"You're Being Lied to About Electric Cars - Science has repeatedly shown EVs are better for humans" - Motortrend article

[mkhuffman]

I also have not heard anyone say BEVs are worse for the environment. I have heard they are not as good as some people claim they are.

The fact is you are moving a very heavy object from point A to point B, and it requires a lot of energy to do it. And no matter what you do, there is a significant environmental impact just doing that.

A BEV definitely negativity impacts the environment, it just has different impacts, some of which we have not fully experienced yet. Like a landfill full of toxic waste from batteries that are worn out. That is an impact we won't be able to accurately measure for another 10 years or more. And nobody knows how bad it will be.

That said, I purchased my car because I believe BEVs are better then ICE in almost all measurable ways, regardless of the environmental impact.

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[Garbone]

I don't care. I'm not trying to save the world, I'm only trying to save my wallet from having to buy gasoline. Mission Accomplished.

Same for the solar panels on my roof. They are there to save my wallet from the local utility. The fact that they also provide power for the Mustang is a bonus.

Could not have stated it better myself.

 

[River Rat]

Wait, if I cannot trust memes on the internet, or the unsolicited advice parroted back to me, what can I trust?

My daughter did that! But she only did it once

 

[JCHLi]

My daughter did that! But she only did it once

Not going to try to replicate the results?

 

[dtbaker61]

Not going into details about how many years it takes to offset the pollutions created during EV manufacturing, as this is a complicated topic, not all pollutants are made equal, and nothing can replace the health of people working in cobalt mines. Also contrary to popular political opinion, CO2 is not a pollutant, in fact, vegetation is currently experiencing CO2 starvation.
BTW, science never tells anything, scientists do (who can be corrupt, biased, unqualified, etc.), but more often it's the journalists interpreting scientists, or cherry picking what to report and what not, or something worse than that.
So putting that aside, It's sufficient to say that it's a moot subject due to the fact that BEVs in their current form will never be anything but a small niche. Perhaps FC vehicles will manage to do better but they need to find a replacement for hydrogen, which has too many problems to be a viable energy source. The best we can hope for is the new generation of fuel cells that will work on oil or natural gas dramatically increasing efficiency and also reusing existing infrastructure.

Regarding the main sources of power, this map tells it all:

again.... data source, dates, and presentor/presentation is key.

for many years NM electricity production was about 60% coal fired, 20% nuke, 10-15% gas peaker plants, and just a tiny bit of wind/solar.

I know for a fact that NM no longer has coal as primary fuel source; we just shut down the coal mine in the four corners are, and shut down the nearby coal-fired power plant. We still pull about 20% from a nuke facility in AZ. The plan is to use more NG temporarily while more wind/solar/battery comes online. I think we are up to around 20% wind/solar statewide now. State goal is 100% renewable by 2045; I dunno if we'll hit that, but there are pretty aggressive incremental targets to shift % to wind/PV. The goal is to 'export sunshine rather than oil/gas from the Permian basin'.

 

[dtbaker61]

The article is missing mention of power loss between the plant and making it into your battery. Estimated at 6% loss to your house, and 10-30% for your charger (for L2 vs L1). It’s a detail that lingers with me because I’m just using a L1 charger since I don’t drive enough to need more. But it means my MME is only marginally better than my previous Prius.

best thing for my carbon footprint has been SARS-CoV2, and transitioning to nearly full time telework! Although I wouldn’t mind a chance to drive my MME a bit more.

Electricity use by BEVs only gets 'cleaner' if the generation shifts to wind/solar/hydro.... either by the Utilities, or with co-generation on homes and commercial property

 

[MW1515]

I also have not heard anyone say BEVs are worse for the environment. I have heard they are not as good as some people claim they are.

The fact is you are moving a very heavy object from point A to point B, and it requires a lot of energy to do it. And no matter what you do, there is a significant environmental impact just doing that.

A BEV definitely negativity impacts the environment, it just has different impacts, some of which we have not fully experienced yet. Like a landfill full of toxic waste from batteries that are worn out. That is an impact we won't be able to accurately measure for another 10 years or more. And nobody knows how bad it will be.

That said, I purchased my car because I believe BEVs are better then ICE in almost all measurable ways, regardless of the environmental impact.

I agree with you to a point, but lithium and the other components of an EV battery are not used up during the process of creating energy, in contrast to gasoline which is burned, never to be seen again. There are a number of companies working on recycling lithium ion batteries, which is an industry still in its infancy. The build up of lithium dendrites on the anode is what causes a battery to become less and less efficient over time. Maybe this is a problem that can be solved and batteries could last 5 million miles, who knows? But even if not, the materials in the battery can be used over and over. I don't think the build up of spent batteries in land fills is nearly as much of a problem as some people say.

 

[MW1515]

The article is missing mention of power loss between the plant and making it into your battery. Estimated at 6% loss to your house, and 10-30% for your charger (for L2 vs L1). It’s a detail that lingers with me because I’m just using a L1 charger since I don’t drive enough to need more. But it means my MME is only marginally better than my previous Prius.

best thing for my carbon footprint has been SARS-CoV2, and transitioning to nearly full time telework! Although I wouldn’t mind a chance to drive my MME a bit more.

True, however oil needs to be transported all around the world in tankers, then refined, then transported in trucks to gas stations around the country. I would say this is analogous to the electricity "lost in the lines", and in my opinion probably much worse.

Plus, people with solar panels on their roof have cut out a lot of this loss, which you cannot do with gas.

 

[MW1515]

Not going into details about how many years it takes to offset the pollutions created during EV manufacturing, as this is a complicated topic, not all pollutants are made equal, and nothing can replace the health of people working in cobalt mines. Also contrary to popular political opinion, CO2 is not a pollutant, in fact, vegetation is currently experiencing CO2 starvation.

"CO2 starvation" is a phenomenon that explains the transition from plants using C3 to plants using C4 as their mode of photosynthesis over the course of the last 65 million years. I don't believe there are any reputable scientists that think that replacing all the CO2 "lost" over 65 million years in the last 100 years is a good thing for plants, humans, or planet Earth. Returning to what the atmosphere was like 65 million years ago would almost certainly not be comfortable for humans.

 

[devmach-e]

Also contrary to popular political opinion, CO2 is not a pollutant, in fact, vegetation is currently experiencing CO2 starvation.

CO2 is absolutely a pollutant at the levels we are currently are experiencing & continue to dump into the environment. This is not in dispute. It has nothing to do with politics. It is just simply a fact according to the people who study these things.

 

[mkhuffman]

CO2 is air fertilizer for plants.

 

[mkhuffman]

I don't think the build up of spent batteries in land fills is nearly as much of a problem as some people say.

The key part of your response is "I think".

We don't know, and yes I do think there will be lots of options to manage old batteries. The key will be if there is profit in it. If the effort involved in deconstructing batteries to get to the raw materials too expensive, it won't be done and they will be dumped somewhere. It is something we will "know" in 10 or 20 years, when millions of huge batteries start reaching their end of life.

 

[MW1515]

The key part of your response is "I think".

We don't know, and yes I do think there will be lots of options to manage old batteries. The key will be if there is profit in it. If the effort involved in deconstructing batteries to get to the raw materials too expensive, it won't be done and they will be dumped somewhere. It is something we will "know" in 10 or 20 years, when millions of huge batteries start reaching their end of life.

I'm not an expert in battery recycling, but I don't think lead acid batteries filling up the landfills is a huge problem right now bc 1) it is illegal to throw them away in the trash, and 2) there are incentives for customers to turn them in to where they bought them instead of dumping them. Li ion batteries last longer and have much more valuable components inside, so let's hope they have at least the same success story. Plus, Li ion car batteries can be repurposed for other uses before end-of-life, like household or commercial battery backup.

 

[drg1012]

The article is missing mention of power loss between the plant and making it into your battery. Estimated at 6% loss to your house, and 10-30% for your charger (for L2 vs L1). It’s a detail that lingers with me because I’m just using a L1 charger since I don’t drive enough to need more. But it means my MME is only marginally better than my previous Prius.

best thing for my carbon footprint has been SARS-CoV2, and transitioning to nearly full time telework! Although I wouldn’t mind a chance to drive my MME a bit more.

The author is quick to quote the lack of efficiency of an internal combustion engine, but forgets (or is unaware of) the fact that every thermodynamic cycle is subject to a limit on their efficiency called the Carnot Cycle. This limits the coal and natural gas power plants to extracting only about 45% of the available energy from the fuel they burn. So, after factoring in the transmission losses and charging losses, this means that the actual % of available energy that actually reaches your battery from the coal and natural gas combustion isn't that much better than IC engine efficiency - probably on the order of 30%. I still would expect the overall life cycle emissions of an EV to be lower than that of an ICE, but it shows there is bias in every article you find. Everyone is, in someway, trying to prove a point.

 

[dtbaker61]

I agree with you to a point, but lithium and the other components of an EV battery are not used up during the process of creating energy, in contrast to gasoline which is burned, never to be seen again. There are a number of companies working on recycling lithium ion batteries, which is an industry still in its infancy. The build up of lithium dendrites on the anode is what causes a battery to become less and less efficient over time. Maybe this is a problem that can be solved and batteries could last 5 million miles, who knows? But even if not, the materials in the battery can be used over and over. I don't think the build up of spent batteries in land fills is nearly as much of a problem as some people say.

when there actually is some meaningful number of 'used' Li batteries that can no longer be used for low-current 2nd life like stationary battery backup systems... THEN collection and recycling will happen. LFP batteries *should* be pretty easy and clean to recycle and reuse, there just isn't much volume of 'retired' batteries yet.

once we move from Li 'goop' between copper/AL to solid state Li (probably starting in 2024-2025), we'll have higher capacity better performace, and longer life.

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