Quote:
Originally Posted by giphlag
I don't know about your statement for Polestar but it appears you are using a worst case scenario for the entire EV industry which isn't really fair. In the U.S. the EPA uses the GREET model by Argonne National Laboratory. They have done extensive studies on this and have shown that EVs are better overall in Greenhouse Gas emissions compared to ICE vehicles.
Furthermore, we are only at the beginning of battery technology for human transport and things will only improve from here on. |
We are on same page re EV vs ICE. Polestar disclosed their CO2 impact in production vs normal car, but that will improve of course (it is Chinese coal that plays part).
The point I made over EVs being not as green as people think is simple:
- there are energy losses which you take when charge EV (as it travels from powerplant, to grid, through transformer, to your socket)
- there are issues with battery recycling on massive scale in 10 years but we are simply told that they will be used to store energy (may be in some advanced western part of society, but in most cases I can tell you what will happen - Western Europe and USA will be selling these batteries with cars in them to Africa and poorer parts of the world, as almost gifts, like they do today with solar panels - and leave the recycling problem there, not at home). And yes, I think this is dodgy gift, but this is what has been always done by richer countries, and especially last 100 years+. Corruption in poorer countries certainly not helpful, but we also will forbid them to mine fossil fuels and get richer (instead, we offer them our left overs). This is sketchy but no one thinks about this. It is easier that way I suppose...
- there will be new better technologies making batteries last longer and be more efficient which will mitigate those above issues of course but not exponentially. Solar panels no longer improve so fast.
Remember, to recycle a battery you need to rip it apart and separate cobalt, nickel etc. It is currently a lot cheaper (5x or so) to keep mining cobalt (especially in africa, child labour is a big issue). A lot of battery recycling taking place in india looks horrendous if you bother to look. People by hand taking things apart for next to nothing.
Recycling batteries will be the big impact and I hope someone like car companies will be taking this on board. Otherwise we are gonna have same pollution issue like we did till 70-80s with leaded fuel. A problem, that was for 50 years known and people just ate up.
But other than those issues I outlined, of course EVs are greener today. Especially if you get rid of the polluting crap that is the 80-90s cars that still are on the road. Im looking at you the guy with Honda Civic 1995 which "never breaks down".
