Are Electric Cars the biggest con on the planet?
Discussion
gmaz said:
Petrol/Diesel - Extract, refine, distribute, burn once.
Batteries - Extract, manufacture, distribute, recharge 1000's of times.
And before you go "yeah but you have to burn coal to charge it!!!", like many EV owners, I recharge during the night when there is cheaper excess energy, or from my own solar.
EVs can get special very low price electric which is supplied from solar, hydro, wind etc. Throw some nuclear into that mix and we have our net zero future. Batteries - Extract, manufacture, distribute, recharge 1000's of times.
And before you go "yeah but you have to burn coal to charge it!!!", like many EV owners, I recharge during the night when there is cheaper excess energy, or from my own solar.
TheDeuce said:
Evanivitch said:
otolith said:
SWoll said:
Low BIK and high petrol proces are what is driving the change. Remove the tax incentives and make petrol £1 a litre and see how many people swap.
Let people opt out of paying to treat their sewage and the rivers would run with s
t. Let them dump their garbage in the street and we’d be up to our necks in rats and flies. That doesn't mean ICE cars should be banned, but you at least need to own up to your choice.
Steam trains and traction engines were never banned, they're celebrated and welcomed wherever they go - as will interesting ICE cars in decades to come. Anyone worried about change should do the smart thing and buy and protect a really interesting ICE car for the future. This is not an end of days scenario, this is an opportunity to move on to an exciting new period in cars and also an opportunity to make a smart and fun investment in the past.
SDK said:
SWoll said:
Low BIK and high petrol proces are what is driving the change. Remove the tax incentives and make petrol £1 a litre and see how many people swap.
If both EV’s and ICE were taxed the same and cost the same to buy & run then most people would choose EV’s.They are just better cars to drive; smoother & quieter.
When the charging network is sorted to the point that they are 100% reliable and available then even the long journey, high milers have no excuse.
The only people left are the towers, who drive 600 miles up a constant hill, in winter and can’t stop
EVs are more expensive to buy, like for like, and company cars are subsidised through tax breaks and low BIK. Charging your EV, especially on public chargers, isn't much different to an efficient diesel, and more expensive when you remove the tax on diesel. VED is zero on our EV and I think about £400 on our ICE
If Ferrari was the same price to buy and run as a golf GTI imagine most people would buy the Ferrari.
EV's have been around for years and the acceleration in take up isn't because people have woken up and thought "the drive train is so much smoother, I'll spend £50k on an EV when I would normally spend £30k in an ICE", they're doing it for one of a number of reasons including
- wanting to be an early adopter of new technology, whatever the implications (I put my hand up as I got my first Tesla in early 2015)
- tax breaks on a company car makes it cheaper than alternatives
- think they're being green and saving the planet (while still flying off on summer holidays)
- think it's a cheap way to buy a low 0-60 time (and not worry too much about the handling)
Every country where tax breaks have been reduced or withdrawn have seen EV sales fall dramatically as a result. The shift to EV is being paid for through gov incentives
Now lets reflect on diesel. There was a time when the equivalent thread would have been suggesting "diesel is so much better than petrol". People would have talked about diesel having upto 40% more thermal efficiency than a petrol car, it's the obvious winner., until the implications were worked out. Everyone was convinced. And 40% better... so whats the efficiency gain of an EV over a diesel.... I think its about 40%...
So while the current thinking is EV is better than ICE, and it may well be, people do need to open their minds to the whole lifescycle of car owning, cost. polution, rare mineral mining slavery, scarcity of resources etc rather than a blanket dismissal of the consequences
Fill the world with nuclear fission, get rid of wind turbines, each with a 50 ton concrete base, convrete being probably the most poluting building material ever invented, killing wildlife and intefering with radar while creating noise and vibration to anyone that lives within 2 miles, might be a better argument.
I'm for EV's but I'm very much prepared to believe that we're still a long way from having it sorted. I also imagine we'll look back in 10-20 years or so at what we have today and laugh, like we laugh at dial up internet, the size of mobile phones, and the performance of ICE cars before fuel injection and modern turbos
Edited by Heres Johnny on Sunday 7th August 11:39
otolith said:
People think that the name implies scarcity.
Very true. Also 0.44kg in an ICE car and 0.6kg in an electric motor. As vehicles have to be 95% recycled by law they are also very good at fitting into a circular economy so targetting the source of energy is the best way to achieve net-zero as it far out weighs everything else. delta0 said:
Very true. Also 0.44kg in an ICE car and 0.6kg in an electric motor. As vehicles have to be 95% recycled by law they are also very good at fitting into a circular economy so targetting the source of energy is the best way to achieve net-zero as it far out weighs everything else.
The scarcity argument has nothing to do with recycling, its to do with having 200k cars on the road today and 20M cars on the road in the UK in the future with rare metals. Its the increased number of deployed units rather than the idea that end of life they go to landfilHeres Johnny said:
The scarcity argument has nothing to do with recycling, its to do with having 200k cars on the road today and 20M cars on the road in the UK in the future with rare metals. Its the increased number of deployed units rather than the idea that end of life they go to landfil
Not sure I follow. Recycling those materials means less demand on extracting them from raw materials. Rare earths can nearly completely be provided by recycled vehicle stock. The top selling cars at the moment are electric. Forecasts have over 6.4m cars as electric in the UK by 2030 but we are already well ahead of the forecasted number for 2022 and the rate of increase is going higher so the forecast is going to have to be revised. captain.scarlet said:
Evanivitch said:
captain.scarlet said:
EVs simply shift the pollution and emissions somewhere else in the chain (where, mistakenly, it is out of sight and other senses, out of mind), be it (for example) in the mining of parts for the battery, the manufacture of the vehicle itself, the charging of the vehicle or the life cycle of the battery, its disposal and its replacement.
It's almost as if you believe the manufacturing of cars and constant production of petroleum products is emission free?Edited by captain.scarlet on Sunday 7th August 06:48
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_spills
And just a few hours ago.
https://www.otosection.com/oil-tanker-off-the-coas...
https://see.news/cuba-121-injured-17-firefighters-...
Heres Johnny said:
Now lets reflect on diesel. There was a time when the equivalent thread would have been suggesting "diesel is so much better than petrol". People would have talked about diesel having upto 40% more thermal efficiency than a petrol car, it's the obvious winner, until the implications were worked out. Everyone was convinced. And 40% better... so whats the efficiency gain of an EV over a diesel.... I think its about 40%...
NOx was a known issue all along, lower CO2 was chosen in favour of it. If you think about the possible potential impact of excessive CO2 on the whole planet vs NOx, that's is understandable.
We now have a technology option to start to address excessive CO2 whilst also addressing the NOx problem.
The main environment impact is extracting the minerals.
As for efficiency improvements...
I believe what you are saying is that diesel reduces fuel consumption by 40% compared to petrol.
In some cases maybe, probably less in most cases.
You've then said the EVs are 40% better than diesel. Whilst it depends entirely on what the mix of electricity generation is, in practice, it is much higher than that. It also depends on what upstream factors you are including.
And certainly if you are basing your arguments around the UK passenger car market, then EVs are already around 'twice as good' as diesel, assuming all upstream factors are taken into account, INCLUDING manufacturing the car.
The other key aspect of this is that the carbon footprint of liquid fossil fuels is close to plateauing, so the only way you can make meaningful reductions is to curb usage and/or severely restrict journey speeds.
In contrast, EVs keep getting greener the more renewables come on line, including those already on the road. Ultimately, it's possible to better diesel by a factor of 4 and for petrol, a factor of 5. This is obviously so far removed from a situation where the gains are 'only 40%' that it makes the EV an impossible option to overlook for policy makers looking at a multi-decade path towards lower CO2.
And yes, it require substantial investment.
The good news for those with an open mind is that it is possible to make that investment using technology that has an incredibly low carbon footprint per unit of electricity generated.
Wind power is generally accepted as having a footprint of under 10 g/kWh, and for the offshore stuff that will make up the majority of UK wind, it's more like 6 g/kWh. Which means that the incremental increase to an EV's carbon footprint would be about 2 g/mile.
Compare that with 200 g/mile for a diesel car, and very quickly you will realise that harping about 100 of tons of concrete for a wind turbine base is ridiculous.
Roughly speaking, the average UK car will get through about 1 ton of petrol or diesel in a year.
And roughly speaking an offshore wind turbine can keep about 2000-3000 cars charged. Probably a lot more cars for the next generation of larger turbines coming through.
A single wind turbine can therefore displace around 50,000 tons of liquid fuel over a 20 year timeframe, but's let's just ignore that and worry about how much concrete was poured to install it.
delta0 said:
Heres Johnny said:
The scarcity argument has nothing to do with recycling, its to do with having 200k cars on the road today and 20M cars on the road in the UK in the future with rare metals. Its the increased number of deployed units rather than the idea that end of life they go to landfil
Not sure I follow. Recycling those materials means less demand on extracting them from raw materials. Rare earths can nearly completely be provided by recycled vehicle stock. The top selling cars at the moment are electric. Forecasts have over 6.4m cars as electric in the UK by 2030 but we are already well ahead of the forecasted number for 2022 and the rate of increase is going higher so the forecast is going to have to be revised. There is no reason a BEV needs more rare earth minerals than an ICE. Using them in EV motors is a choice.
Lithium and cobalt in batteries are NOT rare earth minerals, and are both recyclable.
Electrics not for me said:
Jimbo. said:
School holiday boredom already?
He is right. Electric cars will be a short term mistake.ICE's are fundamentally flawed for vehicle drivetrains, hence the need for gearboxes and a clutch. That's before we get to things like efficiency, control and being bidirectional.
I'm happy to hear your thoughts though. I'm an engineer so don't worry about getting technical in your explanation of how a motor with one moving part powered by electromagnetism (a fundamanta force) is trumped by fire
98elise said:
Besides which, rare earth metals/minerals are not rare in that sense. They are actually quite plentiful. "Rare" refers to their geology/distribution.
There is no reason a BEV needs more rare earth minerals than an ICE. Using them in EV motors is a choice.
Lithium and cobalt in batteries are NOT rare earth minerals, and are both recyclable.
Yep. BMW have managed to make electric motors in the iX models WITHOUT rare earth metals. They claim it also has the benefit of improving how the motors perform too. There is no reason a BEV needs more rare earth minerals than an ICE. Using them in EV motors is a choice.
Lithium and cobalt in batteries are NOT rare earth minerals, and are both recyclable.
There was a review of the 50 model on youtube where he tested 0-60 even with battery down to 8% and was still getting 0-60 around 4 seconds.
98elise said:
Besides which, rare earth metals/minerals are not rare in that sense. They are actually quite plentiful. "Rare" refers to their geology/distribution.
There is no reason a BEV needs more rare earth minerals than an ICE. Using them in EV motors is a choice.
Lithium and cobalt in batteries are NOT rare earth minerals, and are both recyclable.
Precisely. Also a lot of the 0.44kg of rare earths in an ICE are in systems that are replaced a few times during the cars life like a catalytic converter so arguably the lifetime “consumption” of these materials is higher for an ICE. From a lifecycle assessment point of view it’s much worse. There is no reason a BEV needs more rare earth minerals than an ICE. Using them in EV motors is a choice.
Lithium and cobalt in batteries are NOT rare earth minerals, and are both recyclable.
raspy said:
98elise said:
Besides which, rare earth metals/minerals are not rare in that sense. They are actually quite plentiful. "Rare" refers to their geology/distribution.
There is no reason a BEV needs more rare earth minerals than an ICE. Using them in EV motors is a choice.
Lithium and cobalt in batteries are NOT rare earth minerals, and are both recyclable.
Yep. BMW have managed to make electric motors in the iX models WITHOUT rare earth metals. They claim it also has the benefit of improving how the motors perform too. There is no reason a BEV needs more rare earth minerals than an ICE. Using them in EV motors is a choice.
Lithium and cobalt in batteries are NOT rare earth minerals, and are both recyclable.
There was a review of the 50 model on youtube where he tested 0-60 even with battery down to 8% and was still getting 0-60 around 4 seconds.
All of the motor types have been around for ever, so it's not a new technology. It's simply a design choice.
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