If it is not ev it is not planet friendly?

There is. If can, do the calculation that you see in the Engineering Explained video in post #30 for your own car(s), and tell me now many kilograms CO2 emissions you produced last year. If you are recommending buying a new car, find out how much CO2 was emitted to produce that car (10,400kg CO2 for the Tesla Model 3 for example). If you are driving EV, try to find the CO2e rate in that video.

My ICE car got 24 mpg last year, but I only produced 600kg CO2 from my driving in 2022. Anyone here emit less CO2 from driving? Ultimately, severely minimizing driving does more than making driving less emitting.

 

As you say, it works for your situation. But that is a minority one. On average, Americans drive over 14 thousand miles annually. With that level of usage, buying a 15 year old car for a daily commuter isn't a viable option for many.

If I got this right, your CO2 emissions for fuel would be around 6,000kg a year for 10k miles. With the annual emissions for the Model 3 being 1,250kg; a difference of 4,750kg. Drive the old ICE car for over 27 months, and it is adding more CO2 to the atmosphere than the production of the Tesla caused, and it will continue to add 3 times more CO2 than the Tesla for every mile.

That isn't your situation, but that is the scenario for the majority of people. We aren't shifting to a carless society. So, for every car that is taken off the road, a new one will replace it. An EV has a higher emissions from production, but emissions for use is far less. The difference between ICE and EV production will be evened out before the first owner's lease is up in for the majority.

If you can reduce the miles driven, an used car car could be a lower carbon footprint overall than buying new. For most households though, the car is not an occasional use item. It is something used regularly. With such items, the cost of using can quickly exceed the cost of replacing with something more efficient. Keeping the old car going for typical annual miles is like keeping the old refrigerator.

 

Yes, it's a minority situation for a reason. I'm an environmentalist, willing to sacrifice mobility for the environment. Along the lines of:

 

I'd like to ride my bike to work. I think I need to get a bunch of lights since I go to work in the dark. I'm a bit afraid to do so, though, since I have know many in town who've been ran over and killed while biking or walking. How do I bike safely to work so I can stop wasting fuel just to move my butt around?

Why does everyone buy big vehicles now and drive them around like their trying to prove they can go as fast on ice and snow as on pavement on our neighborhood streets? It's been snow packed for a month now and we still have a couple months left to go.

 

I checked and I actually got 1,390 miles out of that 59.9 gallon, 23.2 mpg. If I drove more in the summer, I could get that up to about 28 mpg because most of my driving in the winter are short trips in the cold to get groceries, where the car never warms up completely. For 10,000 miles, my short trips would decrease, and I'm sure I could average 28mpg in that car. That's more like 3570kg for 10k miles, so not quite that bad.

Alaska has dirty electricity. A Tesla Model 3 in Alaska emits 150g/mile greenhouse gases (GHG), worse than the numbers used in the Engineering Explained video, so 1500kg per 10k miles. A hybrid Prius almost matches it at 158 g/mile GHG tailpipe+33g/mile upstream. (Not sure if the Tesla includes charging losses? If it doesn't numbers are even higher.)

 

I had a multiuse path along a creek only 1.5 miles to my office from my old place, which was enough of a perk that I stayed at that job years too long. mtbr.com lights and night riding forum is a good place to look for recommendations. But yeah, I wouldn't ride on the road in the dark either, especially since you also live in a place with snow. Cycling was the first sport I really loved (had fantasy of riding pro when I was a kid) in the '80s and '90s when I lived in CA. But I don't consider it safe anymore because there is much more distracted driving with cell phones around. Not to say I completely avoid roads when biking, but I limit my exposure (and have plenty of trail and path options for running/skiing/biking).

 

It's not just the cost/impact of making batteries. Most of the electricity in the US and worldwide is generated from fossil fuels. Changes to grid don't happen overnight. Say that compared to a pure ICE vehicle, comparable EVs can reduce emissions by X in the US. You can achieve ~70% of X with a hybrid. For some driving patterns, a PHEV will produce fewer lifetime emissions than an EV.

If we're talking about saving the planet, we need to restructure our cities for mass transit and introduce carbon tax. If we're talking about doing our little bit to reduce emissions, we can buy hybrids, PHEVs, and EVs. If we're talking about doing our very best as individuals, we should get a job that is work-from-home or is commutable by bicycle or train. And not live in suburban single family homes. And stop voting for parties that don't acknowledge global warming.

The notion that EVs save the planet and hybrids kill it is blatant propaganda.

 

I like the idea of not trying to live in a suburban single family home, working from home, trying to bike and such.

I do miss our EV very much. When I can I bike to work. But when the weather and daylight don't make it seem safe enough, driving an EV would seem to be much better for the environment than me driving 5 miles a day to and from my places of work in an ICEV. I wish I still had our Leaf.

 

Your final line is hyperbole.
I agree improving mass transit and having people use it instead of individual car use is the best option.
A hybrid is a good option, and an EV is a better option.

When we moved, we designed a net zero home (including power for our cars). If I could have found a net zero multi-unit home, we would have taken a look at that.

And changes to the grid do happen. The fact that they don’t happen overnight doesn’t invalidate the changes that are happening.

For me, owning an EV allows me to control how clean my fuel is.
With an ICE (including hybrids) I had no control over the carbon intensity of gasoline. With BEV’s I do.

 

It's too late for minority solutions to have an impact though.

For much of the US, a plug in will have less carbon emissions than even a Prius. In regions, the hybrid doesn't get half the improvement of the plug in.

For the PHEV to beat a BEV in lifetime emissions over the life time, it has to be more efficient, and the BEV die an early death. A PHEV can be part of the solution, but data from the EU shows they can be mishandled, and become a problem.

The polestar exec didn't say anything of the kind.
"Klaren says Polestar is basing its assessments on science, saying:

From our standpoint, our climate strategy is based on the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). It’s a top-down approach. We’ve said that we need to be climate neutral by 2040 as a company and we need to halve emissions by 2030, and that’s not what we can do – that is what the climate scientists are telling us we need to do as companies.

She adds that anyone who claims they will fix it in 2040 or 2050 is not listening because we will have already missed our goal.

We only have seven years left until we hit 1.5 degrees global warming. That’s a fact if we continue on the route we’re heading into. So, anything after 2030, we’re not interested." - OP article

There is nothing about hybrids killing the planet. Just that investing in cars that use gasoline is a distraction from making the investments to meet that timeline. If things get too hot for us, the planet, nor life, will not die.

 

"Planet friendly" .... is that supposed to state as absolute fact that planet warming trends are positively and solely caused by humans? Yet glaciers were nearly down to Tennessee at one time. Isn't there plenty of rationale to just clean up pollution and not exhaust fossil fuels so quickly? Not trying to sound crazy radical - but with such a large contingent of people not buying into solely man-caused warming - it seems like all of the more concrete & valid reasons would be enough ... & as an added benefit everyone's on the same team.

 

Sure, there are other good reasons too, though not really more concrete or more valid than the ones that contingent chooses to discount.

 

It hasn't been enough in the past.

 

climate deniers are pollution deniers. if they weren't, we wouldn't be selling so many low mpg gassers and coal rollers

 

Possibly also in the abiotic, the oil will never run out set.

 

Exactly, pull up a map of planes in the air at any given time and be amazed, and they are burning some big time amounts of fuel.

As for guilt, i have none, not in the way some politicians tell me i should have it. I didn't invent the car, i didn't invent the assembly line, i didn't invent the freeway system, i didn't invent the suburbs, but i for sure have to navigate life using these innovations or i may starve to death. What is there for me to feel quilt over?

I grew up in a city where everything was a 2-4 min drive away and many times within walking distance. But that city is no longer inhabitable so now i live in an exurb. The view is nice but the drive can sometimes be a chore. Id go back to the city, walk and ride bikes everywhere in a second, i prefer this way of life, i love the city. But alas, things change..

We also grew up very poor and that 'make it last' mentality is still with me at 45 years of age. I buy used, i fix things when they break and i appreciate what i have to a silly degree. 'Environmentalism' has many crossroads with frugality it seems. Something that the people telling us how evil we are for destroying the earth know nothing about. Their opinions do not matter.

Electric is the future for sure, but imo battery tech needs more time to mature. I am looking forward to buying a used Bolt or Leaf here soon.

Anyhoo, hey guys, first post lol.

 

It doesn't matter, we are doomed either way.

The countries that push EV and regenerative tech will need less fossil fuels, and this will unfold:

- less demand for fossil fuels in western countries leads to lower global prices
- lower prices allow 2nd and 3rd world countries to buy more at lower prices
- those countries will use it at the same rate as we did, until nothing is left
- those countries have less stringed environmental regulations, hence they will burn it dirtier

The human race is opportunistic. We take advantage of every resource there is. Same applies to Lithium needed for batteries. We will fight wars over the remaining resources. This rather small planet will not survive our existence.

Only true way out of this mess would be to lower our world population to below 1 billion, by not breading like the rabbits. That won't happen in the same said 2nd and 3rd world countries due to lack of general IQ and / or education.

I bought a hybrid in order to save money, nothing else.

Every gallon I refuse to burn here, will be burned somewhere else with a worse impact on nature. Supply and demand.

 

True except it's not the 3rd world countries that are burning up all the fuel. Half the world's population (about 4 billion) makes less than some $850 per year per household. 3 billion make $2 per day or less.

The average driver in the USA drives 13,476 miles per year. The average car get's 24.2mpg and the average light truck/van gets 17.5mpg . So in the USA the average car driver burns 556 gallons of gasoline per year and the average light truck/van driver burns 770 gallons per year.

Even if half of the world's population actually earned $850 per year (and per person, not household) and spent every last dime of it on gasoline, fuel would have to be between $1.10 and $1.53 for them to even burn as much fuel per person as Americans. And of course that is not going to happen. A family making $850 per year is very unlikely going to be able to own anything that can burn gasoline, and if they do, they're not going to be able to burn as much as Americans and Europeans, unless gasoline falls to just a few pennies per gallon. I'm not sure that's going to happen any time soon. Getting rid of all those billions of people won't make much difference if most of them are from third world countries. No offence intended, but you can't blame some bushman running around the desert with his family gathering roots for dinner for your burning of tens of thousands of gallons of fuel in your lifetime just to move your butt around.

 

And we keep widening roads, building new ones and parking garages .
Any incentive to drive less?

 

Yes. The manual transmission is almost dead. That and they're taking radio out of cars (at least AM radio). The problem is they make the alternatives harder to use. Even just walking or riding a bike is insanely dangerous. I've known of some 6 or 7 people here close by who've been ran over and even killed just from walking or biking down a typical neighborhood street in what considers itself a "bicycle friendly" town.