this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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The Right Can't Meme
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Electric vehicles aren't the problem, the fact that they are really expensive large computers with wheels that phone home constantly and track your every move, can be disabled remotely by the manufacturer, require mobile apps that track you and phone home constantly is the problem.
And they need OS updates to patch potentially fatal bugs.
Modern fossil fuel cars are unfortunately no different...
But you can buy an old fossil fuel car.
Well you could probably buy this old electric car too!
There are old fossils?
They're all old, silly
For now. In twenty years time the current fleet of newish cars will be the old junk.
My family drives 20 year old cars daily.
I like old cars, but the point is there will be a point at which getting a car that is as uncomplicated as a 1990s Japanese sedan will end. In 20 years time you'd have to deal with all sorts of electric and software issues.
It used to be that you could just take out the cassette player and insert a Bluetooth radio, for instance. In modern cars everything is integrated software and it sure as hell won't be maintained by car manufacturers after 10 years at most.
Just a reminder that for the most part a car with an electric motor is very much powered by the combustion of fossil fuels. A grid without fossil fuel inputs is still a pipe dream.
Kind of a red herring when even 100% fossil fuel power is far more efficient than a car engine. Many US states are projecting <5% fossil fuel reliance for the grid within 15 years.
From what I’ve read it’s about 50% emissions pound for pound based on the fuel mix in the North American grid. Which is fucking great! It’s a bit of an issue that the best selling EVs in the US weigh more than twice what a small ICE vehicle weighs. Which, washes out all the advantage. but the grids gets cleaner over time so perhaps they end up on the right side of things by the time the vehicle is retired.
It’s not a red herring, it is a fact and forgetting it is why the fucking EVs got so damn big. TODAY, a compact ICE, is about a wash with a big ev truck in North America and a hybrid drive or small EV is the way you actually cut your carbon output.
Doing some back of the napkin math, that sounds about right. The problem with saying, “don’t forget EV power comes from fossil fuels too”, is that it implies an equivalence between the two. They aren’t equivalent, a 50% reduction in carbon emissions is fantastic. Moreover, as you mentioned, EVs will improve their emissions in lockstep with improvements in the grid.
I agree we should move towards smaller cars on average. However, I think this is simply the car buyer preferences of today. The most popular ICEs are also big heavy SUVs and trucks. People who are shopping for big EV trucks want big trucks regardless of the powertrain type. They were never going to buy a small compact car, so it doesn’t make sense to make that comparison. You have to compare like-for-like.
With a like-for-like comparison, EVs aren’t nearly as dramatically heavier as many people say. Some examples:
Average out a ton of models, and it comes out to 10-15% heavier for an equivalent EV model. Add in that most EVs are more aerodynamic and EVs require a very similar amount of energy input to push them around.
Unfortunately true.
But even then, a fossil fuel power plant is more efficient at capturing the energy in the fuel than a car engine. So an electric vehicle still emits less CO2 per mile driven, even when the power used to charge it is entirely generated from fossil fuels.
My "old" 2017 Ford Fiesta weighed around 1100 kg, and could drive around 17 km per liter of gasoline. Gasoline has about 9.5 kWh worth of energy per liter, so that's 0.55 kWh/km. My new Hyundai Ioniq 5 weighs around 2300 kg (yes about twice as much) and drives 5 km per kWh. So that's only 0.2 kWh/km. So a car weighing twice as much expends less than half as much energy per km...
Luckily there's many places around the world where fossil fuels are rapidly being phased out.
For example, Scandinavia, where I live: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuels-share-energy?country=SWE~NOR~FIN~DNK
It depends greatly on where you live, even by country isn't specific enough.
In Canada, Ontario is about 6% dirty. If you go west you'll see that Manitoba is about 0.3% dirty, Saskatchewan is about 81% dirty (41% coal. What millennium is this?), Alberta is about 90% Dirty, and BC is about 5% dirty.
So if you live in Manitoba, and you live somewhere that requires a personal vehicle, then electric is a decent option. If you live in SK or AB, an electric vehicle might be worse than an ICE.
You're not wrong, but it does depend a lot on where you live.
Illinois is over 50% nuclear, and 10% renewables. We also have solar panels that generate significantly more electricity than we use for our Nissan Leaf.