I’ve seen a lot of posts here on Lemmy, specifically in the “fuck cars” communities as to how Electric Vehicles do pretty much nothing for the Climate, but I continue to see Climate activists everywhere try pushing so, so hard for Electric Vehicles.
Are they actually beneficial to the planet other than limiting exhaust, or is that it? or maybe exhaust is a way bigger problem?
In terms of Carbon, they produce about one third of the damage which an equivalent internal combustion engine car would.
There’s a lot of factors that go into the final figures, like the specifics of the vehicle and the source of the energy used to charge it.
It’s a bit like vaping instead of smoking. Neither are good for you but one is clearly worse than the other.
Does that third also take into account any differences in manufacturing them? In other words, the entire lifecycle.
That’s the best figure I’ve seen for the total lifetime impact.
It depends on a like for like comparison. A really massive and inefficient EV will not stack up so well against a small efficient ICE, for example.
There’s just too much variation for any one figure to be both simple and accurate
