EVs are worse for the environment (and other EV related myths)

zg3409

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120708460#Comment_120708460

Recyclers are complaining there is not enough batteries to keep them going. If cars are a right off, then the batteries are valuable and used on other cars or home storage. It's rare for them to get recycled and even then they are valuable and won't be scrapped. It's not a giant challenge. Far easier to recycle than extract from the earth.

slave1

Not all oil is single use, plastic (crude oil/gas) recycling is now, all our plastic that I cannot avoid (mostly wrapping) gets recycled but the rate of recycling is very low, oil/gas use for plastic is growing at an incredible rate and expected to be at 20% by 2050

Plastics On Track To Account For 20% Of Oil And Gas Consumption By 2050 - Health Policy Watch (healthpolicy-watch.news)

micks_address

my id4 kills way more bugs/flies than any ice i ever had before.

McGiver

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120689785#Comment_120689785

On Lithium environmental impact:

Yes, lithium production CAN be polluting, doesn't mean all of it is. The largest deposits in the EU are in Germany, Portugal and Czechia, you can bet they would mined fairly clean.

But let's look at scale of lithium mining vs oil:

• Global lithum production - 100,000 tons
• Global oil production - 4,400,000,000 tons
• % of global oil production used to fuel cars - 26% i.e. 1,140,000,000 tons

That's 11400 times more volume than lithium. All of that oil is burned in cars with overall ~25% of efficiency of the chain all of which produces greenhouse gases, uses huge amount of energy and generates toxic emissions, and so is environmentally very much damaging. And then all of that oil is forever gone.

Compared to all of the equivalent lithium in EV batteries which is fully recyclable, because it's a metal.

It's a very simple mathematics to understand how much more environmental damage the whole oil chain (well-to-wheel) does compared to the equivalent lithium chain. It's very much obvious. Higher end of 2030 global lithium production estimate is 500 000 tons. That's still 3 orders of magnitude smaller operations than oil production. There's no way this can produce anywhere near the environmental damage than few orders of magnitude larger oil operations.

On Lithium shortages:

There's plenty of lithium for all EVs globally. The question is about doing it economically, efficiently and avoiding environmental damage. Medium-longer term, the future is almost certainly aluminium chemistry. The market will decide to move to Al (or Na) if Li gets too scarce & expensive. That might happen earliest in 10 years' time though so it's a future question.

One can get an EV today and reduce pollution by that for years to come, starting today, right now. EVs will only get better and cleaner as the grid gets more renewable and better battery chemistries are deployed. This is just the beginning, the oil demand will peak in several years and from thereon the future is electric.

sh81722

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121282942#Comment_121282942

Great post! When you start to think about the tanker full of petrol/diesel a car goes through in it's lifetime you can see how silly bringing the mining thing is. A few hundreds of kilograms of battery elements vs. twice the weight of the car of fuel (5000 litres is what about 4500 kg) for each 100000 km it travels if your car consumes 5 litres/100 km.

McGiver

To be fair, it's quite "efficient", because oil is EXTREMELY energy dense, and while lot of energy is wasted, lot of it still remains. Simply - oil economy is powered by oil. But the environmental impact of transporting those volumes are massive, especially because shipping uses the dirtiest/cheapest fuel possible.

We need to swap it and power renewable economy & electric cars through renewables and electric cars. E.g. there's talk about electriying lithium mining in Europe as a pre-requisite for approving the operations. Synergic ecosystem reinforcing its individual components.

slave1

Try comparing the oil usage of the super cruise liners versus even a country's usage, they should be illegal

Woodie40

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121287044#Comment_121287044

True, the greedy, gluttonous, wasteful consumers need their cruises.

...Ghost...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121283049#Comment_121283049

Oil is certainly energy dense @ around 44MJ/kg. However, if only 25% of that energy is turned into work done (ignoring for now the energy costs before it's in the fuel tank), it's still extremely inefficient. Imagine if every pizza you ordered, you only received 2 out of 8 slices, because the driver threw away the other 6 slices on the way.

In any case, 44MJ/kg becomes 11MJ of work done per kg. 1MJ = ~280Wh

EVs are conservatively 80% efficient on average. The energy density of a typical Li battery in a Tesla for example is 150Wh/kg. At 80% efficiency, it's 120Wh/kg.

The overall available work per unit of mass is still greater with oil based fuel v batteries (for now), but I couldn't bring myself to consider for a moment that 75% looses are efficient. Efficiency is about getting the most work done with the least energy wasted.

Old diesel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121294822#Comment_121294822

Pizza example is a brilliant illustration of the ICE engine inefficiency issue

slave1

Hmmmm pizza....

I'm not an engineer so a very basic view

I see two type of EVs, the ground up and the adapted ICE.

The adapted ICE has a motor which sits near an axle, turns that axle which then turns the wheel, not that much more efficient than ICE with potential for losses along the way, think Nissan Leaf or Kona etc

Then there is the ground up EV, think Tesla with the motor on the axel itself so eliminating losses from the above and very close to the action

My head then thinks the best motor is one mounted on the wheel itself which is providing power at the exact place required so would have to be super efficient. Not sure if any car does this or some reason why it can't be done....

mailforkev

Also not an engineer, but I’m pretty sure a motor on the wheels themselves would be a bit of a disaster from a weight distribution and suspension point of view. You might need to move the brakes inboard too?

I’m sure someone more technical-minded will be along to poke holes at my logic though!

Mr Q

I think the Lightyear cars had in wheel motors on both the cars they planned to sell.

But the un-sprung weight wouldn't be good for handling.

kanuseeme

you need 4 motors compared to 1 or 2,

...Ghost...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121305464#Comment_121305464

I'm an Engineer, but I was hungry and so I thought Pizza fit the bill. I managed to hold back from putting up a PIE chart though 😁.

The main efficiency losses are via heat and friction. Almost all the losses in an ICE are heat with a smaller portion attributed to friction getting the power to the wheels.

I used 80% efficiency for EVs, taking into account the extra friction when not designed from the ground up. Those designed as EVs typically reach 90% or greater efficiency. Very little heat is generated by the motor turning and so little is wasted.

There are quad motor variants out there with the motors mounted near the wheels, which give greater control, stability and efficiency, though the efficiency is generally squandered/used to improve performance and fun. Here is one BMW plan to launch.

Tesla Cybertruck will also have a quad motor option.

Balsamnews

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121310222#Comment_121310222

Mandating never works, especially for a product that's not without its flaws, you cant force people into them or you shouldn't anyway, what happened to a free market? Why do EV's need to be incentivised so much? If they are superior product they shouldn't need it.

In 50-100 years time, they will look back at how we dug up the earth to make battery cars as silly imo, ICE will look bad as well, especially big guzzling engines.

I like EV's, fantastic to drive but they aren't the future long term.

If I tried to sell something which forced people to sit around in crappy car parks while their life drains away my customers would say are you mental and tell me to go jump. It's crazy behaviour what's going on. Honestly who wants to sit around in car parks? Unless you are only ever going to charge at home or at work EV's are not an inferior product for A to B travel, they are slower for travelling distances beyond there range, that's a fact and you basically need a driveway to own one. Those are 2 pretty large negatives

I personally wouldn't go and sit in a carpark even if the electric was free, never mind pay for it, it's madness. I'll find a way to save that €20 I save in fuel a week elsewhere in my life.

McGiver

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121311203#Comment_121311203

Fossil industry is subsidised $7 trillion dollar annual on global scale. Just for the reference. It's about increasing EV subsidies at the expense of fossil subsides. The current EV subsidies are miniscule compared to fossil. If you were to pay the real price of petrol and fossil cars (including health damage caused by driving them) you wouldn't drive them.

Future is squarely electric. No way around it. It's going one way. Burning stuff is inefficient and polluting, it's going to end.

Balsamnews

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121311399#Comment_121311399

Where do you think electric comes from? China the largest EV market in the world are burning more coal and importing more oil than ever before. If EV sales scales like governments think then we will be forced back to them as well, renewable stuff won't be able to keep up if there is exponential growth.

How many private cars are in Ireland? Is it increasing every year? How much oil do we import currently? I own an EV btw, a 7 year old Leaf, but I would stil put my house that long term eg 50- 100 years time it wont be electric as the energy source, it's be short term alright, governments have in it now, but better technology will arrive. You'll need 1000kW chargers to charge a 100kWh EV in 6 mins or even fill half the battery in 3 mins to resemble what we with ICE now. The cost and infrastructure to built that out is just madness. They way it is now with 10-80% charging and sitting in a miserable car park for 25-30 mins is just miserable.

DrPsychia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121311203#Comment_121311203

EV's are superior in almost every metric except for range per 'fill' compared to an ICE. There's no debate about it. The only people who deny it are those who are too ignorant or proud to admit they're wrong. It's the best technology currently available that is mass produceable and easiest to adopt. They're cheaper to run, less harmful to the environment, more efficient utilising energy, quieter for motorway and city driving, more reliable, no oil changes, significantly longer warranties for consumer peace of mind. When's the last time multiple brands offered 160-200k engine warranties? Less moving parts so less to break. You can have a full "tank" every morning which is seriously under rated. Then you have the ability to charge from Solar. You can pre-condition the car to be toasty warm on a freezing morning, can't do that with any ICE without making it a target for theft, or releasing dirty diesel or petrol emission outside your door. They're less likely to be stolen, especially Teslas. Less local emissions means less respiratory related illnesses which is a benefit to the healthcare system.

Electric motors are over 90% efficient, no ICE engine is greater than 30% efficient, so that's 70% energy lost by burning fossils and sending emissions into our local environment.

Even if you were to charge electric cars solely from Coal burning plants, the emissions released to the environment would still be lower due to the greater efficiency of a coal power station.

Lithium Ion Batteries are highly recyclable. Oil refinement and extraction is highly CO2 intensive and devastates the areas where extracted due to the chemicals used, look at Nigeria, tar sands of Canada for example.

If you want to blame mining, well guess what, mining would happen anyway regardless of EV's because rare earth metal are needed anyway in other industries.

We still need oil but we will need less oil by moving to electric. Less oil extracted and used means less money for the likes of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Russia, and Kuwait which operate under absolutely terrible human rights, less money going to these oppressive and abhorrent states is something I actively support.

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121311445#Comment_121311445

Have your strong views on the subject been influenced by owning a Leaf?

MightyMunster

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121311203#Comment_121311203

There's less digging needed for an EV than an ICE and most of what you dig up is recyclable unlike burnt oil

slave1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121311445#Comment_121311445

All fair points but not reality for all EV owners, if you own your house with decent roof or garden space the you can do something impossible with an ICE car and fuel it from the sun which has to be the cleanest of fuelling. I put 15,040kms into our EVs from the sun this year and even if I didn’t I’d be charging at night when majority of electricity comes from renewables.

Maybe I’m an outlier? Early adopter Leaf when you could go a week without spotting another electric car, now they’re everywhere. Probably one of the first so abandon ICE altogether when we went two EV household and now that’s not an unusual setup. Give it time and (hopefully) PV/EV will greatly bring us along a healthier road

SuperBowserWorld

Mod Note: Snip, reminder of warning in https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120019339/#Comment_120019339

techdiver

Hi,

I came across this thread and assumed that there are people with more expertise then me when it comes to EVs.

I'm all for whatever improves the environment across the board from cleaner air to less co2 emissions etc, so I want EV's to succeed. Here is my issue though and it's something I find very difficult to get an unbiased comprehensive answer to (as most publications I read online are biased in one direction or the other).

The anti ev crowd point to the manufacturing process as a red flag for EVs. Mining ore for battery production and then the production of batteries themselves causing more environmental damage than the manufacture of ICE cars. I suppose what I want to know is are there any like for like comparisons between EV and ICE cars from initial manufacture to scrapping from an environmental impact point of view?

I often see the claim that EVs are "zero emissions". This is clearly false and only serves as an attack vector for anti ev rhetoric. It's cognitive dissonance to state that whilst yes, EVs in on of themselves have "zero emissions", they run on electricity that has to be produced somehow and the majority of that still comes from fossil fuels.

So surely if EVs are the way forward (which I hope they are), there should be some peer reviewed independent analysis of the environmental impact when compared to ICE cars for the entire average lifecycle of a car (which should include any and all required recycling).

MrMusician18

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121452787#Comment_121452787

The problem with analysis is that there is nothing really independent now. Even academic papers, while ostensibly meant to be even handed and objective are often riddled with the biases of the author.

Life cycle carbon emissions are next to impossible to accurately determine since fossil fuel derived energy is pervasive. There is a carbon footprint associated with everything down to nut and screw that should be quantified.

My understanding is that BEVs are more resource intensive to build than an ICE but are less resource intensive to run (but this all depends on where they are used and the cleanliness of the grid in which they are charged from). There are some states in the US for example that are entirely coal fuelled. The other idea is that EVs get cleaner as the grid becomes cleaner.

200000km will consume 12000l of diesel in a reasonably efficient car or 32400kg of CO2. An electric car for the same distance and of reasonable efficiency will consume 40000kwh. The Irish grid had a CO2 intensity of 345g/kWh in 2022. That's 9800kg of CO2 over it's operational lifetime.

creedp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121452787#Comment_121452787

While I get all that and its obviously good to consider minimising the environmental impact of one consumption, I rarely hear people subjecting other decisions to the same level of scrutiny.

Do people really objectively analyse the emissions impact of their holiday decisions and say Id really love to go to the States this year but due to the high emissions impact of this decision Im doing a staycation instead?

Most people I know with EVs did not even give a passing thought to environmental emissions when considering buying their car. It was the grant, fuel cost savings and quality of car that were the deciding factors and tbh the decision could be boiled down to financial above all else for most people.

Workhorse2024

The people that drank the EV koolaid at the start we're not mechanically savy enough to know what they were buying or how it's made.

The "switch" to EV was a lie, if we all bought one in the morning we wouldn't have the infrastructure to support it, i remember my co-workers coming in saying they were "Going green" buying the EV i just started laughing.

Mad_Lad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121982222#Comment_121982222

The question we need to be asking is why not use our own lithium and cobalt resources ?

Lithium mining is destructive to land and local environment.

There's lots of lithium in Wicklow/Carlow border Mount Leinster area. Protests have prevented mining so far but is it a matter of time before we see the true cost to battery cars or perhaps it's time we actually see it on our own door step.

For every 1 tonne of lithium you need 2 million litres of fresh water, I was banned from threads for highlighting this before because EV enthusiasts don't want to face facts. I even had a thread deleted, I started another and people were were warned not to respond. No one wants to face up to the reality about battery production.

Much of the lithium and cobalt that enters our electric cars has already caused a lot of environmental damage which is completely ignored by EV fans and raising that fact can get a thread ban, so why should we not use out own lithium and cobalt and destroy out own land and fresh water supplies ?

electricus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121982241#Comment_121982241

I don’t think anyone ignores the impact of Lithium production and that is why there is so much research into alternative battery chemistries and methods of production. There are also plentiful geothermal lithium sources which are much less damaging to extract

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201124-how-geothermal-lithium-could-revolutionise-green-energy

Also, there seems to be an assumption that production of fossil fuels is less damaging when CO2 production is discounted (I.e. that carbon capture will solve all of its pollution problems) which is very far from the truth, particularly in poorer countries.

As for cobalt, more of it is used for oil refining than in batteries.

Mad_Lad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121982255#Comment_121982255

Great for the 2nd car but lower energy density, lithium and cobalt mining is highly destructive which can't be ignored.

Good for PHEV Rex type system that runs on biofuel. But they are much heavier and probably more suited to storage.

Solid state is the way to go , sodium while much greener than lithium hasn't a hope of replacing ICE range and refill times.

https://electrek.co/2024/04/05/nio-begins-mass-production-semi-solid-state-batteriesev-use-q2/

Per a recent post by Weibo user @Delu Loves Driving, NIO’s first 150-kWh battery pack (seen above) has rolled off the assembly line in China. According to the post, the semi-solid-state cells from WeLion have already been tested at battery swap stations in Shanghai and Chengdu.

For comparison, NIO’s current stations swap EV batteries that are 75 or 100 kWh in capacity, so the new semi-solid-state cells can deliver significantly more range to drivers in a matter of minutes via swaps.

I don't know about recharge times but 150 Kwh is where we need to be at to approach ICE range, Battery swaps, that was tried before and failed.

150 Kwh @ 22 Kwh/km would mean 681 Kms 100-0%. so it's a good start to replace ICE not quite there but a lot better than what we got now, recharge times still unknown.

https://electrek.co/2024/03/27/worlds-first-mass-produced-900v-ev-drive-system-rolls-out/

I wouldn't be interested in EV again unless there was a super charging solid state battery with at least 150 Kwh and a price of no more than 25K lol.