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A battery lasts 1000-3000+ cycles. That takes the emissions of a car down to 6-2% of an equivalent ICE for the life of that battery. Most cars fall apart before

A battery lasts 1000-3000+ cycles. That takes the emissions of a car down to 6-2% of an equivalent ICE for the life of that battery. Most cars fall apart before the battery reaches that point so recycling of the cells will likely occur but still that is a monumental saving if you can charge that car from clean power. All of those emissions can be replaced with electrical replacements, from the machines that extract and move the material to the processing and making the batteries. So as electrical vehicles take over that number will drop to nothing. There are already replacements for a lot of the big machinery that extracts from mines that can run all the time in the US and other places in the world. It will obviously take an amount of CO2 emissions to transition but the emissions aren't intrinsic to the process but rather the power we are using to make it happen. A common complaint about Solar panels is they take quite a bit of power to make, which is true but if you also look at any of the solar manufacturing plants around the world they are not surprisingly getting their power from their own solar panels as well. When we study the emissions of these things we need to think more about what can not be easily replaced yet, like steel manufacture. Oil also has similar externalities in emissions too from all the extraction and moving of barrels of it around the globe, its one of the largest industries in the world for emissions.

ProllyInfamous 3y ago
>A battery lasts 1000-3000+ cycles. Modern lithium typically wears out due to time, not cycle count (when used outside of extremes).
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  Still, if recharged once a day, that's 3 to 10 years, what's completely in line with the time durability. The time degradation will just bias the lifetime into the short end of that interval. If you have an electric car, and don't use it often, then your numbers will be worse. But if you use it weekly (what is normal for lightly used cars), you need about an year and half to reach the OP's number and become better than the next best alternative.
  - wlesieutre 3y ago
    A charge cycle is one full cycling of capacity, such as 0% to 100% once, 30% to 80% twice, or 70% to 80% ten times. I'd be surprised if there are any EV drivers consistently doing a charge cycle every day, outside of commercial vehicles where the battery size was picked to not be any bigger than its daily route.
    - jandrese 3y ago
      It's not that simple. Going from 100% to 0% is far more damaging to the battery than going from 80% to 70%. This is why most EVs are so conservative with their battery usage, they're trying to avoid needing replacement batteries before the rest of the car has fallen apart.
      - wlesieutre 3y ago
        Right, just generalizing on how charge cycles are counted, but I'd probably file regular 0-100s into grandparent comment's "(when used outside of extremes)" The average American drives around 13500 miles per year[1], so supposing a car with 250 mile range that's 54 charge cycles, just about one charge cycle per week. The vast majority of that will mostly be with under 20% of a cycle per day, plus a handful of outlier days every year with longer trips. 1000 cycles at 54 cycles per year would be 18.5 years, and 3000 cycles would be 55.5 years. I'm no expert on lithium ion battery aging, but that sounds like it's well into the range where age is more of a problem than cycle count for an average driver. [1] https://www.caranddriver.com/auto-loans/a32880477/average-mileage-per-year/ https://www.caranddriver.com/auto-loans/a32880477/average-mi...
        SoftTalker 3y ago
        My newest car is 20 years old. I refuse to spend what a new car costs when a car costing 10% of that does the job. I don't know what I will do for cars when the battery craps out after 10 years. More and more I think the whole EV concept is a way to make cars that don't last as long but cost just as much if not more, so that automakers can extract more money from their customers
- anonuser123456 3y ago
  I haven’t heard of this effect. What is the timeline of degradation from just chronological aging?
  - philipkglass 3y ago
    I don't know if ProllyInfamous is correct about electric vehicle batteries degrading more from age than from cycling, but it is an effect that shows up in batteries. The terms to describe the effects are "cycle life" and "calendar life." Increasing calendar age can degrade batteries that just sit there without deliberate charge or discharge processes. An example would be an old package of Duracell batteries, never used, that sat in the closet for decades and lost power before they ever went into a remote control. Those batteries reached the end of their calendar life.
    - nostrademons 3y ago
      Also note that this affects battery chemistries other than lithium as well. My (lead-acid) car battery is currently dead. The battery itself is 7 years old. The previous battery died at 8 years old. The service tech at the last replacement said that's pretty typical, and (ICE) car batteries are usually slated to be replaced at the 8-year mark.
  - PaulKeeble 3y ago
    The manufacturers certainly list it as part of the expected life. Lipo batteries for example are guaranteed for 6000 cycles at which point they will have 80% of their rated capacity and a minimum of 10 years. So they are fairly certain one of those two criteria is going to lead to the battery no longer meeting >80% capacity. But that is the other thing about them only lasting 6k cycles or 10 years, its not like the battery is expected to be dead just lacking a fifth of its capacity. What is happening with batteries out of old EVs today is either cell scavenging and remade into new batteries or just racking the whole battery into grid storage. Per KWH they pretty cheap once they are that degraded but still quite usable in other applications.
    - 3y ago

ProllyInfamous 3y ago

>A battery lasts 1000-3000+ cycles. Modern lithium typically wears out due to time, not cycle count (when used outside of extremes).

marcosdumay 3y ago
Still, if recharged once a day, that's 3 to 10 years, what's completely in line with the time durability. The time degradation will just bias the lifetime into the short end of that interval. If you have an electric car, and don't use it often, then your numbers will be worse. But if you use it weekly (what is normal for lightly used cars), you need about an year and half to reach the OP's number and become better than the next best alternative.
- wlesieutre 3y ago
  A charge cycle is one full cycling of capacity, such as 0% to 100% once, 30% to 80% twice, or 70% to 80% ten times. I'd be surprised if there are any EV drivers consistently doing a charge cycle every day, outside of commercial vehicles where the battery size was picked to not be any bigger than its daily route.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    It's not that simple. Going from 100% to 0% is far more damaging to the battery than going from 80% to 70%. This is why most EVs are so conservative with their battery usage, they're trying to avoid needing replacement batteries before the rest of the car has fallen apart.
    - wlesieutre 3y ago
      Right, just generalizing on how charge cycles are counted, but I'd probably file regular 0-100s into grandparent comment's "(when used outside of extremes)" The average American drives around 13500 miles per year[1], so supposing a car with 250 mile range that's 54 charge cycles, just about one charge cycle per week. The vast majority of that will mostly be with under 20% of a cycle per day, plus a handful of outlier days every year with longer trips. 1000 cycles at 54 cycles per year would be 18.5 years, and 3000 cycles would be 55.5 years. I'm no expert on lithium ion battery aging, but that sounds like it's well into the range where age is more of a problem than cycle count for an average driver. [1] https://www.caranddriver.com/auto-loans/a32880477/average-mileage-per-year/ https://www.caranddriver.com/auto-loans/a32880477/average-mi...
      - SoftTalker 3y ago
        My newest car is 20 years old. I refuse to spend what a new car costs when a car costing 10% of that does the job. I don't know what I will do for cars when the battery craps out after 10 years. More and more I think the whole EV concept is a way to make cars that don't last as long but cost just as much if not more, so that automakers can extract more money from their customers
anonuser123456 3y ago
I haven’t heard of this effect. What is the timeline of degradation from just chronological aging?
- philipkglass 3y ago
  I don't know if ProllyInfamous is correct about electric vehicle batteries degrading more from age than from cycling, but it is an effect that shows up in batteries. The terms to describe the effects are "cycle life" and "calendar life." Increasing calendar age can degrade batteries that just sit there without deliberate charge or discharge processes. An example would be an old package of Duracell batteries, never used, that sat in the closet for decades and lost power before they ever went into a remote control. Those batteries reached the end of their calendar life.
  - nostrademons 3y ago
    Also note that this affects battery chemistries other than lithium as well. My (lead-acid) car battery is currently dead. The battery itself is 7 years old. The previous battery died at 8 years old. The service tech at the last replacement said that's pretty typical, and (ICE) car batteries are usually slated to be replaced at the 8-year mark.
- PaulKeeble 3y ago
  The manufacturers certainly list it as part of the expected life. Lipo batteries for example are guaranteed for 6000 cycles at which point they will have 80% of their rated capacity and a minimum of 10 years. So they are fairly certain one of those two criteria is going to lead to the battery no longer meeting >80% capacity. But that is the other thing about them only lasting 6k cycles or 10 years, its not like the battery is expected to be dead just lacking a fifth of its capacity. What is happening with batteries out of old EVs today is either cell scavenging and remade into new batteries or just racking the whole battery into grid storage. Per KWH they pretty cheap once they are that degraded but still quite usable in other applications.
  - 3y ago