Featured I don't want an EV. I want an affordable plug-in hybrid that doesn't look stupid. Rocket science?

I honestly don't think the BEV is much (if any) greener than HEV or pure ICE. Yes, less emission at tail pipe but the total carbon footprint may not be.

That being said, for me a daily drive car in my region has a life span on 12 to 15 years top no matter what type of the car it is. Anything older are just rust buckets. My strategy has been to buy a new EV (PHEV or BEV) with discount and trade-in or sell within 3 years, so no repair cost is incurred. When the EV incentives runs out, I will probably just go back to 3yr lease.

 

Total carbon footprint depends on lifespan. The BEV incurs more to make, but the lower amount from use has it beating the ICE in a few years or so. Even on a dirty grid. Grid cleanliness and the car's efficiency is more of a factor when comparing to a hybrid.

 

i think we're attempting to reduce climate change with the move to renewables. a different argument than carbon footprint, or am i mistaken?

 

Isn't climate change the chief reason anybody cares about carbon footprints?

 

this my question as well?

 

The lifespan of an EV also have to include mineral mining, battery disposal and/or recycling. While there maybe some studies indicating that one is better than other, I am just not convinced that it has an impact on the climate change.

My take is that as long as we are encouraging manufacturers to built more cars and sell more, and to consumers to buy more cars and travel longer and further, I don't think we are going to meet the goal.

Then again, I'm with the school which believes we already have passed the point of no return. The best we can do is just delaying the inevitable.

 

The studies have been done, EVs win out by a long shot as long as you include all the same things for gas cars.

Over consumerism is a problem for CO2 emissions. That said, it is a separate issue than EV vs ICE.
If someone is going to buy a car, an EV after 16k miles, will contribute less CO2 than an ICE.
If they weren’t planning to buy a car and they buy an EV, that is a net CO2 contribution until the time they would have bought another car.

Less car use and/or ownership would definitely help. As would less air travel, less beef, less concrete, etc.
All of these are issues, and solving any one of them won’t solve the whole issue. It will take many solutions to solve the whole issue.

It may be too late to prevent 1.5C warming, but not too late to stop 3C. And a 3C world will be a lot more miserable, and expensive, than a 1.5C world.

 

Yep, that is a separate issue. But as with over population, it is at the root of the problem. Buying a BEV over PHEV or ICE is not going to solve it.

Given equitable choices, I certainly would buy a BEV over ICE. But if I need a pickup truck, $70K F150 Lightning even with the incentive is completely out of my reach. I am more likely to buy a Maverick HEV or used ICE truck at $25K. Find me a $25k BEV pickup, I will definitely buy it over the same price PHEV or ICE pickups.

But, considering my use is going to be very limited to local hauling only for annual distance less than 2k miles, my feeing is that buying a $25k gasser ICE pickup is going to be better for the environment overall. Remember that if I buy a BEV pickup, then someone else will buy this hypothetical $25k ICE pickup and most likely drive it for commuting and every day use for the annual 15k miles or more.

 

According to this Harvard article, in
the U.S., the typical non-luxury EV needs to log between 28,069 and 68,160 miles before netting any emissions benefits.

When buying an EV increases your carbon footprint — Harvard Gazette

 

To be clear, I am not disputing any of study results. I am simply saying that I have a doubt that buying a BEV over ICE have a significant impact on climate change.

But if one believes the result of the study quoted above, then for my hypothetical 2k annual mile pickup case, it seems that the world will not gain the emission benefit unless I drive the hypothetical $25k BEV pickup for 14 years to 34 years. In this case, I should definitely buy an ICE car.

On the other hand, if I am looking for a daily commuter for annual 14k miles, then I would definitely buy a Bolt EV over ICE or even over very efficient HEV or PHEV like Prius and Prius Prime.

But I recently secured funding for my fully remote position, so my need for a daily commuter has vanished.

 

With the prices of things these days, it may just be easier to both fight climate change and not end up bankrupt or devoting a large part of one's life to owning a vehicle by just avoiding owning a vehicle. But that has become hard to do with today's expectations.

In my case I have to set aside around 1/5 of my earinings towards my car. That's one whole 8-hour day of work per week! And if my car were to suddenly die I could end up paying more than 1/5 of my earnings towards owning a car with the way prices are now.

Plus not owning a car would help with new year's resolutions to lose a bit of weight, and the extra money to save up for something more important than a car, like owning a house or retirement, neither of which I've started on.

 

"owning a vehicle" - should also include - insurance, registration, property taxes, fuel cost, tires, brakes, filters, maintenance time devoted to the vehicle, parking fees, road toll, increasingly an EV or PHEV will incur a larger Fee by the state for additional road tax and misc..

Agreed that cars are a luxury for some and a very expensive cost for most others.

Took the time to list these -other cost- taken for granted but most would be aware of.

A horse comes with great cost and maintenance upkeep fees also and must have things like saddles and bridles etc as well as enormous feed, housing and vet costs.

There is no free ride!

Public transportation comes at enormous cost and must either charge high user fees or be subsidized. Somebody must shoulder this cost. Moving from one place to another is a problematic expensive proposition and has been that way since the dawn of man.


The vastness of America coupled with spotty public transit force many reluctant individuals into car ownership as a necessity. It is a fact of life in our country.

There are 'specialized vehicles" on the horizon that may help out some, but moving from one place to another will always be very expensive. There are cost associated with it. Modern societies are expensive to live in and it requires a large part of your income or someone else's income taken from them to pay for your existence.

Microlino 2.0, the adorable electric bubble car, seen in new test drive video (electrek.co)

 

Nio is committed to battery swap at least in China. BTW, YouTuber ‘Rich Rebuild’ has swapped/repaired Tesla batteries.

My BMW i3 was designed for modular battery replacement. But there are significant technical challenges. See SEI layer for a current technical challenge.

Bob Wilson

 

I drive efficient hybrids, PHEV, and BEV to save my greenback Yankee dollars.

Bob Wilson

 

My modes of transportation ranked from 1st to last based on personal enjoyment:

1. Walking (30% of travel)
2. Bicycle (20% of travel)
3. PHEV with 30 mile range and home level 2 charger in garage (40% of travel)
4. SUV, 2 rows of seating, 2.4l engine getting 30 mpg (10% of travel)

Retired -no daily work commute.
Percent rank of use does vary seasonally as in winter bicycle use goes down and walking goes up.
By choice live in a small town that has all services in walking distance.

Other members of the home would have a vastly different dynamic = almost exclusive PHEV use and no walking or bicycle mode - oh well.

+1 on being a cost conscious consumer of transportation = why I bought my first Prius, keep cars an average of 12 years and do all my own maintenance and repairs.

My dream car if I had unlimited excess income and could buy anything I wanted = 1970 VW Minibus that I could rebuild like new. I would also be just as pleased with a 1964 VW Beatle or a 1965 VW Karman Gia as long as they came with the manual 4 speed transmission.

 

Of course there isn't a free ride. But when it becomes a substantial percentage of one's wages, either you just keep paying out the nose or you decide to find some other way that's cheaper.

There is hardly any public transportation where I live. None, whatsoever, from my house to my job, to stores, to the next town etc. But there was a time that I walked or biked everywhere, and where I couldn't I'd use my big thumb to hitch a ride.

I hope it doesn't come to that again, but sometimes it seems that there are people who think that a family making $4,000 a month in a town where rent and mortages start at $2,000 per month should some how be able to afford a new car, or a used car that dies and ends up with a $9,000 repair bill 3 months after the purchase.

 

Is your % for each mode, the number of travel counted? This means a 1-mile walk is counted as one travel, just as a 100-mile drive. I am sure if you calculate the "distance" traveled for each mode, your distribution will change vastly.

For our community, mode 1 and mode 2 are too impractical. The closest store is 10 miles away. The road is two lanes (one lane in each direction) state highway without sidewalks or walkable shoulders. While the total traffic is relatively low, most cars speed 60mph or over on this 45mph speed limit rural road making it extremely dangerous to either walk or bike on it.

Since I started working as a fully remote telecommuter at the start of the pandemic, my need for driving or traveling, in general, has diminished to nearly zero on a daily base. Occasional errands (less than once a week) and rare long trips (less than once a month) are the only time I drive. Currently, my wife does more driving for shopping and occasional medical appointments. We do not travel for leisure. No long-distance vacation trips even before the pandemic. But after the pandemic, our annual miles driven has decreased to less than 10kmiles from the previous ~18kmiles put on two cars.

For us, a BEV as the only vehicle in a household does not work due to our needs for occasional but frequent enough long day-trips. Current infrastructure plus reduced EV range in winter time will not allow us to complete our routine 800+ mile round trips in any BEV. With our PHEV (Escape) having ~40 miles of EV range, if we count just the number of travels, I would estimate more than 90% of trips are pure EV. But distance-wise, that 10% of hybrid mode accounts for more than 50% of the distance we have driven in the car.

If I lived in a city, I would gladly give up car ownership altogether. But, living in or near a city is far less attractive than living in an isolated rural setting for me. So, for the foreseeable future, a PHEV with sufficient EV range and large enough cargo space is a requirement. The fact that I got my current Escape PHEV without paying any money makes the choice very economical as well.

 

Carbon footprint is a measure of the amount of extra carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere. That extra CO2 is what is driving global warming. Most of that extra is through fossil fuel use, and renewables reduce the amount of those burned. For most cars, electricity is a good way to get them on renewables.

For that use, your best bet is a small utility trailer for the Escape. If you did need a commuter, the Bolt EUV has a 2000# tow rating.

 

I thought about it, but I have decided that is not practical. Most of the hauling is farming- and construction-related and involves driving on unpaved ground. Unfortunately, our Escape did not come with a tow hitch or the roof rack. Our previous Pathfinder Hybrid had both. While a small utility trailer may come in handy, I just don't want to drive with something hitched behind my car. Maybe easier than I think, but I've never driven a car with a trailer behind it.

 

For me, more #2 than #1, #3 is max 25 miles (40 km) round trips and #4 is full electric. I haven't been in a situation (yet) that I needed to take the Prime because there was no fast charger to reach my destination. We took the Prime to go to Toronto once and a few times to the cottage, so the engine ran for about 1500 km in 6 months while about 8000 km in EV mode.

Also retired so walking and biking is mostly for leasure/exercise. I biked over 5000 km last year alone.