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

Because, as idiotic as she has been it's not in my nature to make people feel bad about themselves

But she'll only feel bad about it if she realises she was wrong. Nearly everyone I've encountered online or in the flesh who believe EVs are worse, usually have their minds firmly made up.

Do you respond in the same manner to everyone who is ignorant on a topic that you have so much more knowledge on?

Tbf I often react in the same manner when people claim that reducing Irelands emissions will reduce flooding and other global climate change related events

OLd evs and by that I mean leafs that can do 50kms are very cheap atm. Like 1.5k to 3k depending on their condition. Very good value imo. If you take range out of the equation you are getting a what 10 to 12 year old well built japanese saloon with generally lowish milage and you don't have to worry about engine condition. RE range...I know a rake of people who's driving habits are to and from work (less than 50km) or to n from nearest town /city (less than 50kms) n the same to n from the shops n the relatives. Ideal for alot of people.

Cheapest Nissan leaf I can find on DD is €2,850 for a 2011 model. Cheapest 2011 Tiida (comparable sized car) is listed at €2,150

Both to me sound like crazy money for nearly 14 year old cars but I'd still lean towards the leaf for the greater reliability. This clearly also demonstrates the depreciation problem resolving itself somewhat

Why's that then?

Planes are technically public transport, surely it's better than moving 200 odd people from Shannon to London by car and ferry

John gibbons was on the radio saying public transport is a good example of self driving vehicles.

Interesting chart. So, if I understand it correctly, both an EV and a PHEV have less of a carbon footprint than your normal public bus?

You'd surely also need to look at distance travelled for the commute. For example, by car I'm 6k from work, so 12k @ 47g in an EV per day = 564g. But to go by bus, leaving aside that it's takes 3 times longer, the journey is 11k each way, so 22k @ 79g = 1,738. I would think this scenario is similar for most people who don't have an almost direct bus route.

Therefore using my EV is not 40% less carbon, but actually 67% less than the bus? (rough calc)

Or, I've completely mis understood the passenger kilometer values?

^^^ Take it with a pinch of salt… Coach figures must be based on them being full.

There is a 57 seat coach that runs a route past my house 6 times a day. There is virtually no one on it and it cannot be profitable with the very low usage. (I'm guessing it's a Gov funded Bus Éireann rural route). The carbon footprint per passenger would be larger than a diesel car on nearly every trip. I can't understand why they don't replace it with a smaller vehicle, perhaps even an electric one.

^^^ True but then again they have to have some sort of metric as a measure and they probably thought that a baseline of a full coach travelling the motorway network between cities/airports was the guideline. These are UK based stats, and their definition of a coach vs a bus route most likely varies slightly from ours. I'd say they would class many longer rural routes as 'bus' and not 'coach' - which shows correctly in the stats as sitting in the middle at 97g. Makes sense as a bus runs with limited passengers a lot of the time.

One of the differences here is we run anything from a 57 to a 72 seat coach on everything, be it a rural 20km length route or town to town, whereas parts of the UK and many EU countries tend to use a dedicated bus equivalent. I'm assuming this is due to there being many small operators here, each having limited vehicle types that have to be used for all travel requirements. Even the school buses (normally a large coach run by a private company) here are not even half full….

You can do that already, seeing as we import nuclear energy from the UK. Not sure how Nuclear is genuinely Zero emissions though, lots of mining, shipping, concrete etc.…

Seems even less safe than hydrogen 💥

Its why high-speed electric rail does so well. It can carry a lot of people a long distance very efficiently.

The only bit that surprised me in that chart is Coach, I'm surprised to see they're so efficient.

This is something I came across about fifteen years ago when doing research for a regional transport project. The "per km" costs are subject to all kinds of additional factors and assumptions, but the real-world data (from the UK) suggested that a 50-seater diesel powered coach was indeed a better per-passenger-per-km option than any rail journey … because outside of rush hour, the coach was still going to be half-full, whereas the train might be carrying as little as 10% of its capacity.

You'll get the same thing with the figures for air travel - they're all based on the assumption that people live in an airport and only ever take a fully-booked flight to some other airport. The carbon footprint of the flight is pretty much a nonsense figure, as it ignores whatever transport that passenger used to get to/from the two airports (twice), and conveniently overlooks the possibility that said passenger is only taking that flight because the tickets are being sold cheap to fill the seats, and they didn't really need to make the journey.

Something similar applies to high-speed electric rail. During the same period, I read about how high-speed rail in France has increased average journey times for average passengers (by about 100%). Why? Because most people don't live near a station serviced by a high-speed service, but the supposed efficiency of the TGV lead to SNCF pushing more of these projects and cutting the regional services, and routing those that remain through hubs that feed the high-speed network rather than offering more direct routes.

As an occasional user of both, I can confirm that the situation is pretty dire these days if you live anywhere other than Paris and want to go anywhere other than Paris. It doesn't matter that French trains are nuclear powered - it's still quicker and easier for me to drive the 650km to my place of work in a 20-year-old diesel-guzzling monster. But once I'm there, my CO2/NOx emissions drop to zero for weeks at a time while half-empty trains keep trundling in and out of Paris.

Very interesting. Do you know did any such research on efficiency \ carbon usage of rail, air or coach also take account of the support structure ? Any per km figures for rail for example should presumably include the associated carbon footprint and energy cost of the railway stations (or bus stations \ airports). if it's to be fair. Is that the way it's done or are these issues never counted as part of the overall and just left in limbo ?