Everyone knows that electric vehicles are supposed to be better for the planet than gas cars. That’s the driving reason behind a global effort to transition toward batteries.
But what about the harms caused by mining for battery minerals? And coal-fired power plants for the electricity to charge the cars? And battery waste? Is it really true that EVs are better?
The answer is yes. But Americans are growing less convinced.
The net benefits of EVs have been frequently fact-checked, including by NPR. "No technology is perfect, but the electric vehicles are going to offer a significant benefit as compared to the internal combustion engine vehicles," Jessika Trancik, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told NPR this spring.
It’s important to ask these questions about EVs’ hidden costs, Trancik says. But they have been answered “exhaustively” — her word — and a widerange of organizations have confirmed that EVs still beat gas.
We’re going to run the country into the ground because we have such a large group of people being totally fine with (or even encouraging) their lack of education and the ability to reason properly. They’re just proud to be “against” something together, they don’t even care what it is they’re against.
There are already EV battery recycling plants springing up now that there are enough used EVs to warrant them, there wasn’t much point building them when there weren’t any battery packs to process.
The renewable energy switch is already happening, because even without subsidies they’re still cheaper.
But no… gotta get out there and roll coal.
The end of life battery recycling has been the #1 thing I’ve been looking at. Glad to see they aren’t going to landfill.
I’m curious to know what you’ve learned. Would you care to share?
If you’ve been looking at it, then perhaps you’ve seen this:
EV Batteries Can Outlast A Vehicle’s Lifetime With Minimal Degradation, Study Finds https://insideevs.com/news/733987/ev-batteries-outlast-vehicle-degradation-study/
““Batteries in the latest EV models will comfortably outlast the usable life of the vehicle and will likely not need to be replaced.” That’s what David Savage, Vice President for the UK and Ireland at Geotab said in the company’s latest study that looked at how EV batteries degrade over time.”
But if not, the article, and research it’s based on is worth a gander. EVs require a whole lot less maintenance, too, as it turns.
So far, the biggest problem with battery recycling is that not enough of it is done locally. Depleted batteries are being shipped to China for recycling.
https://www.npr.org/2024/06/27/nx-s1-5019454/ev-battery-recycling-us
But things are improving here, so that’s good!
Ideally what I’d like to see are large, regional, recycling centers and that’s just not a thing yet. I’d say a minimum of 6, 2 in the West, 2 in the East and 2 in the center of the country.
I live in Virginia and the other day I saw a Tesla with a custom license plate for friends of coal. like I don’t even…
I must admit this is a big-brain move — being for electric cars in order to have more coal-fired plants rather than burning gasoline.
Even a coal burning EV emits less carbon than a gasoline car. The payback threshold may increase uncomfortably though. A while back I read something doing that analysis per US state. I believe the threshold ranges from 2 year in states with cleaner energy, up to 14 in coal burning West Virginia and Wyoming
That feels like they’re trolling or making fun of themselves a bit. I know a few people in Kentucky with EVs and they also have “friends of coal” plates.
Wasn’t that what Desantis did, put a coal sticker on his Tesla? Then had dealerships write up a bill to restrict people from purchasing vehicles directly from manufactures without going through a dealership, keeping the costs higher for the people. The bill had an exemption for certain vehicles… Like the Tesla he bought.
This is the bottom line. We all know who these morons are and they’re never going to care what actual repercussions are for their actions. They think it is funny to “own the libs” no matter what the issue may be. If a left-leaning person advocates for one thing, their automatic reaction is to oppose it without question.
It’s truly scary to look around (especially in red states) and to know a good percentage of those around you are that dumb.
North American auto has lost its mind and handed over any chance at being top-tier in the future. Seems game over to me. Canada is joining in on the 100% tariff game and I’m furious that my government will, this late in the game, try and protect an industry that gambled with the oil and gas industry and lost (not to mention their compete fall into profiteering in five to six digit major life purchases) by passing costs of avoiding Elon and subpar selection onto consumers.
I hope the industry wakes up and goes hard for competitiveness in EVs and stops waiting for elections to decide if climate change is real or if the economy will be affected by their decisions. To stop waiting for elections to decide if people want EVs. To allow manufacturing to flourish regardless of who’s fighting for the rights to our money while we briefly have it.
And to your point yeah - just like Asimov said:
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
Be sure to call a few government reps and speak your mind. Try to do it by asking questions. If you can turn a few aides against the system it can have a snowball effect bc those are people who are young and passionate about politics
An even larger portion of America can’t afford them, so it doesn’t even matter.
Thank you. I can’t even afford a base model Corolla and used cars prices are through the roof. I might have to buy a paraglider or something.
Hybrids actually have the best longevity and repair scores, however.
The longevity of the vehicle actually does count towards its ecological impact, because if you have to replace it sooner, you’re creating a bigger ecological impact of creating a short-term use device before more energy has to be used to recycle parts of it.
So, at the moment hybrids win that battle. I think its simply because hybrids have been around longer, not because they’re special. Give it about 10-15 more years and I think you’ll see a flip to EVs taking over that spot from hybrids.
EDIT: Also, the bad build quality of Teslas and the early adopters of EVs mostly being Tesla owners also means that the sample of hybrids having better longevity and repair scores is impacted by Tesla specifically being so bad. If you cut out Teslas from the equation, I bet EVs and hybrids would probably have similar longevity and repair scores.
I’d like to see a source that says hybrids, with two separate engines plus the mechanical linkages between them plus the transmission, have better repair scores than a pure EV with no transmission, no mechanical engine, and a simpler drivetrain.
I’m skeptical that hybrids with ICEs and transmissions at their heart really do have more longevity than BEVs and electric motors. ICE and especially hybrids are inherently more complex than BEVs, and have many more moving mechanical parts to wear out over time. So while BEVs may technically be “harder to repair”, there’s actually much less to repair in the first place. not to mention less maintenance like dozens of oil changes over the life of the car.
Where did you get that info about the hybrid longevity, an episode of Comedy Bang Bang? Could it be due to hybrids not running the gas engines full-time (less wear hours of usage per mile) ?
The only hybrid I’ve driven tends to run the engine more as a power generator than to drive the wheels, and often uses no gas engine. I could see how the engine would be less worn from that kind of usage vs driving the wheels all the time.
EVs have a lot of advantages over ICEs. It’s good that things are evolving finally to make EVs more than a niche. It however doesn’t remove the problem that they are still a car with all of those negatives, even if they pollute much less. In some ways providing an individual solution could harm efforts to reduce the number of cars on the road. It’s not a final solution, only a step to fix a few of the most obvious problems while retaining others.
Most US metro areas are just too spread out for mass transit to be a worthwhile solution for most people. The only solution to significantly reducing cars in the US is telecommuting; unfortunately businesses generally don’t like it, so we need to find a way for this to be encouraged by the government with subsidies or something.
Even if you live in an area where busses are, they’re slow and limited routes. Times are often inconvenient to work schedules. 1h 30m by bus, 50m biking, 3h 10m walk. A drive to work takes me 15 mins on average.
If you can drive to work in 15 minutes. Properly funded and prioritized transit can get you there in 10. Hourly bus service is not good transit.
