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For me, the experience of operating an electric vehicle is so much better than biofuels: refueling at home, simplicity of the drivetrain, and quietness/smoothne

For me, the experience of operating an electric vehicle is so much better than biofuels: refueling at home, simplicity of the drivetrain, and quietness/smoothness all are huge improvements over ICE vehicles. For your comparison between ICE and electric vehicles, are you counting the fuel processing and delivery infrastructure? Electric delivery infrastructure has very low emissions once it's in place, and production continues to get better (especially with distributed models like rooftop solar). Also, do you have a citation for "...lower energy requirements for building ICE cars versus batteries"? Yes, battery production is fairly intensive (economically and resource use), but (like I said above) the drivetrain is vastly simpler. I can't see how electric general aviation will become widespread without a monumental breakthrough. But it's hard to beat electric for ground-based transportation, IMHO.

svara 7y ago
This article addresses your questions: https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-help-to-tackle-climate-change https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-... Check out the "lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions" figures. It's really interesting in how it shows how different the total emissions are depending on which country you charge your electric car in. Also, depending on which electric car model you have, the lifecycle emission improvement over a conventional one might be relatively slim, depending on where and how much you drive it. By and large, electrics are at a substantial disadvantage due to both battery production and fuel cycle emissions, which then gets compensated over time as you drive the car. Edit: There's also this super interesting article on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_aspects_of_the_electric_car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_aspects_of_the_e... which is largely consistent with the Carbonbrief article.
- Tade0 7y ago
  I've seen the graph there and I find one thing troubling: Lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions for conventional and electric vehicles (by country) in grammes CO2-equivalent per kilometre, assuming 150,000 kilometres driven over the vehicle lifetime. That's less than 100,000 miles - rarely do cars travel less than that during their lifetime. Specifically in my country that would mean using the car for ~10 years, meanwhile the average passenger vehicle age is 14 years! As for biofuels: land and water usage are major hindrances. For example you need ~1800 liters of water to grow 1kg of soybean. Sure, you can use waste products for fuels, but they need to be waste from something.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    My gut feeling is electric cars may very well last significantly longer than internal combustion ones. Assuming a 100,000 mile lifetime range smells to me like someone putting their thumb on the scale.

svara 7y ago

This article addresses your questions: https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-help-to-tackle-climate-change https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-... Check out the "lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions" figures. It's really interesting in how it shows how different the total emissions are depending on which country you charge your electric car in. Also, depending on which electric car model you have, the lifecycle emission improvement over a conventional one might be relatively slim, depending on where and how much you drive it. By and large, electrics are at a substantial disadvantage due to both battery production and fuel cycle emissions, which then gets compensated over time as you drive the car. Edit: There's also this super interesting article on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_aspects_of_the_electric_car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_aspects_of_the_e... which is largely consistent with the Carbonbrief article.

Tade0 7y ago
I've seen the graph there and I find one thing troubling: Lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions for conventional and electric vehicles (by country) in grammes CO2-equivalent per kilometre, assuming 150,000 kilometres driven over the vehicle lifetime. That's less than 100,000 miles - rarely do cars travel less than that during their lifetime. Specifically in my country that would mean using the car for ~10 years, meanwhile the average passenger vehicle age is 14 years! As for biofuels: land and water usage are major hindrances. For example you need ~1800 liters of water to grow 1kg of soybean. Sure, you can use waste products for fuels, but they need to be waste from something.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  My gut feeling is electric cars may very well last significantly longer than internal combustion ones. Assuming a 100,000 mile lifetime range smells to me like someone putting their thumb on the scale.