3 ms·
A £1000 car will have net lower emissions than a new zero emissions car. Buying a new car is definitely worse for the environment
by crispyporkbites 7y ago
A £1000 car will have net lower emissions than a new zero emissions car. Buying a new car is definitely worse for the environment
- rebuilder 7y agoWhat calculation goes into that?
- crispyporkbites 7y agofor every new car you buy a car has to go to scrap. It's unlikely that the emissions in creating the new car are less than the difference in emissions from running the old car vs the new car. So if you really want to save the environment stick with your old car until it falls apart and buy cars that would otherwise go to scrap. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/2010/sep/23/carbon-footprint-new-car https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20...
- rebuilder 7y agoI meant what numbers are you using. Googling around, I got 9-17 tons of CO2 to produce a new car. Let's assume 17. For a mid sized gas-powered car, I found an estimate of 0.133 kg CO2/km driven, and for an EV, 0.043 kg. Let's not count the CO2 the beater car's production put out, that's old news. Let's assume a new car gets driven 200 000 km before it is scrapped. For 200 000 km driven, we get these CO2 footprints: Beater: 26.6 tons CO2 EV: 25.6 tons CO2. So for those values, it's really pretty similar! The devil is in the details though - 17 tons of CO2 is a pretty rough estimate for production, one would hope to get more than 200 000 km out of a new car, and the means of electricity production has an effect on the EV's footprint per KM.