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Note that this publication only seems to be analyzing the costs post-production. It's important to consider how damaging the cobalt and other rare mineral minin
by eyegor 7y ago
Note that this publication only seems to be analyzing the costs post-production. It's important to consider how damaging the cobalt and other rare mineral mining is for the sake of batteries, which are essentially scrap after 10 years or so by current standards. Older ice engines can basically be rebuilt forever as long as they're maintained. Certainly alternative battery technologies will emerge in the future but the current ones seem problematic.
Back in college a few years ago I wrote a paper trying to compare the environmental cost of maintaining and operating 90s cars vs buying and replacing electric car batteries measured by co2 emitted (typically written co2e). This was written around 2012 but I found the break even around 10 years. That is, electric cars were measured as a fairly flat line (not fully flat, assuming some non zero co2e for electricity generation). There was of course a ton of hand waiving but the gas car was assumed to have a y intercept near zero and to be operated for 10 or 15k miles/year (can't remember exactly but I know it was in that range). I would link it but I'm currently not in the same country as the hard drive that might still have a copy of it. Of course I would prefer to have a peer reviewed publication on this, but I had a lot of trouble researching the manufacturing/mining estimates back when I wrote it.
- growlist 7y agoJeremy Clarkson mentioned a study on Top Gear years ago that showed (as I recall it) that a new Jeep Wrangler would, all things considered, have lower lifetime environmental cost than a new Toyota Prius, the gist of it being that all the high-tech and advanced materials in the Prius had a massive environmental cost that far outweighed its lifetime hydrocarbon frugality when compared to a car as simple to manufacture and being made of basic materials like the Wrangler. For some reason, people are particularly hostile to countervailing evidence when it contradicts previously swallowed feelgood propaganda. Edit: 'Using the average CO2 output of the European electricity network, Ernst concluded that an electric car using a 60kWh battery made in Europe would have to travel some 700,000 kilometres (435,000 miles) before it is “greener than an average petrol car”. However, Ernst also says that a fully renewable European grid would reduce the EV’s CO2 lag to just 30,000km (18,640 miles). ' https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/analysis-just-how-green-are-electric-vehicles https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/analysis-just-ho...
- Gibbon1 7y agoTrouble with a Jeep Wrangler is it's a utterly shitty unreliable vehicle. Also if you want to trust basic balance sheet economics, a Prius is cheaper than than Jeep Wrangler. 'splain that.