Electric car emissions benefits are far greater than first thought

https://www.futurity.org/carbon-emissions-benefits-electric-vehicles-3342292/

97 points · 5 comments · view on lemmy.world

5 Comments

betanumerus@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 35d (2 replies)

Some people might have overestimated, others might have underestimated, others pushed misinformation, some changed their minds, others never bothered to make a numerical prediction. Saying "than first thought" without saying who "thought" is very meaningless.

artyom@piefed.social · 7 pts · 35d (1 reply)

Seems the article implies that no one really thought about it:

And, surprisingly, there wasn’t existing research-based guidance.

Which is just not true. Here are a few that I looked up quickly: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012.00532.x

https://energy.mit.edu/publication/on-the-road-in-2020-a-life-cycle-analysis-of-new-automobile-technologies/

https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cleaner-Cars-from-Cradle-to-Grave-full-report.pdf

betanumerus@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 34d

Right. We never needed a genius making numerical predictions to KNOW that EVs would be beneficial emission-wise. This became real to me when I first saw a Honda Insight in year 2000 and started taking EVs seriously. We didn't just "think", we KNEW.

phant@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 35d (1 reply)

They couldn't provide a graph showing CO2 emissions over time, including the embedded energy in making the car and the point at which a new EV starts to have a lower impact than keeping a combustion engine car running? I swear I've seen that kind of graph before in studies/aricles on this topic and it's a great at-a-glance way to visualise it.

sep@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 34d

I have seen that as well in a norwegian car magazine. Iirc it was a little under a year. 8 ish months? But ofcourse the graph would vary wildly baded on monthly km driven. And i do not remeber what km/month they used.
A longer commute would recoup the difference much faster then a short one.