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genuine question: electric cars have to be worse per car on the environment than a gas-car right now? reasoning: lets compare the carbon footprint of the enti

genuine question: electric cars have to be worse per car on the environment than a gas-car right now? reasoning: lets compare the carbon footprint of the entire supple chain (production, maintenance, etc) of electric and gas(petrol) cars; guess it is about the same (actually economies of scale for the gas-car side mean per gas-car footprint is lesser right now, but say electric cars also catch up at scale). Then we are down to efficiency diff of the power plant vs ICE. So would you argue: we will be renewable energy powered soon, at that point we need the electric car ecosystem? I understand the push to switch to renewables. But there's enough load on the grid to soak up the production and clean up the air.

ceejayoz 3y ago
No. https://environment.yale.edu/news/article/yse-study-finds-electric-vehicles-provide-lower-carbon-emissions-through-additional https://environment.yale.edu/news/article/yse-study-finds-el... > But a recent study from the Yale School of the Environment published in Nature Communications found that the total indirect emissions from electric vehicles pale in comparison to the indirect emissions from fossil fuel-powered vehicles. This is in addition to the direct emissions from combusting fossil fuels — either at the tailpipe for conventional vehicles or at the power plant smokestack for electricity generation — showing electric vehicles have a clear advantage emissions-wise over conventional vehicles. > “A major concern about electric vehicles is that the supply chain, including the mining and processing of raw materials and the manufacturing of batteries, is far from clean,” says Gillingham. “So, if we priced the carbon embodied in these processes, the expectation is electric vehicles would be exorbitantly expensive. It turns out that’s not the case; if you level the playing field by also pricing the carbon in the fossil fuel vehicle supply chain, electric vehicle sales would actually increase.”
- balaji1 3y ago
  great news. tho it is not intuitive. I will def take a look at the link later, but is it per car or per mile or some normalized comparison?

ceejayoz 3y ago

No. https://environment.yale.edu/news/article/yse-study-finds-electric-vehicles-provide-lower-carbon-emissions-through-additional https://environment.yale.edu/news/article/yse-study-finds-el... > But a recent study from the Yale School of the Environment published in Nature Communications found that the total indirect emissions from electric vehicles pale in comparison to the indirect emissions from fossil fuel-powered vehicles. This is in addition to the direct emissions from combusting fossil fuels — either at the tailpipe for conventional vehicles or at the power plant smokestack for electricity generation — showing electric vehicles have a clear advantage emissions-wise over conventional vehicles. > “A major concern about electric vehicles is that the supply chain, including the mining and processing of raw materials and the manufacturing of batteries, is far from clean,” says Gillingham. “So, if we priced the carbon embodied in these processes, the expectation is electric vehicles would be exorbitantly expensive. It turns out that’s not the case; if you level the playing field by also pricing the carbon in the fossil fuel vehicle supply chain, electric vehicle sales would actually increase.”

balaji1 3y ago
great news. tho it is not intuitive. I will def take a look at the link later, but is it per car or per mile or some normalized comparison?