Do EV's actually do anything beneficial for the planet?
Do EV's actually do anything beneficial for the planet?
I've seen a lot of posts here on Lemmy, specifically in the "fuck cars" communities as to how Electric Vehicles do pretty much nothing for the Climate, but I continue to see Climate activists everywhere try pushing so, so hard for Electric Vehicles.
Are they actually beneficial to the planet other than limiting exhaust, or is that it? or maybe exhaust is a way bigger problem?
Good luck convincing people who live outside dense population zones to bike 3 hours to work. And "just move" is not an option. Think rents and home prices are bad now? If everyone moved to cities imagine the price gouging.
E: for the record I'm all about public transportation, it's just unrealistic to think we completely ditch cars. They are too useful so EVs make sense going forward
It is the nuclear power vs fossil fuels vs renewables debate all over again. Nuclear is much greener than fossil fuels but comes with its own challenges regarding cost, safety and waste disposal. Renewable energy like solar, wind and hydro are better than nuclear but the point is that nuclear and renewables are not enemies rather they are allies who have to band together to beat fossil fuels.
Public transport is like renewables, the best solution but one which needs time because years of underdevelopment and under-funding means that they are not as developed as they should be.
EVs are like nuclear. Not the perfect solution but have the capability to serve areas and use cases that public transport (renewables) can't. There are issues like them costing more than the alternatives and that the disposal of waste produced by both is a problem with an unsatisfactory solution.
ICE vehicles are like fossil fuel energy plants. The worst of the worst with regards to their effect on the planet. Their only advantage is that they offer convenience.
So I think we should stop the narrative that EVs(nuclear) are bad because the are not the best solution at hand but rather combine increasing adoption of both EV(nuclear) and public transport (renewables) to combat the true threat that is ICE(fossil fuel energy plants).
First priority is to get rid of cars in general. Try to use bicycles and public transportation. If you don't need a car to get to work, consider a car share service to replace your private car/private parking space.
EVs probably have around 1/10th the lifetime emissions of a gas car, which is still really significant.
#1 - Burning fossil fuels (automobiles, specifically) kills 250,000 Americans a year. It causes a TREMENDOUS amount of pollution that is hugely impactful to health and quality of life
#2 - The only way to make our energy usage sustainable is to centralize production - ie you have to make all automobiles electric to start before the transition of the grid to renewables has a more dramatic effect. BTW, 40% of energy production of the US in 2023 was renewable. So our grid is getting cleaner and cleaner by the day.
#3 - Climate change. It is the most existential threat to our survival in our lifetime, bar none. We should do everything we can to leave the planet better than when we came. And right now we are failing miserably.
FYI, for all the naysayers saying EVs are "as" or "more" polluting than their ICE counterparts, this has long been debunked. Please do not listen to the Russian/Chinese propaganda or the comments of idiots that have no ability to analyze data.
EVs are good for the environment overall but you are not going to fix climate changing by buying more things.
Most of the criticism towards EVs comes from the idea that buying the shiny new thing is a net positive when it's actually less harmful than buying a traditional car.
Tldr: if you are going to buy a car, buy an EV, but don't just buy a new car just to switch to EV if you don't need it.
I like to think of it as "better than".
They're not perfect, but they're better than what people might do instead.
I could swap my older car for a second hand EV, which would be an environmental improvement.
The current car does 50-ish MPG, about 1.5 miles per KWH. An electric would do 4+miles per KWH, which going in reverse is 100+MPG.A bigger improvement might come from me getting the bus/train/bike everywhere, which is where the fuck cars argument comes from.
But I am disorganised, a bit lazy, and I don't want to shepherd 4 people onto the train, paying £150 to go 100 miles.So for me, slightly better is better than no improvement at all.
The energy used can be green, depending on what the national grid is up to that day. But it's always more green than burning dinosaurs.
And the reduction in brake dust is always a nice plus.EVs are much better for the environment than ICE vehicles. Mass transportation is much better still.
In case you missed it, co2 is causing global warming, which has the ability to extinct mankind in the future. EV don't produce any co2. Some idiots will talk about indirect emissions, but the point is moot. You don't remove indirect emissions by removing EV, you remove them by cleaning power grid and logistic lines.
EV are a necessity on a short term basis. Developing public transports and alternative to cars are also a necessity.
Even looking only at the healthcare costs of the exhaust-induced unhealth, you see massive economic benefit.
It's the old star-topology vs decentralized-mesh-topology question...
It is much more efficient to have 1 giant windmill, rather-than a zillion little ones.
It is much more efficient to have electric-trams than the number of cars required to move the same number of people.
As for electric-cars vs internal-combustion-engine-cars, the relocation-of-cost from always buying gasoline, to just plugging-in at night, is something that many people have openly adored.
The Engineering Explained yt channel bluntly stated that if you're in the city, it's a no-brainer.
Rurally, or in the arctic, you can be screwed, however.
I've no idea what the equation is for how much exhaust per mile-driven is produced, between
- star-topology fuel-burning electric-grid powered cars
- mesh/distributed-topology of the same number of I.C.E. cars
but it wouldn't surprise me if it is significantly more efficient, just due to getting the maintenance up to industrial standards.
( sloppy maintenance costs, and some companies push sloppy maintenance, not changing oil frequently enough, e.g. in order to produce engine-wear, forcing required-replacement.
Some yt mechanics call-out this practice. )
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No product is good for the environment.
But an EV is a hell of a lot better than an ICE.
The cynical take is that EV's don't exist to save the world, they exist to save the car industry.
The more neutral take is that between an EV and an ICE car, the former is preferable.
Fact of the matter is that in order for many people to use a private car to go from anywhere to anywhere, you need a shocking amount of space and resources to make that work, especially if you compare that to expecting most people take those journeys by mass means, by bicycle or by foot.
So if you propose electric cars as the silver bullet solution for climate change, in a place where walking, cycling and transit are systemically kneecapped and held back, and nothing is done to solve the latter part, then the environmental impact of EV's is a drop on a hot plate.Here's what the Union of Concerned Scientists has to say about electric vehicles. In short, they're a win.
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/electric-vehicles-are-cleaner
They're better than ICE cars so provide a path for improvement on the existing installed base for transportation whilst not requiring people to significantly change their habits or large public investment.
However they're not the environmentally best solution for transportation in urban and even sub-urban settings: walking, cycling and public transportation (depending on distance) are vastly superior realistic solutions from an environmental point of view in those areas (they're seldom very realistic in the countryside, hence why I'm being very explicity about it being for urban and sub-urban areas).
However making cities and, worse, suburbia, appropriate for those better alternatives requires public investment (and we're in the late ultra-capitalist max-tax-evasion neoliberal era, so it's very much "screw collecting taxes and spending that public money for the public good"), time and even changes in housing density in many places (US-style suburbia is pretty shit at the population density and travel distance levels for realistic commuting by bicycle or public transport).
So Electric Cars are a pragmatic environmental improvement in such areas (and pretty much the only realistic solution outside them) and one where the economic elites don't have to pay taxes like everybody else since unlike for public transportation the cost of upgrading is entirelly born by consumers.
other than limiting exhaust, or is that it?
Gee, when you say it like that, it makes extinction-level events sound not so bad! It is That Bad, so that would be the most direct answer.
The important thing to note is that even though some electricity is generated from fossil fuels, EVs eliminate the path-dependency that ties transportation to fossil fuels.
They are two separate solutions for different phases of the problem.
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Buying electric vehicles over internal combustion engines now is practical because most of us don't live in a reasonable commuting distance to our jobs.
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Vote for politicians that support pedestrian friendly zoning practices, remote work, and mass transit for the future so that less people are stuck in that situation in 20 years.
Doing only one of them doesn't fully solve the problem, you either continue to pollute now or you are stuck polluting, albeit less, forever.
I'm sure it annoys people that both are necessary and if you happen to live in a situation where the first is unnecessary for you, it can look like it's not necessary for everyone. But most Americans live at least 20 miles from their workplace so the vast majority of us can't just wait for policy solutions.
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The best solution is 0 cars anywhere.
A more realistic solution, is to replace planet-murdering cars with planet-kicking cars.The math that I have seen on when an EV becomes better for the planet compared to an ICE is kinda all over the place, mostly due to how the power is generated.
Where I live, with a high amount of coal, buying a used ICE vehicle makes more sense than buying a new EV. If we drove more than just our weekly grocery trip, it might make more sense.
Doing "pretty much nothing for the climate" is hyperbole, I think. It's hard to say what the net climate benefit EVs might have, because our system is so complex. The numbers I found show that electricity and heating accounted for the highest, single category of CO2 emissions, at around 15 billion tons annually in 2020. Transportation came in second at around 7 billion tons. If we could wave a magic wand, and instantly do a 1:1 replacement of ICE cars with EVs, it would put a big dent in that category's emissions. It would also spike the electricity and heating category. Would the increase be less than the savings in the transportation category? LIkely, and the benefit would increase as more renewable electricity sources come online.
But even if we further used that magic wand to instantly get all of that new electricity for EVs from renewable sources, that still wouldn't touch the vast majority of emissions, in which car-centric lifestyles play a large role, e.g. manufacturing, construction, land use, even electricity and heating. So saying that EVs will do pretty much nothing for the climate is inaccurate, but so is saying that they're a big part of the solution. They're just incrementally better, and the size of the increment is arguable.
I think the push-back is mainly directed at that line of magical thinking that says that all we need to do is switch to EVs to drive to the grocery store, bring re-usable bags, and get Starbucks coffee in compostable cups, and the environment will be saved.
It's the same thing with recycling, companies trying to sell the idea that climate change is a personal failing of every single person even though said companies are responsible for like 90% of carbon emissions.
The problem with EVs is that we already have a better fix for this: public transit. Like trams and trains are both electric and would solve the microplastics caused by tires. Car companies are just pushing EVs to make a profit as always, the percentage of adoption required to effect climate changes isn't happening in the next several decades so just fix the issue centrally with proper public transit and actually effect climate change before we all die.
A lot of good answers here. One made me think about the good aspects, not just the game reduction aspects.
Electric cars are creating additional sources of funding for battery research, improvement of the electrical grid (there was a movement to get rid of central power generating and just use generators at each house), and electric generation smoothing.
Better batteries faster will help humans to make better use of the minerals we pull from the earth and the electrons we set in motion. (Imagine a battery peaking plant with 1980's batteries.)
Improvement of the electric grid could limit wildfires caused by them.
Smoothing electric grid drawls moves generation from peaking with natural gas to more base load, hopefully with something better than coal.
In terms of Carbon, they produce about one third of the damage which an equivalent internal combustion engine car would.
There's a lot of factors that go into the final figures, like the specifics of the vehicle and the source of the energy used to charge it.
It's a bit like vaping instead of smoking. Neither are good for you but one is clearly worse than the other.
If they want more people to switch to EVs specifically, they absolutely need to try to make some changes if they can.
Chargers: In a world where many people are living in old apartment buildings and condos, people are going to need public chargers. I don't just mean enough for 20 people. If we want a big societal switch, we need to be able to assure people that they won't encounter what happened in Texas recently. 60 chargers is still pretty rough if your city has half a million people in it.
Cost: MANY people can only afford used vehicles. This is not only because of the up-front cost. Parts for repairs can become a massive factor when deciding what type of car to buy. Even if you can get a used car for 6K, you might not go for it if you know that certain important repairs will cost you up to 20K.
Design: There are concerns for a lot of people with things being too screen-based. Some people like knobs that you can change without having to look away from the road. How many functions will be stuck behind a subscription? Will an update brick your car? Is it ok to tow normally, or will it sometimes require a special flatbed that most people can't afford? Do we have the battery fire thing under full control yet?
If every single car eventually becomes too expensive, driving will either become a "caste" thing, or people will put things together at home that might be even worse for the environment. Shoddy DIY repairs can also count for this.
In the USA, out of every economic sector, transportation creates the most GHG emissions [EPA1], and the majority of that is from passenger vehicles [EPA2]. Significant portions of the industrial sector's emissions come from refining automotive fuel [EPA3]. US total GHG emissions are down around 20% from their peak in 2005, but almost all of that has come from the electrical power sector [CBO1][CBO2]. Vehicular pollution has dramatic direct health impact on top of GHG emissions [HSPH].
Transport emissions are the long pole in the tent for the US. Solutions to that will be the focal point of US climate strategy for the next decade. Barring the demolition of the majority of US housing to re-establish walkability, our two best solutions are EVs and public transit.
EVs cut lifecycle emissions by about 55-60%. [UCS][ANL][MIT][ICCT][BNEF][CB][MIT][IEA]
Public transit cuts lifecycle emissions by... about 55-60%. [IEA][AFDC][USDOT]
Neither is a magic bullet. Both get their asses kicked by bicyles (and to a lesser degree, microcars). Both get better with increased passengers per vehicle. Both can be fueled with renewable energy for additional reduction. Both can be manufactured with renewable energy for additional reduction. Both take surprisingly equivalent amounts of raw resources and energy. EVs need batteries that are carbon-intensive under current practices, but rail needs large quantities of steel which is equally carbon-intensive under current practices.
There are a ton of factors I can barely touch on here, so here's a rapid-fire overview. Public transit offers unique advantages from an urbanist perspective and the liveability of cities [ST], but that's objectively different from sustainability. The US has such low average ridership/occupancy that our busses have more emissions per passenger mile than our cars [AFDC1][AFDC2], and that was before the pandemic -- it's even worse now [NCBI]. Low ridership can be partly attributed to the incompatibility of American suburbs with public transit -- which could be a major roadblock because 2/3rds of Americans own detatched homes [FRED], representing $52t [PRN] in middle-class wealth that they will likely defend with voting power. Climate solutions will need to maneuver around this voting bloc. I personally think individual EVs and intercity rail are complementary technologies -- the more cheap (short-ranged) EVs are out there, the more people will lean on public transit for long trips. Heavy rail gets way better efficiency per vehicle mile than light rail or commuter rail and I have no clue why [APTA][ORNL], but I'm not as impressed by light rail as I expected to be. Since public transit and personal transport leverage different raw resources and face different challenges to adoption, we will achieve the most rapid decarbonization if we do both at the same time.
TL;DR
This is a huge, huge question, and anything short of a dissertation would fail to answer it objectively. My best answer is that the most effective solutions to climate change are diverse, engaging multiple technologies in parallel. EVs are a piece of the puzzle, but not a one-size-fits-all solution.
I once calculated that my upper-middle class EV (2.1 tons in kerb weight, sadly) is better for the environment (indeed, carbon neutral since I'm only using clean energy) starting at 70,000km of driving usage. I'm at 20,000km now, so I'm already 28% there :)
Depends on what part of the planet you're talking about. America and Europe sure, but any sovereign nation with Lithium, well watch out, freedoms coming. Im just glad Trump was too dumb to make his Latin American coup work.
I mean "nothing" is beneficial to the planet besides just stopping dumping CO2 into the air and toxic bs into the land and ocean. There is NO substitute for stopping corporate pollution, I mean nothing. That said, electric cars have more perks than just environmental impact, they do marginally help and they're cool. but in reality, you have to learn to tease apart what actual climate action looks like VS corporate adoption of "green washing" their products and putting the responsibility on the avg citizen. But that is infinitely hard for some people to come to realize.
Here is a source with lots of detail on how carbon emissions compare: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/23/do-electric-cars-really-produce-fewer-carbon-emissions-than-petrol-or-diesel-vehicles
The tl;dr is that EVs have lower lifetime emissions. If the relevant grids use low-carbon sources then emissions are far lower. (But not as low as bicycles.)
Just like universal healthcare, these systems only really work to their potential with full participation. If all (commuter cars at least) go electric, the incentive is then there for business/funded science to solve the related problems with generating electricity. We've already seen advances in leaps and bounds in recent years, and that's all with the drag of relatively small participation.
So the answer to your question is that they are currently less beneficial than they could be, but the potential of the platform is clear and superior to internal combustion engines. Emergency rooms triage patients based on severity of injuries - if a patient has a gunshot wound, a broken leg and signs of an early stage cancer, you start with the gunshot wound. People planted firmly in the position you represent with your question (not saying that's you, OP) are the ones that start to boast that medicine is a failure if the treatment for the gunshot wound doesn't also cure the cancer - it's the first and most important step towards the solution in that moment.
It is all about people who either are arguing in bad faith, or are focused on perfection.
"Pretty much nothing" is an exaggeration, but they aren't wrong in stating that it isn't the ideal solution. You've pobably already seen them talk about how shitty the Lithium mines are for the environment, and if you're still getting your electricity from, like, coal plants or other environmentally unsustainable places, well, you're not emitting CEO2, but the plant that outputs the electricity that fuels the car is now outputting more. It's still better than nothing, though
My personal issue with EVs isn't so much that they aren't perfectly ecofriendly, but that the biggest pushers of EVs are still capitalists with an industry to make money. The best we have in terms of solutions is better civil engineering for walkable cities and a robust and efficient public transport system. 5 EV buses is better than 50 EV cars. Thing is, companies making EV cars still want to make money. They have no incentive to actually push for public transport (Some like Tesla seem actively hostile towards the idea), as they would make more money on 50 electric cars than 5 electric buses. Considering how much power companies have in politics, especially in the US (which is from where I'm speaking), things don't look good
I'm certain that EVs are less of an issue in, like, the Netherlands, where public transport is better, and people can just bike everywhere. Again, though, I am speaking as an ignorant American, seeing how things are playing out here. Either way, EVs are generally preferable to ICE cars, but they are a far-cry from the actual solution they are being marketed as
I don't drive much so my favourite EVs are trains, ebikes and electric buses.
You can run a fleet of ev on regenerative energy, that doesn't work with converting engine vehicles. BUT the problem is it makes no sense if we just exchange all the ce cars with ev ones. We need to stay away from individual transportation solutions towards public transportation.
Pretty much; although, (more importantly IMO) it also removes their economic support from oil companies. GHG's are still produced when obtaining lithium for the batteries, aluminium for the body, etc. There's as well the break and tyre particles that are still major pollutants regardless... despite all that it's still better then using a gas engine.
It's also not easy to convince someone to change their preferred mode of transport and EV's provide an acceptable (and in many ways superior) alternative. Not to mention taking the bus or riding a bike just isn't feasible for some people, similarly some places (like Japan with three separate voltage standards) don't have the necessary infrastructure and capacity to support EV's.
They're marginally better but we don't need marginally better, we need to get our shit together right now.
Lithium mining is not good for the environment.
We rape Africa for those metals the in a similar way we've been raping the middle east for oil. I guarantee once the US starts mandating EVs and the majority start to transition over there will suddenly be some reason we need to have a vested military presence in Africa, with the possibility of wars centered around countries with these metals that we need.
It's better for air quality and would do a shitload towards giving us some spare time to process climate change, but they come with their own baggage of bullshit in terms of environmental damage.
The #1 problem with EVs is not the energy and materials used to create the battery because that is eclipsed many times over by not using gas during the battery’s life- the biggest problem is that the entire car becomes e-waste as soon as the battery is damaged or degraded in any way.
Short term EVs aren't making a lot of difference due to the higher energy costs of manufacturing them. Long term cars are just a terrible transportation method, especially within cities, and we really need alternatives so that we can get rid of most of them.
On the other hand as renewable energy sources take over the grid the energy costs of manufacturing EVs will be less relevant to climate change, and it's just going to be faster to switch power plants and new car manufacturing over than it will be to rebuild the entire transportation infrastructure on all of Earth, especially North America. That time difference will have a large effect on how bad things will get by the end of this century. EVs are dumb, but also a necessary stopgap.
Exhaust and noise are still a problem. It won't do much on a climate level, but even if we manage to reduce car usage having the remaining cars be electric is useful. Both noise pollution and particulate pollution have negative effects on human health.
Maybe it's just my bubble but most climate activists I see are primarily pushing for renewable electricity generation, and consumption reduction across the board in all aspects of life. They are usually also against cars generally but it's a secondary subject.
It's a diversion tactic. The vast majority of greenhouse emissions come from large companies.
They want us to argue about irrelevancies amongst ourselves to distract from that fact.
Are EVs a net positive for the environment? Maybe. But that's like asking an atomic bomb survivor what they were wearing that day.
it's actually a pretty simple to figure out carbon footprint for gas powered cars. Gasoline is just a bunch of carbon atoms loosely linked together. You add heat, you add oxygen, and the carbon molecule bonds break in favor of bonding with oxygen to form carbon dioxide/monoxide, and release energy in the process. That's how combustion works. None of the carbon is destroyed in the process, all of the gasoline just gets converted into a gas; a greenhouse gas. Its why cars are the largest source of emissions in the US.
All of that is cut in an EV. With renewable energy sources there doesnt have to be any greenhouse emissions with EV's.
I’m no expert, but I’ve asked the same question myself.
First off, I’ve been told that yes, exhaust from I.C.E. vehicles is very much a HUGE environmental concern. That being said, however- due to issues with current electrical generation, means that unless large steps are taken toward sustainable green energy, running the current grid for enough to cover charging needs produces a comparatively close amount of pollution per mile driven. On top of that, is the issue with the rare-earth minerals needed to manufacture the batteries used in current EVs, which are extremely damaging to mine, especially in increasing quantities. And finally- once they are worn out, there is no reliably safe way to dispose of those batteries. And the current lifecycle of them averages around 3-5 years, so as more are disposed of, that impact on soil and water tables is projected to skyrocket.
So it’s a many-fold issue, and at the end of the day they aren’t necessarily WORSE than ICE vehicles, but they are also not really any better.
As for why people THINK they are super environmentally friendly? In a word- marketing.
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