6 ms·

This kind of things is what I think of when people complain about "hidden external costs of electric cars". Yes, recycling batteries is an issue. Conditions in

by ajuc 5y ago

This kind of things is what I think of when people complain about "hidden external costs of electric cars". Yes, recycling batteries is an issue. Conditions in rare earth mines are an issue. But when you want to "consider hidden costs" of EVs you should do the same for ICE cars. And there are lots of these, including building, maintaining and recycling supertankers, refineries, pipelines, oil wells on land and in the sea, causing oil spill every decade, keeping oil tyrannies in charge, fueling resource wars in 3rd world countries. But it's status quo so it doesn't count.

10xrubberduck 5y ago
It's crude oil, so this topic is a bit of a tanget. EVs will reduce consumption, but not make it zero.
worrycue 5y ago
Aren’t most power grids still powered mostly by fossil fuels. You have to pay for the fuel one way or another - i.e. if it’s not gasoline, it’s coal or natural gas; unless you charge only at peak solar/wind power generation and there is excess power generated, your charging will increase fossil fuel usage.
- ajuc 5y ago
  ICE have <30% efficiency. Usually about 20%. Turbines in powerplants have about 50% efficiency. Best ones up to 60%. Even if you get all your energy from fossil fuels it's better to burn them in powerplants than in small inefficient ICEs in cars that most of the time aren't even working in optimal conditions and start/stop constantly.
  - worrycue 5y ago
    I suppose my point is you are still burning fossil fuels - admittedly less of it - in most cases (for now) so you pay into the shipping of that stuff around too.
    - ajuc 5y ago
      Well, yes, but you need half the tankers, half the pipelines, half the refineries, etc.
  - beerandt 5y ago
    Once you account for transmission, distribution, charging, and battery inefficiencies, electrics fall to the same range or below ice vehicles. Especially using fast charging technology. And ironically, using grid renewables decreases relative efficiency, since they require more deployed infrastructure (collection, transmission, etc) per kilowatt-hour generated, since intermittency has to be factored in, as well as the embedded cost of whatever supplies power when the sun isn't shining and wind isn't blowing, whether that be hydro, batteries, natural gas peakers, or nuclear.
    - rektide 5y ago
      EIA estimates 5% grid loss. Charge cycles should be >85% efficient i'd hope (battery losses & charger losses) but probably not in all vehicles. Discharge I'd expect even better. Your guestimate sounds way way off to me. I'd also expect significant improvement over time. We're just getting good at GaN fets & SiC fets, which usually have a couple % boost to efficiencies versus classic semiconductor chemistries. Newer lower internal resistance batteries provide more power on demand and heat up less, again boosting efficiency. Where-as with cars we've had a number of historical events pushing us towards efficiency, huge incentives to make trucking or other major industries more efficienct, and yet we've seen dwindling returns on optimization investment: we're already very good at gas. Short of jumping to turbines or other radical leaps. You also havent accounted for energy costs to store, transport/distribute gas, in spite of holding that against electric vehicles. I expect that's probably >15% efficiency loss there too for gas. We could go deeper & assess the energy inputs required to produce these units of power, a gallon of refined low sulfur highway gas versus the kWh produced by solar, nuclear, natural gas, or, heaven forbid coal at the power plant. Again i feel like gas is rapidly losing efficiency marks versus the competiton. Off the cuff I'd expect >3x energy efficiency net.
- RobAley 5y ago
  Indeed, but even centralised coal fired electric generation produces less carbon per mile travelled than petrol/diesel engines. We're not there yet, but proper grid management and diverse renewable sources mean that an increasing number of countries are heading towards large parts of base load being renewable. In all scenarios (apart from not travelling at all) electric cars are a carbon win, and it looks like it will only increase.
- stefan_ 5y ago
  You can burn the gasoline in a central power station for electricity, feed that into the grid, charge your electric car and still go further than the same amount of gasoline in a petrol car. Without all the adverse health issues that exhaust in close vicinity to people causes.
aembleton 5y ago
Also the source of electricity to power the refineries. I found some figure on how much electricity is required for every litre of petrol and it wasn't insignificant - not as much as an electric car but uses but certainly not an order of magnitude less. Unfortunately I can't remember where I found that information.
- ajuc 5y ago
  According to [1] it's 200 Wh per gallon so 52 Wh per liter. Average car burns 10 liters per 100 km so that's 0.5 kWh per 100 km. According to [2] best Tesla uses ~15 kWh per 100 km. That's 30 times more. [1] https://www.cfr.org/blog/do-gasoline-based-cars-really-use-more-electricity-electric-vehicles-do https://www.cfr.org/blog/do-gasoline-based-cars-really-use-m... [2] https://driving.ca/features/feature-story/home-on-the-range-these-are-the-evs-with-the-best-driving-range#:~:text=Tesla's%20Model%203%20Standard%20Range,to%20Transport%20Canada%2C%20at%20least https://driving.ca/features/feature-story/home-on-the-range-....
  - aembleton 5y ago
    Thanks for digging out the links. I thought I read about it using more than that, but I've probably mis-remembered.
lm28469 5y ago
The hard truth is that both are unsustainable and extremely inefficient in the end. Transporting 70kg of meat in a 2 tons metal box, which is sitting unused 95% of its life, using 10 sq meters of public space. ~25% of the materials used on a car aren't recyclable and end up in a landfill. With an average lifespan of 12 years and 1.4 billion vehicles on earth that's a lot of waste. And that's not even talking about the current trend of ditching nuclear for intermittent energy sources while at the same time increasing our reliance on electricity
- rektide 5y ago
  there's still a problem of toting around multi-ton structures which seems semi-obscene, but i a little interested in decoupling some. a car as a self contained structure, with it's own motive power system, with extensive energy reserves, seems wasteful. especially given how much cars just sit around. i like to image the future as using things like the Citroen skate concept from a couple days ago[1], or other similar-ish strategies of using some kind of detachable tug or tractor that is summonable on demand. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28745304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28745304
- sva_ 5y ago
  You could make similar arguments about houses, offices, etc. Humans have a desire for comfort, being protected from the elements and such, and those desires aren't invalid. The argument of cars wasting space is a very city-centric view, in which people live in a very densely populated area. The surface area of this planet is around 500e6 km^2, of which about 1/3 is land-area (~166e6 km^2). Of course not nearly all of that is inhabitable, but if we assumed that every person owned a car, they'd all combined take 8e9 * 10 m^2 = 8e4 km^2 of space, or < 0.0005% of available land. Very, very rough estimation, but just to poke fun at the ridiculous claim that allocating 10 m^2 for every person's transportation device is wasteful. We got enough space, it's just our way of living stacked on top of each other, which is weird. Sure, it could be more efficient, but people's basic desires aren't numbers to do cold optimizations like that on.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
bell-cot 5y ago
You left off all the toxic and environment-degrading crap that the combustion (including combustion further up the supply chain) dumps into the air. Which at least has the "virtue" of spreading enough to also affect the well-to-do - not just those stuck living near the infrastructure, in the petro-kleptocracies, & such. (My biggest issue with the electric vehicle enthusiasts I have known is that they seem to assume that EV's have zero hidden external costs. It's as if all the extra electricity needed was going to come from magic elves at the North Pole, via wires in hyperspace that no NIMBY could see or object to. (Let alone fail at scale, say, after a hurricane.) And Santa was going to bring EV's for all the human who aren't well-to-do home owners like them. Plus practical charging options, etc. for those folks - including the "living in their car" homeless working poor.)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Aloha 5y ago
Oil is also a hidden cost of EV's, from energy to plastics, it's still a required component
- Aloha 5y ago
  I'm unclear why this statement is unpopular, its factually correct. There is virtually no technology on the planet that can be made without oil.
wil421 5y ago
I’m thinking about getting a plug in hybrid Jeep. There are tons of forum posts bashing them and complaining about lithium mining or what your electricity providers are using for power generation. They also complain that the diesel gets similar mileage as the 4xe. It’s missing the point entirely. Dino fuel production is a dirty dirty industry. My next car will be a hybrid and after that I expect they will be full EVs.
irthomasthomas 5y ago
The problem is over consumption, and shiny, new, must-have electric cars just encourage more of it. The majority of a cars carbon footprint comes from its manufacturing, so it's actually more carbon friendly to run your old ICE car for as long as possible, rather than trade it in for a new EV.

by ajuc 5y ago

10xrubberduck 5y ago

It's crude oil, so this topic is a bit of a tanget. EVs will reduce consumption, but not make it zero.

worrycue 5y ago

Aren’t most power grids still powered mostly by fossil fuels. You have to pay for the fuel one way or another - i.e. if it’s not gasoline, it’s coal or natural gas; unless you charge only at peak solar/wind power generation and there is excess power generated, your charging will increase fossil fuel usage.

ajuc 5y ago
ICE have <30% efficiency. Usually about 20%. Turbines in powerplants have about 50% efficiency. Best ones up to 60%. Even if you get all your energy from fossil fuels it's better to burn them in powerplants than in small inefficient ICEs in cars that most of the time aren't even working in optimal conditions and start/stop constantly.
- worrycue 5y ago
  I suppose my point is you are still burning fossil fuels - admittedly less of it - in most cases (for now) so you pay into the shipping of that stuff around too.
  - ajuc 5y ago
    Well, yes, but you need half the tankers, half the pipelines, half the refineries, etc.
- beerandt 5y ago
  Once you account for transmission, distribution, charging, and battery inefficiencies, electrics fall to the same range or below ice vehicles. Especially using fast charging technology. And ironically, using grid renewables decreases relative efficiency, since they require more deployed infrastructure (collection, transmission, etc) per kilowatt-hour generated, since intermittency has to be factored in, as well as the embedded cost of whatever supplies power when the sun isn't shining and wind isn't blowing, whether that be hydro, batteries, natural gas peakers, or nuclear.
  - rektide 5y ago
    EIA estimates 5% grid loss. Charge cycles should be >85% efficient i'd hope (battery losses & charger losses) but probably not in all vehicles. Discharge I'd expect even better. Your guestimate sounds way way off to me. I'd also expect significant improvement over time. We're just getting good at GaN fets & SiC fets, which usually have a couple % boost to efficiencies versus classic semiconductor chemistries. Newer lower internal resistance batteries provide more power on demand and heat up less, again boosting efficiency. Where-as with cars we've had a number of historical events pushing us towards efficiency, huge incentives to make trucking or other major industries more efficienct, and yet we've seen dwindling returns on optimization investment: we're already very good at gas. Short of jumping to turbines or other radical leaps. You also havent accounted for energy costs to store, transport/distribute gas, in spite of holding that against electric vehicles. I expect that's probably >15% efficiency loss there too for gas. We could go deeper & assess the energy inputs required to produce these units of power, a gallon of refined low sulfur highway gas versus the kWh produced by solar, nuclear, natural gas, or, heaven forbid coal at the power plant. Again i feel like gas is rapidly losing efficiency marks versus the competiton. Off the cuff I'd expect >3x energy efficiency net.
RobAley 5y ago
Indeed, but even centralised coal fired electric generation produces less carbon per mile travelled than petrol/diesel engines. We're not there yet, but proper grid management and diverse renewable sources mean that an increasing number of countries are heading towards large parts of base load being renewable. In all scenarios (apart from not travelling at all) electric cars are a carbon win, and it looks like it will only increase.
stefan_ 5y ago
You can burn the gasoline in a central power station for electricity, feed that into the grid, charge your electric car and still go further than the same amount of gasoline in a petrol car. Without all the adverse health issues that exhaust in close vicinity to people causes.

aembleton 5y ago

Also the source of electricity to power the refineries. I found some figure on how much electricity is required for every litre of petrol and it wasn't insignificant - not as much as an electric car but uses but certainly not an order of magnitude less. Unfortunately I can't remember where I found that information.

ajuc 5y ago
According to [1] it's 200 Wh per gallon so 52 Wh per liter. Average car burns 10 liters per 100 km so that's 0.5 kWh per 100 km. According to [2] best Tesla uses ~15 kWh per 100 km. That's 30 times more. [1] https://www.cfr.org/blog/do-gasoline-based-cars-really-use-more-electricity-electric-vehicles-do https://www.cfr.org/blog/do-gasoline-based-cars-really-use-m... [2] https://driving.ca/features/feature-story/home-on-the-range-these-are-the-evs-with-the-best-driving-range#:~:text=Tesla's%20Model%203%20Standard%20Range,to%20Transport%20Canada%2C%20at%20least https://driving.ca/features/feature-story/home-on-the-range-....
- aembleton 5y ago
  Thanks for digging out the links. I thought I read about it using more than that, but I've probably mis-remembered.

lm28469 5y ago

The hard truth is that both are unsustainable and extremely inefficient in the end. Transporting 70kg of meat in a 2 tons metal box, which is sitting unused 95% of its life, using 10 sq meters of public space. ~25% of the materials used on a car aren't recyclable and end up in a landfill. With an average lifespan of 12 years and 1.4 billion vehicles on earth that's a lot of waste. And that's not even talking about the current trend of ditching nuclear for intermittent energy sources while at the same time increasing our reliance on electricity

rektide 5y ago
there's still a problem of toting around multi-ton structures which seems semi-obscene, but i a little interested in decoupling some. a car as a self contained structure, with it's own motive power system, with extensive energy reserves, seems wasteful. especially given how much cars just sit around. i like to image the future as using things like the Citroen skate concept from a couple days ago[1], or other similar-ish strategies of using some kind of detachable tug or tractor that is summonable on demand. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28745304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28745304
sva_ 5y ago
You could make similar arguments about houses, offices, etc. Humans have a desire for comfort, being protected from the elements and such, and those desires aren't invalid. The argument of cars wasting space is a very city-centric view, in which people live in a very densely populated area. The surface area of this planet is around 500e6 km^2, of which about 1/3 is land-area (~166e6 km^2). Of course not nearly all of that is inhabitable, but if we assumed that every person owned a car, they'd all combined take 8e9 * 10 m^2 = 8e4 km^2 of space, or < 0.0005% of available land. Very, very rough estimation, but just to poke fun at the ridiculous claim that allocating 10 m^2 for every person's transportation device is wasteful. We got enough space, it's just our way of living stacked on top of each other, which is weird. Sure, it could be more efficient, but people's basic desires aren't numbers to do cold optimizations like that on.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

bell-cot 5y ago

You left off all the toxic and environment-degrading crap that the combustion (including combustion further up the supply chain) dumps into the air. Which at least has the "virtue" of spreading enough to also affect the well-to-do - not just those stuck living near the infrastructure, in the petro-kleptocracies, & such. (My biggest issue with the electric vehicle enthusiasts I have known is that they seem to assume that EV's have zero hidden external costs. It's as if all the extra electricity needed was going to come from magic elves at the North Pole, via wires in hyperspace that no NIMBY could see or object to. (Let alone fail at scale, say, after a hurricane.) And Santa was going to bring EV's for all the human who aren't well-to-do home owners like them. Plus practical charging options, etc. for those folks - including the "living in their car" homeless working poor.)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Aloha 5y ago

Oil is also a hidden cost of EV's, from energy to plastics, it's still a required component

Aloha 5y ago
I'm unclear why this statement is unpopular, its factually correct. There is virtually no technology on the planet that can be made without oil.

wil421 5y ago

I’m thinking about getting a plug in hybrid Jeep. There are tons of forum posts bashing them and complaining about lithium mining or what your electricity providers are using for power generation. They also complain that the diesel gets similar mileage as the 4xe. It’s missing the point entirely. Dino fuel production is a dirty dirty industry. My next car will be a hybrid and after that I expect they will be full EVs.

irthomasthomas 5y ago

The problem is over consumption, and shiny, new, must-have electric cars just encourage more of it. The majority of a cars carbon footprint comes from its manufacturing, so it's actually more carbon friendly to run your old ICE car for as long as possible, rather than trade it in for a new EV.