The best car for the environment?

k6chris

So is the answer "don't buy a new EV until you absolutely need a new car, then buy the one that has the lowest environmental impact, based on the technolgy available at that time. In the mean time, try and reduce the use of your current car"?

Navigator123

It does not matter what car you purchase. You will need to drive it for around 2 million miles for it to generate the same levels of pollution/carbon footprint etc. that it generated in the manufacturing process.

marlot

Richard53 wrote: »

All of which goes to show that the most environmentally friendly car at the moment is a 1960s Series Land Rover:...

I'd agree, especially if you're only doing modest mileage, and preferably out of town. Because air quality is an important aspect too.


I hear all sort of madness from people replacing perfectly good cars because they save £20 a year on tax, or because the new one does 2mpg better.

MEM62

The best car for the environment?

Legs
Bicycle
Public Transpsort

fred990

Surely it's the types/brand most commonly seen on the school run?
Parents of young children these days will naturally be more concerned about the future and drive appropriate types.

[Deleted User]

Get a used Nissan Leaf. Very reliable, cheap to buy, cheap to run, and very good for the environment.

iolanthe07

DELETED USER wrote:

Get a used Nissan Leaf. Very reliable, cheap to buy, cheap to run, and very good for the environment.

The early ones (24KW?) didn't have much of a range, though.

DrEskimo

Second time I've quoted a video from this electrochemist's video series, but he does a nice analysis of the impact of new EV's vs running old petrol cars:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdqtFXyDLIo&t=543s

I went one step further and bought a used EV....

Robisere wrote: »

One thing that keeps returning to my thoughts about EV's: where is all the electrical energy going to come from? We are already forecasting energy shortages in the UK within a decade or two.

The issue is less about overall capacity, and more about peak demand. The biggest advantage of EV's is that they can be scheduled to be charged at 'off-peak' hours. This not only helps by not adding to peak demand, but also allows for load balancing, as electricity generation currently follows a 'duck curve'.

This is dead easy to incentivise for EV owners, as you simply offer a tariff that enables cheaper kWh charging at off-peak times. Octopus GO currently offers £0.05/kWh between 00:30-04:30.

Further still is the potential that EV's have in making renewable technology more consistent. Before we used to think about building great big batteries to harvest the solar and wind, meaning that things like nuclear would only be needed at low levels to provide base load stability. Well now it looks increasingly more likely that Vehicle-2-Grid technology will simply utilise the thousands of EV's connected to the mains of houses at any one time. Research has shown that this model not only works well, but actually can preserve the life of the EV batteries by charging and discharging at optimal rates and temperatures.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421517307619

It's the software side of things that I imagine would prove most challenging. Presumably machine learning based algorithms would enable users to enter desired charge levels and journey times to ensure the user has the required charge level to do their journeys, while being able to help balance national energy supply. First hurdle that comes to mind is any unplanned journeys, but the larger size of batteries, and 'minimum charge' settings could probably go a long way to solving that issue.

Personally, I could leave my EV parked up to mains for the majority of the peak demand hours, and have no need for charge till next morning. With 41kWh, even 50% charge every day would be more than sufficient.

wongataa

k6chris wrote: »

I have a car, which is diesel, not electric. I could buy a new electric car to reduce my local emissions, but then there would be an enviromental impact in terms of the production of the new car, the fact that not all electricity is 'green'

Even generating 'non green' electricity is far more efficient than any internal combustion engine. The emissions created by generating electricity for an electric car is so much less than the emissions than you would get with a traditional car. Plus any emissions can be far more easily captured at large industrial generating sites than at point of use on a road vehicle.

MEM62

fred990 wrote: »

Surely it's the types/brand most commonly seen on the school run?
Parents of young children these days will naturally be more concerned about the future and drive appropriate types.

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: