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Originally Posted by Solecismic
We've been hearing about promising technologies for decades. Electric grids will fail if they don't emerge soon.
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To clarify, was referring in terms of technologies to improvements in battery technology.
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Originally Posted by Solecismic
the cost of replacing a useless battery and all the materials that went into its production, the cost of recycling and the damage that does to the environment. When you add it all up, especially combined with the increasing cost of electricity, the additional weight you have to transport, and the eventual end (surely it musk end) of the subsidies... it's very bad for the environment and even worse for the financial health of those who invest in the technology.
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You keep saying this, and I maintain it just isn't true. The profile of the electricity grid is an important factor, and it depends on what assumptions you make there. Having said that, I'll cite a few data points:
- Argonne National Laboratory, developer of the Greet model for evaluating emissions for both EV and gas-powered vehicles over their lifetimes, has estimated that on average the emissions for gas-powered vehicles will be much higher.
- A Reuters analysis of different scenarios found that even in the worst-case scenario of charging
entirely from a coal-powered grid, EV emissions are still better, though not by a particularly large margin. This is because the initial cost of production is off-set by the fact that engines in EVs are about 95% energy efficient, while internal combustion engines are only about 20%. There is simply a huge gain in how well they use the energy.
Here's an article about another, older study:
Even electric cars powered by the dirtiest electricity emit fewer emissions than diesel cars, says new study | Electrek
- Damien Ernst, who claimed just a few years ago that to break even with a gas-powered vehicle in terms of emissions, an EV would need to be operational for 700,000 km, has revised that estimate greatly downward to 150,000 at most and sometimes half that amount, which is well less than the expected lifecycle of vehicles. This is just one illustration of what has generally happened when people take a serious look at the increasing amount of data available
- The estimated life of batteries is about 20 years. In other words, way longer than most people are going to be driving the car anyway. It's not like they are going to have to be constantly replaced.
I'm not aware of significant recent studies funded by independent parties - i.e. not the oil industry for example - that contradict these. Do you have contrary ones to cite?