Electric Cars Good for planet or just bad?

Hasbeen

Looking at a new car but finding lots of negatives against positives?


https://www.msn.com/en-gb/cars/news/analysis-just-how-green-are-electric-vehicles/ar-AAB9moT?ocid=spartanntp

gzoom

I love these kind of 'reports'.

I haven't read this one, but usually it involves add in every bit of EV construction all the way down to raw materials extraction, than add electricity supply into a comparison with a combustion car using manufacture CO2 emission figures.

But if you want to compare like for like, you also need to factor in the energy used to extract, refine, transport petrol - The stuff that comes out of the pump didn't get there by magic, which I suspect if you did the numbers will show you just how badly combustion cars compare.

System

If you're in a country with a high percentage of coal powered power generation like Germany then its likely to be no better. However we're not in Germany, we're in the UK where coal didn't provide power for an entire week recently and come 2025 won't at all and if you've got solar at home and you charge there mostly during the day there's no carbon involved in charging your car so it wins.

Jakubk

Do you really care about the planet?

Do you want to do your tiny bit or are you all in?

Currently Electric cars are a total rip off, hybrids are only economical if you are a taxi driver.

Until the industry is FORCED to move all production to Elecric things will not change, personally I would bring the date forward to 2025, then the market would respond appropriately.

The proof of potential innovation is in Formula 1 racing, when limits were put on the cars we saw all sorts on innovation such as reclaiming the energy from braking.

Although F1 agreed to stop using it Tesla use it now.

Things will only get cheaper if people are forced to use electric.

Of course if you are all in you will not buy a new car, you would rent one using an app only when you needed it, this may depend on whether you are rural or in a town but those that have the determination find ways (home made car conversion building own battery cells even).

Of course the brutal truth is that what we do makes no difference at all to the planet as long as India and China do not do things in equal measure (by percentage of their population).

So we close all our coal fired power stations and China builts 13 brand new ones.

With 2.3bn of the population living in these two countries THAT is where things need to change dramatically!

Also what do you think happens to our old cars, are they really scrapped or are they sent to 3rd world countries to continue the polution. What does scrapping mean, stripping parts for re-use or sticking 3 cars in a container and shipping to Kenya? I actually know someone who does this.

buglawton

True sustainability means decimating the enormous carbon footprint of manufacturing and disposal of cars. A car chassis and body could be designed to last 30 years if the design deliberately allowed highly modular swapping out and upgrade of components. Will it ever happen?

Current consumer culture strongly favours newness and wow factor on big ticket items. Manufacturers profit models agree. Governments tacitly agree with the way things are now.

Personally I consider the mobility of a private vehicle something of a miracle. Wow factor neither here nor there. A more sustainable product lifecycle would suit me but I seem to be in a tiny minority.

prowla

One way to cut energy use is to stop people needing to travel to go to work; the so-called "rush-hour" is full of people going to an office to log on to internet-connected computers and talk over a telephone.

shinytop

Listen to Prince Harry. The only way to save the planet is to have less people. Cars are the proverbial pimple on the backside.

sevenhills

I do consider myself to be an environmentalist, but I would not buy an electric vehicle. I have free solar panel on my roof, but I would buy a EURO 6 diesel car.
I think reducing our own air miles and food miles is just as important as electric or internal combustion. The efficiency of our homes is also something which should be tackled, before thinking about the type of vehicle we have.

Supersonos

Electric cars are just good for pushing all the pollution somewhere else rather than the towns and cities you actually drive in. The Chinese towns that make the batteries, the nuclear waste, the towns surrounded by noisy wind turbines, the areas of the world being mined for the metals to go into the batteries...

You can't move around at 70mph in a comfortable 2-tonne vehicle without impacting the world. Electric cars just impact it in a different - and equally damaging - way.

Supersonos

Jakubk wrote: »

Things will only get cheaper if people are forced to use electric.

Unfortunately, I don't think that's possible. Imagine you could suddenly turn every one of the 40m cars in the UK into electric. Where on earth would they all charge? A lot of people don't have a driveway or somewhere they can guarantee to park/charge.

I just don't think electric cars are the answer. I don't know what is, but batteries will never supply what we need (and battery tech hasn't advanced in about 20 years and, as I believe it, has reached it's peak power storage per kg).

Sea_Shell

prowla wrote: »

One way to cut energy use is to stop people needing to travel to go to work; the so-called "rush-hour" is full of people going to an office to log on to internet-connected computers and talk over a telephone.

My last job could have been done 100% from home, with remote access to the servers, but no, they didn't offer any work from home contracts.

Crackers, when you put it in environmental terms.