riding busses around the suburbs for the same distance commute. Neither are good solutions.
And also we have solved the “getting to work” debate with teleconferencing. why should we need cars or an even bigger mass transit system when most people can simply work from home?
Eh there are plenty of places that have less population density than the US but they do just fine with transit. It might be true that most US cities are poorly designed for transit, but the density isn’t a the reason.
if you want everyone to use mass transit
That’s the point, nobody wants to move people in the middle of nowhere to buses. Everyone wants these people to move to buses:
That’s like a half-full train’s worth of people if they single-seat, which they do, or 5-10 buses.
Imagine how cooler the place would be if that 16 lane road would be a 2 lane train track.
Someone has to see Not Just Bikes. Capitalism was the driver to the sub-urbanization process made after WW2 in the US, as a national economic policy to orient growth around building detached houses, private cars and suburban infrastructure (and secondary security considerations of reducing losses and damage in case of nuclear bombs in cities). The US was not a '‘very spread out’ place before WW2 (i.e. for the vast majority of its history), in fact cities like San Francisco were world leaders in mass transit, and trains were the axis of transportation of both people and goods (even existing suburbs were connected to trains, in whatever shape and size they come). The us cities spent and spend an enormous amount of money and debt to pay for all the road infrastructure, that even neoliberals say it’s not economically sustainable, and that money can also be better used paying for higher quality mass transit, not the tertiary thought they give it now (horrible buses that stay in traffic with the cars for the poor people that can not afford a car). Most people do not work remote all the time, even flexible / hybrid workers need to transport themselves some trips per week. Not to mention that full remote work may over time trickle to foreign countries that do the service cheaper, and the work remaining onshore is work that the owners need-want at least hybrid or on site workers.
The US was not a '‘very spread out’ place before WW2
no kidding, the population was also like a third of what it is now.
in fact cities like San Francisco were world leaders in mass transit, and trains were the axis of transportation of both people and goods (even existing suburbs were connected to trains, in whatever shape and size they come). The us cities spent and spend an enormous amount of money and debt to pay for all the road infrastructure,
yeah, mass transit within cities is a great idea and should be used as much as possible. I am not shitting on the general idea of mass transit. what I’m saying is, in the context of a practical daily commute, mass transit only works to a point, and a LOT of people live beyond that point.
Most people do not work remote all the time, even flexible / hybrid workers need to transport themselves some trips per week.
again, I’m not saying mass transit should never be used. what is the cost:benefit for the infrastructure to cover out to the suburbs? how much time is added to very long trips, and are people willing to deal with that?
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An even larger portion of America can’t afford them, so it doesn’t even matter.
Thank you. I can’t even afford a base model Corolla and used cars prices are through the roof. I might have to buy a paraglider or something.
Check out auctions, feds and locals are always dumping cars. They can be a decent bit cheaper than dealerships with better maintenance and lower prices, talking SUV with sub 20,000 miles on it for $2,000 cheap.
EVs have a lot of advantages over ICEs. It’s good that things are evolving finally to make EVs more than a niche. It however doesn’t remove the problem that they are still a car with all of those negatives, even if they pollute much less. In some ways providing an individual solution could harm efforts to reduce the number of cars on the road. It’s not a final solution, only a step to fix a few of the most obvious problems while retaining others.
Most US metro areas are just too spread out for mass transit to be a worthwhile solution for most people. The only solution to significantly reducing cars in the US is telecommuting; unfortunately businesses generally don’t like it, so we need to find a way for this to be encouraged by the government with subsidies or something.
Even if you live in an area where busses are, they’re slow and limited routes. Times are often inconvenient to work schedules. 1h 30m by bus, 50m biking, 3h 10m walk. A drive to work takes me 15 mins on average.
If you can drive to work in 15 minutes. Properly funded and prioritized transit can get you there in 10. Hourly bus service is not good transit.
Absofuckinglutely not
Those 15 minutes usually are on low traffic roads, getting you straight from the point you depart to the point you need to go. A bus route on its own would be at least 20 minutes if it has almost no stops. And that is without counting the travelling beyond the bus stops, because it is impossible to have a stop at every single building.
Those buses aren’t going to be driving faster than cars are allowed either.
A tram could go faster and have signal prioirty at intersectuons. Buses are the lowest tier and lowest quality of transit.
I’ve been wondering… Those batteries are really heavy and I’ve already had to explain to multiple customers that their ~1000kg heavier and ~100kw stronger engine (to get similar acceleration in a comparable model to the gas vehicle) is going to eat up tires twice as fast. If you were burning through a set of tires a year you better budget for two sets and the extra time to come in and have them changed every 6 months. And all those extra tires have to come from something. And shipped from somewhere. And then the roads need repaving more often because of both the extra weight and higher power output. 1000’s of km of road that will have repaving works going on twice as often. On top of reduced traffic throughput while roadworks are ongoing, is any of that taken into account when comparing environmental impact? How will the increase in airborne particles and toxic runoff from the roads affect the environment?
The vehicles weight a little more, but the move to solid state batteries will decrease weight by 30-50%. So that issue is already being addressed. Batteries will get better as we start to use them as competitive markets drive fixing such. We aren’t improving gas powered vehicles much anymore, they still kill people with their exhaust daily. Anyone going against the movement is for killing people and the environment. Dead stop.
People can be against EVs and still be for the environment. EVs still need massive amounts of parking and lanes, our zoning laws often mean we keep destroying natural land to pave these spaces. The EV will also prolong the suburban experiment which is massively worse for the environment compared to desner housing options. Some people view EVs as delaying some of the more pressing issuses related to tranportation and city development in our urban areas.
Personally I think EVs are better than ICE but i dont think just swapping them out is doing enough for the environment or to reduce our overall energy demands.
“they still kill people with their exhaust daily”
Exactly my point. The pollution from road and tires kills more people than exhausts on a modern vehicle. And now that we are moving to heavier vehicles that need to compensate with higher power we will have even more pollution and carcinogens killing us. I’m a car mechanic and take the bus+subway to work but on the rare occasion I bring my car to get some work done I get lectured by customers, about how I should buy an ev for 5x the cost of my current car while they trot around in their 4 ton beasts every day. I’ve used my current set of tires for 6 years. Many of my EV customers need new tires every 6-12 months. People need to change their habits before buying en EV unless all they want to do is virtue signal.
A Chevy Bolt weighs the same as a Toyota Camry. Why why would it need new tires every 6-12 months?
Also… Still before they eventually move to lower weight batteries over time as I originally stated.
The cost is also no where near 5x as much, I believe they are both ~30. Costs also come down with mass production of parts
Not surprising. There has been a pretty successful campaign by the right to paint EVs as worse for the environment because we get our electricity from coal (we barely get anything from coal) and mining; more expensive to fuel up (using the highest priced fast charging vs lowest price of gas); and worse from a humanitarian perspective (cobalt mining).
Things to refute this: EVs, even with coal power as their energy source, emit less CO2 over the lifespan of the vehicle compared with gas vehicles. Mining sucks and is indeed environmentally damaging but oil is also fucking terrible. The benefit of EVs is that the vast majority of a battery can be recycled whereas oil is single use. So to meet a consistent demand, we do have to ramp up mining but once the demands is met, mining can be scaled back dramatically.
For fuel costs, it’s easy to do the basic math but many don’t. I’ve seen people complain that their electricity bill will just skyrocket. When I suggested my parents get a battery powered riding mower, my mom thought they would be more expensive and that the electricity bill would be just as much as the gas bill. The price of the mower is the same and the electricity cost was about 1/15th of what has is and you don’t have to be riding around in gas fumes.
As for the humanitarian angle, the right obviously does not really give a shit. You could easily point out the atrocities that oil companies have done over the years. You could also point out that cobalt is being phased out. We could also do the mining here instead of having our done abroad. And there is the previous point that most of this just had to be done once then mining can be scaled back.
I heard about this, although the positive news is it’s mostly people who weren’t in the market for an EV to begin with so it doesn’t really impact EV sales or anything. Still hate to see disinformation win, though.
I’m a bit sad to hear Congress is more or less outlawing Chinese cars here, though. Affordable EVs are far and few between and it really feels like the national security rational they’re giving thinly hides the real reason of preventing competition for US car makers, as if they even planned on making a decent EV.
Yeah, Congress blocking affordable Chinese EVs completely betrays their messaging about EVs. It is clear they don’t care about the planet, EVs are just another opportunity to transfer public funds to the donor class (billionaires)
Hybrids actually have the best longevity and repair scores, however.
The longevity of the vehicle actually does count towards its ecological impact, because if you have to replace it sooner, you’re creating a bigger ecological impact of creating a short-term use device before more energy has to be used to recycle parts of it.
So, at the moment hybrids win that battle. I think its simply because hybrids have been around longer, not because they’re special. Give it about 10-15 more years and I think you’ll see a flip to EVs taking over that spot from hybrids.
EDIT: Also, the bad build quality of Teslas and the early adopters of EVs mostly being Tesla owners also means that the sample of hybrids having better longevity and repair scores is impacted by Tesla specifically being so bad. If you cut out Teslas from the equation, I bet EVs and hybrids would probably have similar longevity and repair scores.
I’d like to see a source that says hybrids, with two separate engines plus the mechanical linkages between them plus the transmission, have better repair scores than a pure EV with no transmission, no mechanical engine, and a simpler drivetrain.
I’m skeptical that hybrids with ICEs and transmissions at their heart really do have more longevity than BEVs and electric motors. ICE and especially hybrids are inherently more complex than BEVs, and have many more moving mechanical parts to wear out over time. So while BEVs may technically be “harder to repair”, there’s actually much less to repair in the first place. not to mention less maintenance like dozens of oil changes over the life of the car.
Where did you get that info about the hybrid longevity, an episode of Comedy Bang Bang? Could it be due to hybrids not running the gas engines full-time (less wear hours of usage per mile) ?
The only hybrid I’ve driven tends to run the engine more as a power generator than to drive the wheels, and often uses no gas engine. I could see how the engine would be less worn from that kind of usage vs driving the wheels all the time.
