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> With an electrical car you're starting with a CO2 debt for the production of the battery. In what way is this bigger than the production of the many componen

by bni 7y ago

> With an electrical car you're starting with a CO2 debt for the production of the battery. In what way is this bigger than the production of the many components needed in a gasoline car? Internal combustion engine (as an example) is not exactly CO2 natural to manufacture either.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>In what way is this bigger than the production of the many components needed in a gasoline car? Internal combustion engine (as an example) is not exactly CO2 natural to manufacture either. He literally said "for the production of the battery". Don't build a strawman. It's pretty well accepted that batteries are environmentally dirty to make. An ICE drivetrain and electric drivetrain sans motor are both big lumps of metal. I'm not sure what the difference is between the carbon footprint per pound of copper vs steel (both cars are gonna have a lot of aluminum but I'm assuming they're within an order of magnitude of even). In either case the manufacturing carbon footprint it pennies compared to the energy required to move the damn thing its whole life (except in the obvious case of the electric an in an area where electricity is low/zero cabon). I suspect the EV is going to be just barely more carbon heavy to manufacture simply because tech is at a point where the EV needs to place a much higher priority on weight (because it has the heavy battery to compensate for by being light everywhere else and reducing weight increases range) and that priority will result in different part choices throughout the car and that is where the extra carbon will come from (e.g. forged aluminum control arms and rims vs stamped steel). Obviously the EV is far superior to the ICE vehicle in operation so it would make that back quickly.
- bni 7y ago
  I also was talking about the _production_ of the component. Not sure what you mean. In any case if there is some comparison made between CO2 footprint of _production_ of an EV vs gasoline car, I would love to read that.
  - bni 7y ago
    There was some info in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_aspects_of_the_electric_car#Environmental_impact_of_manufacturing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_aspects_of_the_e... So production CO2 impact is bigger (no only because of the battery) but total lifecycle is somewhat less than gasoline. Best option is obviously no car produced.
    - greatpatton 7y ago
      Ok but the value used in the table is for a quite dirty electricity. The value used is 500gCO2/kWh when the OECD mean value in 2013 was already down to 430gCO2/kWh, and the value for my country (Switzerland) is at 24gCO2/kWh... Based on that you get completely different result based on where you leave.
      - kube-system 7y ago
        The first column, which is about production, doesn’t use that value.
        greatpatton 7y ago
        I'm not even talking about the first column as there is no such thing as a standard electric car, is it a Zoe or a Tesla model X? Moreover, production needs energy and the carbon intensity should be mentioned (so we suppose that they used the same value). A battery produced at the Gigafactory is going to have a smaller carbon intensity as most of its power supply is solar... By the way this study is very pessimistic. For example if I take the efficiency of the Tesla Model 3 (16.4kWh/100km) for the whole 150'000km we get 12.3 metric tons of CO2 (500gCO2/kWh), far from the 19 tons of the figure.
asdff 7y ago
Both are bad. Good is not buying a car when you have one in your driveway that does the trick. Better is never having a car in the first place and biking to a transit hub.

by bni 7y ago

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

>In what way is this bigger than the production of the many components needed in a gasoline car? Internal combustion engine (as an example) is not exactly CO2 natural to manufacture either. He literally said "for the production of the battery". Don't build a strawman. It's pretty well accepted that batteries are environmentally dirty to make. An ICE drivetrain and electric drivetrain sans motor are both big lumps of metal. I'm not sure what the difference is between the carbon footprint per pound of copper vs steel (both cars are gonna have a lot of aluminum but I'm assuming they're within an order of magnitude of even). In either case the manufacturing carbon footprint it pennies compared to the energy required to move the damn thing its whole life (except in the obvious case of the electric an in an area where electricity is low/zero cabon). I suspect the EV is going to be just barely more carbon heavy to manufacture simply because tech is at a point where the EV needs to place a much higher priority on weight (because it has the heavy battery to compensate for by being light everywhere else and reducing weight increases range) and that priority will result in different part choices throughout the car and that is where the extra carbon will come from (e.g. forged aluminum control arms and rims vs stamped steel). Obviously the EV is far superior to the ICE vehicle in operation so it would make that back quickly.

bni 7y ago
I also was talking about the _production_ of the component. Not sure what you mean. In any case if there is some comparison made between CO2 footprint of _production_ of an EV vs gasoline car, I would love to read that.
- bni 7y ago
  There was some info in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_aspects_of_the_electric_car#Environmental_impact_of_manufacturing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_aspects_of_the_e... So production CO2 impact is bigger (no only because of the battery) but total lifecycle is somewhat less than gasoline. Best option is obviously no car produced.
  - greatpatton 7y ago
    Ok but the value used in the table is for a quite dirty electricity. The value used is 500gCO2/kWh when the OECD mean value in 2013 was already down to 430gCO2/kWh, and the value for my country (Switzerland) is at 24gCO2/kWh... Based on that you get completely different result based on where you leave.
    - kube-system 7y ago
      The first column, which is about production, doesn’t use that value.
      - greatpatton 7y ago
        I'm not even talking about the first column as there is no such thing as a standard electric car, is it a Zoe or a Tesla model X? Moreover, production needs energy and the carbon intensity should be mentioned (so we suppose that they used the same value). A battery produced at the Gigafactory is going to have a smaller carbon intensity as most of its power supply is solar... By the way this study is very pessimistic. For example if I take the efficiency of the Tesla Model 3 (16.4kWh/100km) for the whole 150'000km we get 12.3 metric tons of CO2 (500gCO2/kWh), far from the 19 tons of the figure.

asdff 7y ago

Both are bad. Good is not buying a car when you have one in your driveway that does the trick. Better is never having a car in the first place and biking to a transit hub.