Can I just ask - forgive the potential ignorance - if EVs have been proven to be less net carbon emitting with their manufacturing and expected disposal emissions factored in?
EVs have an initial higher carbon footprint after production than ICE vehicles due to their battery.
However, the initial CO2 footprint is dwarfed when compared to the operational footprint of ICE vehicles. Takes a few years for the scale to tip in EVs favour, to which then there's a substantial difference.
> BNEF studied the US, Chinese, Germany, UK and Japanese markets. It determined the lifecycle CO2 emissions of a medium-size BEV manufactured in 2023 and driven for 250,000km would be 27-71 per cent lower than those of equivalent ICE vehicles.
Another important factor is that emissions are highly dependent on what you're burning to power the grid. As electrification intensifies those effects become even more pronounced. In 15 years or so I imagine most countries with sane leadership will be mostly running on renewables & nuclear.
> In 15 years or so I imagine most countries with sane leadership will be mostly running on renewables & nuclear.
I think it's good to mention that in Europe, 40% of all the electrical energy usage was renewable in 2024 [1]. This number is higher than it was in 2023, and will increase again in 2025 due to many new solar, wind, and battery installations.
In the US, 19% of all the electrical energy was produced by renewables and 20% by nuclear [2].
> BEV manufactured in 2023 and driven for 250,000km would be 27-71 per cent lower than those of equivalent ICE vehicles.
(Disclaimer: I know little about cars ...)
My country, New Zealand, is awash with new BEV brands, some also offering ICE, from China and South East Asia. Compared with traditional SEA manufacturers (Japan, Korea) that supply most of our new cars, the prices are apparently ridiculously competitive and packed full of premium features.
It feels like I see a new brand advertised every couple of months. Four new brands were introduced late last year [1] One of whose SSL cert expired a couple of weeks ago and still has not been renewed.
The question is will these low cost EVs last 250,000km? I don't think the batteries will.
Are there well known SEA car manufacturers, or exporters? Proton of Malaysia is (or was?) probably the biggest, they owned the legendary Lotus brand at one point.
> The question is will these low cost EVs last 250,000km? I don't think the batteries will.
> Why do you think the batteries won’t?
I was commenting on low-cost EV. I don't know but I think its likely that given the following (maybe incorrect) assumption:
1. Cheap EVs use cheaper lower-quality cells to keep costs down.
2. Cheap EVs use battery tech that maximises range and performance at the expense of longevity, which would be cheaper than both maximising range and performance AND longevity.
3. Cheap EVs save money with worse cooling of the batteries.
I could be wrong on both points.
There are plenty of stories of EV batteries having low deterioration despite high KMs. But I am not sure these are usually old EVs, just EVs driven a lot.
Lithium batteries experience cyclic degradation (degradation when charged) and degradation over time (calendar degradation). We have yet to see how multiple decades effects them.
This NZ govt. report is an excellent resource [1]. It cites this paper [2] where they charted Nissan Leaf battery deterioration over time under various conditions.
Here in NZ, I looked at our post popular used-car website and 9 year old Leafs (2015 model) which had done 90-100,000km had lost 25-32% of battery capacity. There is not much data for earlier leafs.
Yeah, that’s a bad assumption. Cheap EVs tend to use chemistries with a poor energy to weight ratio, but those chemistries are relatively long lasting (in particular see LFP). I’d bet on a cheap electric car made today lasting longer than a high end one 5 years ago for this reason.
Some brands (in particular Tesla has done this) even use LFP in low-end versions of a single model, and NMC in high end.
> Yeah, that’s a bad assumption. Cheap EVs tend to use chemistries with a poor energy to weight ratio, but those chemistries are relatively long lasting (in particular see LFP). I’d bet on a cheap electric car made today lasting longer than a high end one 5 years ago for this reason.
Even that's a pretty conservative estimate these days. It's typically less, ~11,000m (18,000km) and the balance keeps shifting in EVs favour over time as the grid becomes more renewables based...
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-21-misleading-myths-ab...
It's also worth considering that EVs & battery technology are evolving and over time the impacts from build, use and disposal will most probably lessen. If you start with the industrial revolution, the fossil fuel industry had a couple of centuries and the ICE vehicle industry had about 100 years before they even had to think about the environmental effects of their actions and come up with solutions. The battery industry is really only just getting started and already environmental impact of the full life cycle is a significant consideration and a budding industry in itself.
Some of it’s probably genuine. The oil industry has been pushing this particular lie in various forms for about half a century (comically, it’s a claim that they would sometimes make about _nuclear power plants_), and it has sunk deep into the culture.
Of course it is. The campaigning for fossil fuels is very sneaky and uses great talking points. There is always a grain of truth to every such talking point, so they are very difficult to debunk and discuss.
Yes. There are many myths spread around by the fossil lobby and, as always, there is a grain of truth in every myth, that's why they are so hard to debunk.
