The encounter between a Rivian driver and uninformed Tesla owner highlights 'a need for better education and communication within the EV community,' the Rivian driver says.
I’m undecided on getting an EV or not getting one, and this makes me glad I kept my old diesel: for one, nobody questions my ability to fuel up at any gas station. But also, all gas stations are designed to accommodate cars that have a tank filler on either side of the vehicle without forcing the driver to take up two spots.
The more I look at the EV world, the more I’m convinced I should wait until all the quirks are ironed out - by which point I’ll probably be old enough to stop driving altogether.
from what I undertstand the climate impact is less if you drive your petrol/deisel car into the ground than if you ditch a functioning car to buy a newly manufacruted EV.
That’s a rather old hypothesis that hasn’t been found to be true. The discussion on climate impact hadn’t been so easily measured, but recent studies have caught up.
It depends on the new EV you’re speaking about and how old and dirty your present diesel is. Some cars are produced as “carbon-neutral”, like the VWs ID.3 & ID.4 (and I think Kia maybe?).
Whereas recent diesels have been found out to be up to 3x more polluting4-times more polluting than originally thought, and older ICE cars have been found to increase their pollution output as they age.
Remember the Daily Mail’s repeated rage articles about EVs being dirtier if charged with coal-fired electric sources? That’s been disproven again and again.
If you’re looking at climate impact beyond production, especially over the long term, EVs quickly surpass ICE vehicles in clean operation (production and usage) in less than 2 years (some cars, just months).
Many EV also use battery packs that are recyclable and can be repaired; Ford, VW, NIssan, Kia/Hyundai and others use a pack in a pack approach, where a bad groups of cells can be swapped out while keeping the main battery. Some like Tesla tends to glue them together, which means the whole pack needs to be replaced, but it’s still rare to have cells fail unless there’s a manufacturing problem like GM had with Hyundai cells (again, old manufacturing methods - modern EVs do it differently now).
From cradle to grave, modern EVs are overall far less polluting than gas or diesel cars.
I was actually describing petrol car vs production divided by reduction in emissions in operation over time, so I shouldn’t have inculded deisel. I’ll have a look at your links, thanks
Where you getting that from? Engineering explained I think calculated getting an EV is better CO2 wise after about 2 years with US average power generation. It’ll take longer than that to break even though if you have a dirty grid, or you get an EV with an enormous battery.
I’m not sure where my wife read it (she’s a phd in experimental physics with ecology training, and is thus no slouch + a realist) so I’d be surprised if it wasn’t from actual research articles in journals, and not a youtube video, but I’ll ask her
The problem with all of these analyses is nobody can agree where to draw the system boundaries. I prefer to draw very large system boundaries (societal level), e.g. your car will enter the secondary market when you sell it and someone else will typically drive it somewhere approaching the end of useful life. So to me, any ICE (or EV) has sort of a “fixed” carbon cost consisting of production, fueling, maintenance, etc. over its lifetime. At this point, what matters is that as many new new cars as posible are EV so that they can enter the secondary market and replace the fleet. Amortizing or sunk cost fallacying the use of ICE doesn’t make sense because reality doesn’t care about amortization, it just counts the carbon dioxide ppm in the atmosphere as it occurs. The secondary and tertiary markets are driven by economics, so we need a combination of (a) wealthy people eating the depreciation as soon as possible and (b) much cheaper new EVs. Our goal should be to eliminate the production of ICE. Applying to an individual level, if you sell your older ICE truck to someone that was about to buy a new gas F150, and you buy an EV, that’s a win and you shouldn’t do some weird math that results in you burning a bunch of gasoline to get to some amortized level for that vehicle before moving on.
I live in Ireland where the NCT (state inspection equivalent) is so fucking stringent that people talk to me about my car all the time and its just over 20 years old. cars get NCT’d off the road here all the time, and you cant sell it here without the NCT. Once it finally fails, someone who knows what they’re looking at will probably ship it to Hungary or something, so there’s the cost of that, but your market idea has to be global for that to make sense, but something tells me your idea of the system is everywhere the atmosphere is, so
That makes sense. My understanding is that it’s quite common for cars to end up in poorer countries as they age, so that all checks out. The point is on average, cars get used, so we want to prevent the worst ones from being made moving forward (ICE). And yes, to me the system is the atmosphere since I’m primarily concerned with an overabundance of CO2 in the atmosphere.
That’s one of the factors that keeps me from getting an EV. It’ll always be worse for the environment if I get a new car - EV or not - rather than continue keeping this old diesel in good working condition and driving it until it dies, because its manufacturing carbon cost is already spent. So the more I drive it, the more I dilute it.
But really, the real reason is because modern cars are friggin’ spying devices. And that too goes for EVs and not EVs. That’s really the biggest turnoff for me. I swear to God, when this car dies, I’m seriously considering going carless again, because I just don’t want a car that’s connected to the internet 24/7, spying on me and pulling software updates without my knowledge or my consent.
someone else posted a reply to my comment that shows it might not be true that its better to keep pushing your deisel car rather than replace it with an ev.
I’m in the EU, so data protection is better than elsewhere, but I agree. I’ve looked into how to essentially disconnect the gps device and cellular comms devices from new cars for when I need to finally get one.
honestly will 100％ look into conversion of my current petrol car to ev, although it would not be economically smart to do so
That’s sad to hear. I use the other sort of port, CCS, but I’ve never had any issues with charging. The people have been very nice and the process has been smooth.
Plus a big selling feature for me was that I could save about $1.5k a year in gas with my commute distance. I didn’t know how that matches up for diesel though.
a big selling feature for me was that I could save about $1.5k a year in gas with my commute distance.
Yeah but how much did you have to pay to get that saving in gasoline, after you were done sold you previous car and buying the new one?
I too could save a bunch of money running an electric car, and even more so because my company has free chargers on the parking lot and I drive so little that I would essentially never have to pay to charge up. But any savings I could get with an EV would be totally negated for many, many years just because of the cost of buying a new car.
Financially, it makes more sense to keep my old car. It costs more to run, but it’s paid for. Ultimately, if I ever get an EV, it’ll probably a gift I’ll give to myself because it won’t make much sense, financially or ecologically.
Given your little driving, sticking with the old one is a sound decision. But it’s worth looking into getting a used electric car if you do need to upgrade. Especially since you say you don’t use the car too much, an older one which has had some battery decay might still be fully operable, and closer to a price range where it’s not a large monetary loss.
Actually I was looking into getting one of the early models - perhaps even a plug-in hybrid - that wasn’t yet equipped with all the surveillance gear and internet connectivity I dread, and having it refurbished. Even if the original range was, say, 120 miles and it only gets half of that because the battery is worn out, and half of that again because I live in a cold climate, I still get 30 miles in the winter and that’s enough for me because the most I would drive is 20 miles between charges - basically for commuting.
I’m undecided on getting an EV or not getting one, and this makes me glad I kept my old diesel: for one, nobody questions my ability to fuel up at any gas station. But also, all gas stations are designed to accommodate cars that have a tank filler on either side of the vehicle without forcing the driver to take up two spots.
The more I look at the EV world, the more I’m convinced I should wait until all the quirks are ironed out - by which point I’ll probably be old enough to stop driving altogether.
from what I undertstand the climate impact is less if you drive your petrol/deisel car into the ground than if you ditch a functioning car to buy a newly manufacruted EV.
That’s a rather old hypothesis that hasn’t been found to be true. The discussion on climate impact hadn’t been so easily measured, but recent studies have caught up.
It depends on the new EV you’re speaking about and how old and dirty your present diesel is. Some cars are produced as “carbon-neutral”, like the VWs ID.3 & ID.4 (and I think Kia maybe?).
Whereas recent diesels have been found out to be up to
3x more polluting4-times more polluting than originally thought, and older ICE cars have been found to increase their pollution output as they age.Remember the Daily Mail’s repeated rage articles about EVs being dirtier if charged with coal-fired electric sources? That’s been disproven again and again.
If you’re looking at climate impact beyond production, especially over the long term, EVs quickly surpass ICE vehicles in clean operation (production and usage) in less than 2 years (some cars, just months).
Many EV also use battery packs that are recyclable and can be repaired; Ford, VW, NIssan, Kia/Hyundai and others use a pack in a pack approach, where a bad groups of cells can be swapped out while keeping the main battery. Some like Tesla tends to glue them together, which means the whole pack needs to be replaced, but it’s still rare to have cells fail unless there’s a manufacturing problem like GM had with Hyundai cells (again, old manufacturing methods - modern EVs do it differently now).
From cradle to grave, modern EVs are overall far less polluting than gas or diesel cars.
Edit: Updated with links.
fair enough, thanks for that.
I was actually describing petrol car vs production divided by reduction in emissions in operation over time, so I shouldn’t have inculded deisel. I’ll have a look at your links, thanks
Where you getting that from? Engineering explained I think calculated getting an EV is better CO2 wise after about 2 years with US average power generation. It’ll take longer than that to break even though if you have a dirty grid, or you get an EV with an enormous battery.
https://youtu.be/6RhtiPefVzM
I’m not sure where my wife read it (she’s a phd in experimental physics with ecology training, and is thus no slouch + a realist) so I’d be surprised if it wasn’t from actual research articles in journals, and not a youtube video, but I’ll ask her
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/6RhtiPefVzM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The problem with all of these analyses is nobody can agree where to draw the system boundaries. I prefer to draw very large system boundaries (societal level), e.g. your car will enter the secondary market when you sell it and someone else will typically drive it somewhere approaching the end of useful life. So to me, any ICE (or EV) has sort of a “fixed” carbon cost consisting of production, fueling, maintenance, etc. over its lifetime. At this point, what matters is that as many new new cars as posible are EV so that they can enter the secondary market and replace the fleet. Amortizing or sunk cost fallacying the use of ICE doesn’t make sense because reality doesn’t care about amortization, it just counts the carbon dioxide ppm in the atmosphere as it occurs. The secondary and tertiary markets are driven by economics, so we need a combination of (a) wealthy people eating the depreciation as soon as possible and (b) much cheaper new EVs. Our goal should be to eliminate the production of ICE. Applying to an individual level, if you sell your older ICE truck to someone that was about to buy a new gas F150, and you buy an EV, that’s a win and you shouldn’t do some weird math that results in you burning a bunch of gasoline to get to some amortized level for that vehicle before moving on.
thats all valid.
I live in Ireland where the NCT (state inspection equivalent) is so fucking stringent that people talk to me about my car all the time and its just over 20 years old. cars get NCT’d off the road here all the time, and you cant sell it here without the NCT. Once it finally fails, someone who knows what they’re looking at will probably ship it to Hungary or something, so there’s the cost of that, but your market idea has to be global for that to make sense, but something tells me your idea of the system is everywhere the atmosphere is, so
That makes sense. My understanding is that it’s quite common for cars to end up in poorer countries as they age, so that all checks out. The point is on average, cars get used, so we want to prevent the worst ones from being made moving forward (ICE). And yes, to me the system is the atmosphere since I’m primarily concerned with an overabundance of CO2 in the atmosphere.
That’s one of the factors that keeps me from getting an EV. It’ll always be worse for the environment if I get a new car - EV or not - rather than continue keeping this old diesel in good working condition and driving it until it dies, because its manufacturing carbon cost is already spent. So the more I drive it, the more I dilute it.
But really, the real reason is because modern cars are friggin’ spying devices. And that too goes for EVs and not EVs. That’s really the biggest turnoff for me. I swear to God, when this car dies, I’m seriously considering going carless again, because I just don’t want a car that’s connected to the internet 24/7, spying on me and pulling software updates without my knowledge or my consent.
thats all fair.
someone else posted a reply to my comment that shows it might not be true that its better to keep pushing your deisel car rather than replace it with an ev.
I’m in the EU, so data protection is better than elsewhere, but I agree. I’ve looked into how to essentially disconnect the gps device and cellular comms devices from new cars for when I need to finally get one.
honestly will 100％ look into conversion of my current petrol car to ev, although it would not be economically smart to do so
That’s sad to hear. I use the other sort of port, CCS, but I’ve never had any issues with charging. The people have been very nice and the process has been smooth.
Plus a big selling feature for me was that I could save about $1.5k a year in gas with my commute distance. I didn’t know how that matches up for diesel though.
Yeah but how much did you have to pay to get that saving in gasoline, after you were done sold you previous car and buying the new one?
I too could save a bunch of money running an electric car, and even more so because my company has free chargers on the parking lot and I drive so little that I would essentially never have to pay to charge up. But any savings I could get with an EV would be totally negated for many, many years just because of the cost of buying a new car.
Financially, it makes more sense to keep my old car. It costs more to run, but it’s paid for. Ultimately, if I ever get an EV, it’ll probably a gift I’ll give to myself because it won’t make much sense, financially or ecologically.
$13k. My old car fell apart, so keeping using it wasn’t an option.
Ah yes, I guess in your case, it was a simple choice of saving $1.5K a year or not saving $1.5K a year 🙂
Given your little driving, sticking with the old one is a sound decision. But it’s worth looking into getting a used electric car if you do need to upgrade. Especially since you say you don’t use the car too much, an older one which has had some battery decay might still be fully operable, and closer to a price range where it’s not a large monetary loss.
You’re right.
Actually I was looking into getting one of the early models - perhaps even a plug-in hybrid - that wasn’t yet equipped with all the surveillance gear and internet connectivity I dread, and having it refurbished. Even if the original range was, say, 120 miles and it only gets half of that because the battery is worn out, and half of that again because I live in a cold climate, I still get 30 miles in the winter and that’s enough for me because the most I would drive is 20 miles between charges - basically for commuting.