They offset all those emissions by the time they’ve reached like 80k km in places where electricity is produced using coal (compared to a gas vehicle that increases its total emissions as time goes) so no, he’s not right actually.
That’s not even taking into consideration the wear on emission equipment and cars age.
If most people replace their cars every three years they’re not getting to 80,000 km before they buy a new one.
Do they though?
And it’s not as if these cars were sent to the scraper, they’re sold on the used market and replace gas cars.
According to Mr. Bean’s original article, that’s the average length of car ownership in Britain due to the prevalence of three year leases.
And it doesn’t matter if they’re going on the used market because there’s still another new car getting built that doesn’t have to be.
That’s the thing though, no it isn’t.
If you continue driving a gas car it continues to generate emissions, if you switch to an electric car it offsets it’s emissions (compared to switching to another gas car or keeping the same gas car) after max 80k km and after that it’s a better car for the environment than whatever gas car you would have been driving instead and that you keep driving and that keeps increasing its carbon footprint.
You’re taking a useful piece of equipment, a perfectly running car, and doing what with it? Scrapping it? Reselling it? Just letting it sit? None of those make sense from a “save the planet” perspective.
You can scrap the internal combustion car. Sure, it won’t make any more emissions itself, but it does cause demand for another EV to be manufactured RIGHT NOW, which has opportunity cost - manufacturing is expensive, monetarily and environmentally. Would this eventually even out, yeah, probably but it’d cause a lot of stress in the short term.
Reselling it is probably the MOST environmentally friendly option, but that car is still making emissions. If the buyer of your internal combustion car already had a car, it’s the same problem as scrapping it, kicked down 1 more chain link. the emissions necessarily increase. If they didn’t already have a car, well now there’s the same combustion engine car on the road, and we made a new EV to fit demand.
Letting the car sit is a bit of a sunk cost fallacy, I admit. The manufacturing cost of the car has already been paid, and it has useful life left in it. This is where we have to actually make a cost-benefit decision. If the car is older, yeah probably don’t drive it anymore. If it’s less than 20 years old, it probably has enough life left in it to offset the benefits of producing a new EV right now. This just feels like scrapping it, with even more junkyard requirements.
Obviously this isn’t all on the individual level, one person doing any of these things isn’t causing any shift in demand, but if everyone suddenly started having that mentality, I don’t think it’d end well at all. Use what you have, don’t buy until you have to or comfortably can. Reuse is as important as reduce and recycle.
If like the guy further up this thread you only drive 8k km a year that’s going to take 10 years to reach parity. The Li-Ion battery may not even last that long.
Obviously if you drive for work or commute long distances that can’t be covered by public transport then an EV makes sense, but with the expansion of WFH it may not for many.
That’s 80k km if you live somewhere where electricity comes 100% from coal, where I live with hydro it’s under 20k km. You’re also making an assumption without knowing how much that 8k km emits with their gas car.
To give an example with numbers…
Gas car produces 5 tons of CO2 when being manufactured and then emits 1 ton a year driving 8k km
Electric car produces 10 tons of CO2 when being manufactured then emits 0.25 tons a year driving 8k km
After 6 ⅔ (we’ll round it up to 7) years the EV compensated for the extra CO2 required for its production and has emitted 10 + (7 x 0.25) = 11.75 tons of CO2. Meanwhile the gas car has emitted 5 + (7 x 1) = 12 tons of CO2 and the difference will keep increasing.
As for the battery failure scare, it’s a non issue with the vast majority of models and it ignores the extra maintenance required on the gas car that also pollutes.
We’re about 10k past that mileage where we’re supposed to be having battery issues, maybe need a replacement, with our Prius and they aren’t happening. I’ve been wondering if it was just a scare from the salesman to push me to an ICE. We’ve kept on top of the maintenance and it’s been the most reliable car I’ve ever driven. Might just be a Toyota thing tho. I set aside the money for the repair and I’m waiting, but I’d really rather spend it on hookers and blow.
