One kilowatt-hour of electricity currently emits about 372grams of CO2, a number that has dropped from 500 grams in 2012.
A new Chevy Malibu gets 32.5mpg combined. Hummer EV gets 47mpge combined, or about 1.394 miles per kWh.
363gCO2 per mile for the Malibu, 267gCO2/mile for the Hummer.
I don’t think using hyper-specific region specific metrics makes a lot of sense considering the grid is all connected. (At least, the East Coast and Midwest, Texas doing its own thing, and then the west Coast.) in any case, the grid is getting lower emissions over time and could go MUCH lower than current (maybe half or less) over the full life of any new vehicle.
Also, a Hummer EV is displacing other large vehicles. And if everybody drove subcompacts or other hyper efficient gasoline cars then we’d have less of a problem anyway. But not everyone is doing that. And a lot of people don’t want to. From a political economy standpoint then this is still a huge net win. Every new car and truck needs to at least have a plug in it within the next 5 to 10 years, and then we can start penalizing larger and heavier vehicles more directly.
EDIT: what we should do is expand the EV tax credit. GM no longer qualifies as they used theirs up, like Tesla. Mostly just foreign EV makers qualify, which cannot be the real intention of lawmakers when they made the law.
We can use the EV credit as a tool for improving efficiency. Instead of subsidizing per kWh of battery, we subsidize per mile of range. The first 50 miles of range (ie to be a plug in hybrid, but need at least 6.6kW charging speed) are incentivized at $100/mile of range. The next 200 miles of range $25/mile (under the condition of 100kW fast charging capability).
That way car companies are incentivized (even more) to maximize miles per kWh. Small, hyper-efficient EVs will be disproportionately credited. For a given kWh of battery, you’ll make more EV credit money as a carmaker putting it in a small, very efficient car than a big Hummer. But unless we renew the EV credit (and make it per kWh), there isn’t this (additional) incentive.
>Also, a Hummer EV is displacing other large vehicles.
this is the key point, if you are going to compare compare apples to apples. I mean you can always keep making EVs bigger and thus more inefficient till you have total cost & environmental toll parity with some smaller car.
Though its unlikely that somebody who was going to buy a regular hummer was going to opt for a malibu & nevermind the price. a good starting point may be comparing cars with Total cost of ownership parity & that too when both cars are past initial production ramp.
my cynical brain says the truth is much simpler, fossil industry they wants a stream of these type of articles so they can keep the illusion of 'just as bad' alive for buyers on the fence. that is until then next fossil friendly administration shows.
> my cynical brain says the truth is much simpler, fossil industry they wants a stream of these type of articles so they can keep the illusion of 'just as bad' alive for buyers on the fence.
Yes that seems to be the takeaway from Transport Evolved on another recent “study” that compared EVs to ICE cars on tire particulate emissions.
A Hummer H3 is less than 5,000 pounds. The EV Hummer is about 9,000. This is a vehicle that's much heavier than almost anything on the road that isn't a commercial vehicle, including similar ICE vehicles.
(And for what it's worth, I don't think Tesla should get a free pass here. Tesla Model S's generally weigh about 4,000 to 5,000 pounds, which is awfully heavy for a Sedan. They just don't look heavy, so people don't think about it.)
I'm in favor of EVs generally, but I think the would would get along just fine if there wasn't an electric Hummer.
Talking of making larger and large EV's, but I've thought for a while that electric RVs would be great. Though I imagine that the Tesla one would(will?) be 500k minimum.
But you'd get a huge electric battery for boon-docking it, running AC, etc and you get a large surface for solar panels. You might even be able to have enough solar to be able drive for a day to a new local, and then park for a few days to recharge and then drive again. ;)
I bet they'd sell pretty well and still be better environmentally than the RV's that get 5mpg.
Also worth noting that as the grid goes green, so do all EVs. Not so for combustion engines, unless we somehow switch to synthesizing hydrocarbon fuel from non-sequestered carbon sources.
(Which tbh I think will happen more as we near 100% green energy - you'll still end up with special cases where the energy density and portability benefits of storing energy as bonds in hydrocarbons still makes sense and justifies paying a higher cost for such synthetic fuel!)
But with how everything is going with solar, batteries, and nuclear, I suspect that the invisible hand of the free market is going to make the default "I want to make 1-7 people go about 70mph for 0-4 hours" vehicle be an EV, rather than doing complicated and expensive chemistry to make renewable hydrocarbons.
If you’re going to factor in the refining process for the fuel, wouldn’t it make sense to factor in the refining and manufacturing process for the battery?
Yes, it would, but that’s part of making the overall car and it depends on lifetime. As EV batteries can now last 500,000 miles (vs 250,000 miles for first generation long range EVs), that’s not as big of an impact as many assume. (A lot of papers assume really low EV lifetimes, like just 100,000 miles, and no secondary reuse of the battery and they assume really outdated and inefficient numbers for manufacturing the cells.)
That would be comparing two completely unrelated things.
If you want to factor in manufacturing emissions, you would have to do so for both. Unlike the manufacturing process for the battery, fuel refining is not a one time thing, but part of the emissions associated with operating the vehicle.
I think the only thing in question is the co2 cost associated with the creation and consumption of the fuel, not the storage of the fuel or the parts that consume it.
But if https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-co2-emitted-manufac... is a good benchmark, we can probably assume the battery's manufacturing process releases between 3120kg and 15,680kg of co2, though that does describe a tesla model 3 battery and I don't know how similar it would be. For the sake of expedient math, I'll average them and say it emits 9,000kg of co2.
If we assume a lifespan of 200k miles, no part replacements, and no change in co2 costs/mile for EVs, then the total emissions would be:
~68,200kg for the EV (341g/mile) + the battery = 77,200kg total
~177,800kg for the non-EV (889g/mile), not including the manufacturing emissions associated with the ICE
Ultimately it's not an insignificant amount of co2, but in context it is actually pretty unimportant. It turns 341g/mile into 386g/mile. Of course, it's incorrect to assume an EV will have static "emissions" since they all come from the production of electricity, and given current trends it would be fair to assume those numbers will trend downwards. Gasoline, however, can probably be expected to have fairly static emissions over the life of the vehicle, likely actually getting worse as parts wear.
Not really because this about emissions per mile driven. It takes energy to refine and deliver energy (both electricity and gasoline) so it makes sense to take that into account when comparing total emissions (comparing local emissions just makes ICE vehicles look bad). If you included the battery pack you would need to include the drivetrain of the ICE vehicle to make it commensurate. At that point it is just a different analysis, a fine analysis to do of course, but a different one.
Also what is the purchase price difference between the these two cars (the malibu versus the hummer)? I'm not American so not really familiar with either but from what I know I assume the average person who would but the ev wouldn't be cross shopping for the malibu. It seems like a bit of a straw man to present the figures for these two cars. It would be better to have what the average model 3 buyer would have otherwise purchased.
Agreed. And the Model 3 (132mpge) and Model Y (124mpge) are FAR more efficient, using less than half the electricity per mile than the Hummer EV (47mpge).
The one thing about a Hummer EV with a huge battery is it can be used for work requiring towing large payloads. With large tow jobs, the thing that matters most for range is the kWhs of the battery of the vehicle, so it’s somewhat justified to have such a big and heavy vehicle.
For Europeans, the Malibu is essentially the Opel Insignia with Chevrolet styling. It was also sold in the US as the Buick Regal with only the front Opel badge replaced by a Buick badge.
> Also, a Hummer EV is displacing other large vehicles.
Is it? Not all hummer drivers are Arnold Swartz. what if the main buyers are just folks who want the largest electric cars? It's possible this mainly cannibalizes Tesla Model X sales more than gas Hummers.
I haven't seen studies for who buys what but until there is we're all just making wild assumptions about consumer demand.
For the record, I'm not saying this is awful or hurts more than it helps. My main point is brands offer more EV options shouldn't defacto be applauded.
Dont forget that there's a lot of embodied energy in everything too.
Even renewable capacity creates CO2 when it's made. So does the grid. So does maintaining these things. And so does drilling for oil, & shipping it around the world, processing it, and shipping it again.
> We can use the EV credit as a tool for improving efficiency. Instead of subsidizing per kWh of battery, we subsidize per mile of range. The first 50 miles of range (ie to be a plug in hybrid, but need at least 6.6kW charging speed) are incentivized at $100/mile of range. The next 200 miles of range $25/mile (under the condition of 100kW fast charging capability).
> That way car companies are incentivized (even more) to maximize miles per kWh.
As long as battery charging times are so slow, IMO car companies already have a ton of incentive to make their EVs efficient, as range is a big differentiator and batteries are such a large cost component. I suspect there isn't a lot more efficiency that would be gotten out of a change to incentive structure.
> Also, a Hummer EV is displacing other large vehicles. And if everybody drove subcompacts or other hyper efficient gasoline cars then we’d have less of a problem anyway. But not everyone is doing that. And a lot of people don’t want to.
This is a big source of waste and inefficiency though. People just needing to commute by themselves from A to B and buying pickup trucks or large sedans with poor efficiency, then whining whenever energy costs shoot up.
As a taxpayer, I would much rather if my taxes subsidized programs that encouraged people to be more frugal with their vehicle type choices.
Well my personal opinion is these larger vehicles should require a special license to drive. And once we kill gasoline and diesel on our roads, we should tax based on 1) wear and tear on the roads and 2) risk to pedestrians and other vehicles.
Weight is an okay stand-in for that metric, but isn't perfect (there are ways to distribute load on the road using the wheels that reduce wear, and there are design features like a low hood or even external airbags that could be used to reduce fatalities to pedestrians and other vehicles).
But we shouldn't go there until we've all but eliminated fossil fuels from our roads.
You’ll be glad the biggest single consumer tax credit won’t go to buyers of the Hummer then. GM vehicles aren’t eligible for the federal tax rebate anymore
> A gallon of gasoline emits about 11.8 kg of CO2 if you include refining.
A gallon of propane emits about 0kg of additional CO2, if you consider that it's just going to get flared off as waste gas anyway, and we need to refine lots of oil to make the plastics to make electric cars.
Why are you still wasting time running things on petrol when propane is better in just about every way?
Is that equation complete though? The cost of making and disposing of the vehicle should be included, as making batteries and recycling the batteries is supposedly quite energy intensive. However electric motors are simpler, have less parts and require less maintenance.
> One kilowatt-hour of electricity currently emits about 372grams of CO2
Not if it's coal. 1 kWh from a coal power plant generates 820-940 grams of CO2 (down from 1130g [5])
The EV Hummer actually gets ~631g CO2/mile - nearly twice that of the Malibu - if your electricity comes from a coal plant.
60% of the USA's power comes from coal, oil and gas. [6]
In many parts of the country, going to EV does not substantially reduce CO2 emissions nor save money. We have a very long way to go until we can say that EV is always better for the environment than ICE.
CO2 emissions from energy generation are now higher than they've ever been in history. More coal is being burned lately due to higher natural gas prices. And as emerging markets have more need for electricity, they are ramping up more non-renewable power production facilities, because gas, oil and coal are cheaper/easier/more available. [1] [2]
(aside: the EIA considers electricity generation "from biomass [..] to be carbon neutral" [3], which is bonkers. Biomass co-firing generates 740g CO2, non-cofiring 240g [4])
> We have a very long way to go until we can say that EV is always better for the environment than ICE.
This is a meaningless point as you can make this argument about literally anything. Please point to the person you think is making a purchasing decision where it’s heads = Chevy Malibu, tails = Hummer EV.
An H1 Hummer gets 10 mpg rated, but at the performance levels listed for the EV it would be substantially lower. So an equivalent performance gas H1 Hummer would have four, five or more times the emissions of a Chevy Malibu.
Your position is irrational. I’m really looking forward to urban gas stations being deleted and replace with nice things that don’t contribute to childhood cancers.
Only about 21% of US electricity comes from coal right now, and the number is falling over time.
Efficient natural gas plants can actually do pretty well, about the same as the 372g/kWh grid average. Almost no oil (or petro coke, etc) is burned for electricity. I think less than a tenth of the amount of electricity from solar (solar is currently somewhere around 5% to about 4.2%, depending on how you count "now", i.e. annualized amount based on the last month of data in April with seasonal effects taken out... or the more conservative 12 months rolling average).
>in any case, the grid is getting lower emissions over time and could go MUCH lower than current
This is a key point so many people miss.
Perfect World: We reduce our emissions.
Good World: We transition our infrastructure to things that can be decarbonized in the future. That Hummer EV could theoretically run on completely renewable energy (once other changes are made) the Malibu will never.
If the stupid EV credit was refundable I'd have taken it into account when looking for a new vehicle; as it is it's pointless to me because my tax liability isn't high enough.
The typical workaround (and it's not ideal, but it's not zero either) is to lease the car, where the finance company can take the credit and return most of it to you in the form of cap cost reduction on the front end of the lease. (Yeah, yeah, it's not as good as money in your pocket, but it's better than a stick in the eye.)
Interesting comment that inspired me to look into the grams of carbon dioxide emitted when running biodiesel fuel:
This page [1] says biodiesel emits 2,661 grams of carbon dioxide per gallon. Let’s say a 1988 F250 gets 15 mpg => 2,661 g/gal * 1/15 gal/mile = 177.4 gram CO2/mile.
Pretty cool it’s less than both the Chevy Malibu and Hummer but wonder how it compares to other petrol cars - it is just proportional to fuel economy but im not gonna run the numbers. In my head a pure gasser car would need to get above about 40mpg of petroleum fuel to emit less grams of CO2 than a 15mpg vehicle running pure biodiesel.
TLDR biodiesel is what’s up if you can’t afford an ev (and still has its place if you can).
Pure petroleum diesel still barely emits more co2 than gasoline anyway [2]
Disclaimer: only comparing carbon dioxide and not other greenhouse gas emissions
Edit: i'm seeing some numbers around that the average human exhalation per day is emits 1 kg of CO2, for reference. [3]
The thing with human exhalation is that this CO2 comes from the food we consume and gets captured again when food is produced thus having netzero influence on the actual CO2 in the atmosphere. Same basically applies to biodiesel. Of course that ignores energy spent to produce crops and other issues like fertilizer.
The problem is the fossil fuel that is concentrated carbon from millions of years of plants and now just adds to the CO2 in the atmosphere without a corresponding mechanism to take it out again.
If we create gasoline by capturing CO2 from the atmosphere there isn't a CO2 problem with using it for fuel. Processes exist, but all have some (major) inefficiency issues.
Biodiesel is interesting but if you end up using palm nuts as the oil source and the producers are clear cutting forests to plan palms then the climate story gets muddy.
Are we allowed to call these "coal vehicles" yet? They don't make nuclear power plants anymore - so not sure why everyone wants to run more coal plants.
They do make wind and solar plants though. And either way, even with coal feeding a thermal plant as the energy source, it is still more efficient to generate the energy and distribute it to the wheel than it is to refine, transport and burn the fossil fuel the ICE vehicle would use.
In many places in the US it’s an accurate description for sure, but your getting down voted here because it’s an inconvenient truth. I gave you an upvote, because I appreciate the irony. Where I live it’s an 85% coal, 15% solar vehicle.
>>EDIT: what we should do is expand the EV tax credit
No we don't, that will increase inflation is basically a tax on poor people to pay for rich people to buy new vehicle
The EV Tax credit needs to do away completely, EV can either compete with ICE in the market or they cant, government should not be picking winners or losers.
>>Also, a Hummer EV is displacing other large vehicles.
Not until batter tech improves, I am interested in an EV truck, none of them have the towing range that makes them practical for a weekend trip to the dock with your boat, or a camping trip. One of the Youtube channels I watch just did a head to head with a ICE truck against the Ford Lightening, they did not get 80 miles with the truck before they ran out of charge pulling a normal sized trailer, that is with the Truck claiming a 150 or so mile range at the start of the trip. TERRIBLE towing miles.
Current batteries may be good for a car like the Model 3 and Model S, or the Mach E, but it is TERRIBLE for large SUV's or Trucks that are made for towing
> The EV Tax credit needs to do away completely, EV can either compete with ICE in the market or they cant, government should not be picking winners or losers.
One of the governments jobs is to make sure externalities are accounted for, and ICEs should not get a free ride by not dealing with their pollution.
There are many things that do not make sense on the open market, unless we can collectively agree to tip the scales in the direction it should go for a better society, till the "market" can manage it on it's own.
The EV tax credit doesn't apply at all to the Hummer EV, so you have your wish.
But what we need is a full carbon tax of about $250/tonne of CO2 (eventually), as that's approximately the fully accounted social cost and is also about the long-term cost to suck the CO2 out of the air and store it. Then there wouldn't be any need to subsidize anything except for the usual industrial policy/tech dev reasons as the externalities would be priced in.
I agree to an extent. Pass a carbon tax to take care of the externalities, and let the invisible hand work. Unfortunately most people who are as enamored with the free market as you are would never go for it. So instead we get things like EV tax credits.
So don't use them for towing, or wait 5-9 years. Towing is not not done by a huge fraction of trucks, in fact most are probably looking pretty in suburban driveways.
“ Comparing larger vehicles, the original Hummer H1 emits 889 grams of CO2 per mile and the new Hummer EV causes 341 grams, demonstrating that behemoth EVs can still be worse for the environment than smaller, conventional vehicles”
So 1/3 the emissions of a normal hummer… I don’t think the normal hummer owner is going to ever switch to a sedan so that seems like a major improvement
Arguably that’s why you need legislation to more strongly dissuade buying a ridiculous car like that via taxes or whatever. If you leave it to individual choice there will always be plenty of people who don’t care about the costs they’re imposing on others.
This seems like a useless place to optimize. Like, what is the total pollution output of all Hummers or similar vehicles? A rounding error, I'm guessing. The only way to make dents is with systemic changes like for entire trucking industry, for example.
> If you leave it to individual choice there will always be plenty of people who don’t care about the costs they’re imposing on others.
I think the current state of affairs is actually worse than that -- big trucks are popular not just because some people like big trucks, but also because there are regulations that prevent small trucks from being a viable market segment in the U.S.: that class of vehicle has much more stringent fuel economy standards (perversely forcing people into larger vehicles with looser regulations), and light trucks imported from other countries are subject to a 25% tariff.
The only light truck I know of that you can get currently is the long version of the Jeep Wrangler. I'm not sure if they actually meet the fuel economy standards, or if they can somehow claim to not technically be a light truck. Maybe there are some others, but as far as I can tell almost all trucks sold in the U.S. are huge and have comically tall grills.
If I wasn't already in the middle of an EV conversion project, I'd be tempted to get something like an old Datsun 620 and load it up with batteries. I wish there was a product on the market like that.
Unfortunately half of our government is against any common sense regulations or rules. Mass shootings are becoming a daily occurrence that happens in no other first world country but instead the gop has spent the last decades trying to weaken what little gun regulations there are. Enough of The public seems totally okay with that, and would absolutely go batshit if they perceived someone as wanting to ban trucks.
Tell me in that climate how the government does it’s job? People keep electing government officials who are expressly against what you’re suggesting.
I think the premise of the article is a bit silly - not everything is "average-able". The US is huge, and many places (like SV) do have 100% renewable energy so the electric is carbon free. This is like saying that if Portugal had a 100% clean grid that cars in Poland powered by coal plants meant that Portuguese EV's were not truly "environmental".
Something rarely discussed is that the generation technology matters in your specific locale.
If you're powering it with coal, this is horrible. If hydro/solar/nuclear power, well it's still a big load on the grid, but carbon wise it's a small fraction of the footprint.
Of course you need to factor in where the power is actually coming from on your grid. And definitely factor in the time of day (are you charging overnight and actually using a higher carbon source, etc).
When you do the math on this Hummer on the cleanest sources, it's still far cleaner than even a small ICE engine. Even though I still hate it :)
If you are powering with hydro/solar/nuclear then you are consuming electricity that could otherwise be used to reduce the load on a natural gas power plant somewhere else
I think you're missing the fact that a huge chunk of a vehicle's lifetime emissions are just in the manufacturing alone. And EVs are much more energy intensive to manufacture. Mostly this is due to the batteries. Which also have to be replaced every decade
Because of this alone, there are many EVs that are still worse for the environment than many gas-powered vehicles
38%[0] of an EVs emissions are in the manufacturing alone. Ultimately, the best thing you can do for the environment is still to STOP BUYING NEW CARS
Carbon costs per-vehicle can be calculated based on your local grid power source, duration of ownership, and more: https://www.carboncounter.com/ -- be sure to click the "Customize" tab
If your annual driving distance is low (<5,000 miles) and your grid is relatively dirty (e.g. the midwest [SRMW] grid), a range of EVs have more CO2 emissions/mile than conventional internal combustion vehicles.
> If your annual driving distance is low and your grid is relatively dirty, a range of EVs have more CO2 emissions/mile than conventional internal combustion vehicles.
Right now. I'm sure you know but the beauty of this is that those cars' emissions can be reduced without changing anything about the car simply by changing the fuel used to generate electricity which can (and has to) happen in the future.
Yes this is a key point lost on many when I hear this argument. It doesn’t mean to not buy an EV, it’s still a great idea, we just need to do more work on our power sources
Those cars' emissions can also be made worse over time without changing anything about the car simply by changing the fuel used to generate electricity....
Such as Germany currently decommissioning nuclear plants...
Related data on CO2 intensity on grids, this shows a map based on EPA data. It shows what the equivalent CO2 emissions would be between an average EV compared to a gas car. The worst in the lower 48 is SERC Midwest (parts of IL and MO) at around 42mpg, the best is upstate NY at 255mpg.
Customize, click on West Virginia preset and graph uses 560 gCO2/kWh to EPA's 860 for WV for Electricity (charging). Select Idaho and graph uses 310 gCo2/kWh compared to EPA's 96.
Carboncounter seem to be using the eGRID subregions, but I'm not sure how much green power actually flows from southern Wisconsin all the way to western Virginia. Maybe there's a power expert here that can comment on whether state or eGRID subregion numbers are more appropriate.
That the graph origin is not 0,0 by default and includes tax credits doesn't inspire much confidence in their impartiality.
One thing to note is power isn’t consistently generated M from the same source. Sometimes more wind, sometimes more solar, sometimes more gas. There’s currently a surplus of wind power overnight in that region and There are several companies teaming up with utilities to shift EV charging to lower cost, lower CO2 producing times.
The fundamental difference obviously being that electricity production can change significantly during the lifetime of a vehicle whereas energy production within the vehicle usually can not.
If I was worried about this offsetting purchases of Chevy Malibus, then maybe yeah? But they are still going to produce significantly less CO2 than their actual competition.
In the long run, manufacturers making all of their halo cars ostentatious EVs is a good thing. Offroad car bros are not one wholesome lecture away from switching to a bicycle. Let's let car makers make electric cars cool and then focus on actually providing better sources of electricity.
They aren’t a wholesome lecture away, but they are a law, tax, or regulation away. Removing tax loopholes for large cars, tightening emissions standards, and perhaps adding extra licensing requirements for oversized vehicles could reduce the environmental hazard and the safety hazard these vehicles create.
I doubt it because I don’t think most status car buyers are particularly cost-sensitive and moreover passing said legislation is easier said than done (and regulations are likely to be overturned whenever the presidency changes parties). So far “sexy” has done a whole lot more to convert people to EVs than regulation (and I say this as a staunch proponent of carbon tax/pricing).
I'm all for good incentives, but I fundamentally do not see the value in waging wars on things people like while there is so much other low hanging fruit.
> We can hem & haw and browbeat consumers, but if they want to buy big trucks.. better EV flavored ones than V8 coal rolling polluters.
Yes, or perhaps regulate these tanks that are a disaster for human life in all the years past 2150 (i.e., a time people born in the next twenty years will live to experience)...
I mean, I can't just bring a gigantic 500 kilo suitcase on an airplane. There's costs associated to the airplane and other passengers, and thus doing this is priced such that nobody does this for fun or mere convenience, but rather only very rarely out of necessity. In fact, only on the rare occasion when the costs are worth paying because the value is equal or higher than the price.
There's rules & conditions to using certain services and infrastructure like an airplane. Roads aren't any different, we just happen to accept rules & conditions that are ridiculously imbalanced, aren't pricing in the costs, and are disastrous on a whole range of categories: from climate change, to environmental pollution, to human health and safety, congestion and geopolitical issues around oil dependence.
Very few people are buying this exact monstrosity at $100K price point.
I am mostly trying to drive home a point I think a lot of perfectionists miss..
A lot of people drive gas vehicles.
A lot of people drive big trucks.
The more form factors that EVs come in, the more gas vehicle drivers can be converted to EVs, which is a net win.
I am not sure we are going to magically regulate and legislate away everything al at once in one Great Leap Forward of banning ICE, mandating smaller vehicles, changing land use and road design all in one go.
I am simply putting forward the opinion that every EV Hummer sold to a former gas Hummer buyer, is a net good. Every F150 Lightning/EV Silverado/Rivian sold to a former F150/Silverado V8 buyer is good. Every Tesla Model 3 sold to a former Camry/Accord buyer is good. Every VW ID4 sold to a former CRV/RAV4 buyer is good. Every Chevy Bolt sold to a former Honda Fit/Chevy Sonic buyer is good. Etc etc etc.
Look at the list of top vehicles sold in America. Most of them don't have EV versions available or affordable today. The more we can convert the merrier.
I don't think you are going to convert a lot of Chevy Suburban buyers into a Polestar 2, or BMW X5 buyer into a Tesla Model Y, or a Toyota Highlander into a Chevy Bolt. You could get some of them into a BMW iX or Mercedes EQS SUV or Rivian R1S, etc.
Some vehicle bloat is also crash safety regulatory driven as you see how much crumple zone growth cars have experienced if you compare say a BMW 3 series from 1990/2000/2010/2020.
If they want to buy big trucks, we need to consider those trucks' negative externalities. A bigger, faster, heavier, and more deadly vehicle, imposes costs on everyone around it.
Insurers aren’t properly internalizing the liability costs and therefore are pricing premiums too low for the risk these vehicles create. Maybe judgements need to be higher for deaths and injuries caused by overweight vehicles? I don’t have enough context to say. If they’re significantly more dangerous, it should be priced accordingly (based on claims data).
If those externalities were priced correctly, people would stop buying big cars. That’s why they’re not.
This is the sort of things governments can be good at if they choose. Otherwise gas/energy prices will eventually do it for us. And it won’t be pretty.
Not only only we not pricing in those externalities, the current regulations are structured in a way that actively incentivizes bigger vehicles, above and beyond consumer preferences:
This is not because of some innate character of Americans, it is because of specific state policies and subsidies. Fuel prices and registration fees are only slightly higher in California but that small economic nudge is enough to knock trucks completely out of the ranks of best-selling vehicles in that state. The Model 3, Camry, Civic, and Corolla all outsell any pickup truck in California.
My observation is that in many countries people want to drive big cars but only in US non-negligible fraction of population can afford it: combination of 5th highest median income in the world, low (relative to the EU) fuel (and electricity) prices and availability of parking for large cars. A state can counter this by higher taxes, but looks like support for this is not broad enough.
That would seriously depend on 'what part' of California you are talking about. In the cities and down south where parking and traffic are huge factors, you bet. But the farther north you go the more trucks and large SUVs you will see on the road. California is far too big to be treated as a single entity when it comes to anything.
>Fuel prices and registration fees are only slightly higher in California but that small economic nudge is enough to knock trucks completely out of the ranks of best-selling vehicles in that state.
I'd be cautious about blaming it all on fuel prices. I'd argue that the increased wealth of California residents relative to the rest of the country also plays a part in why a vehicle that is too expensive for most people made it so high on that list in California.
> This is not because of some innate character of Americans, it is because of specific state policies and subsidies.
I would argue it's more because auto manufacturers wish to streamline their production lines. Body-on-frame is very flexible and allows them to re-use most components across different products.
The marketing departments then produce Television ads questioning your masculinity if you don't drive a vehicle based on a commercial truck frame. Suddenly "it's what the customer demands".
> Fuel prices and registration fees are only slightly higher in California
I'm not sure what the prices and fees are in California, but for comparison, in Mississippi it costs me about $45/year for registration and today I paid $4.17 for fuel. If I recall correctly, vehicles newer than 20 years old can cost significantly more to register here, but I don't have anything that new.
This is the thing that drives me nuts. Remember the anti-SUV mania of the 90s? It completely failed and SUV consumption skyrocketed and people stopped buying minivans and station wagons. The absolute least, smallest, simplest thing an ordinary consumer can do to decrease emissions is to just buy a smaller car and people just did the opposite. You're right that our only choice is to meet consumers where they are it just makes it such an uphill battle. Everyone complains that elected leaders and corporations are not doing anything to fight climate and it's almost entirely because people are telling them not to.
Yeah, that's how I remember it too. Back then I wondered why some people I knew bought SUVs even though they were only needing to commute to/from work.
In the early 2000's my own situation changed, I was needing to haul relatively heavy/bulky items. I acquired a Honda Pilot because of its rated 1300 lb payload, better than a small pickup. After a while that need ended, but I kept the Pilot and still drive it. However since then it's used <3000 mi/year, a good thing with price of fuel being what it is now.
The Pilot was/is built on the same platform as the Honda minivan, albeit with slightly modified drive train. Pilot and minivan have essentially identical mileage ratings. So with these models switching from minivan to "SUV" makes no difference in fuel usage.
Can't disagree that old-style "station wagons" were more fuel-efficient than minivans and similar size vehicles. However, station-wagons seem to have disappeared from the scene at least to my observation. Out of fashion I suppose. And from the fuel usage point of view that's unfortunate.
EVs are the future but expense factors will keep ICE in the picture for some years to come. Do you suppose the current increased fuel prices will inspire a resurgence of smaller vehicles for routine transportation? In the interim that would be a good thing.
> It completely failed and SUV consumption skyrocketed and people stopped buying minivans and station wagons.
The government put fuel efficiency regulations on sedans in the 1970s. This effectively killed station wagons. The rules around light trucks were different though, and that's why the minivan was created.
It is of the same flavor of why many of my smartest leftiest friends don't understand why we lose elections if we are so smart and tell people how wrong they are if they don't vote for us? Don't they understand? Maybe we just need to educate them more!
Simply put, you need to meet the voters were they are.
Companies know this and meet consumers where they are.
Why do people buy SUVs?
Because the generation that grew up embarrassed by their parents minivans never wanted to buy a minivan!
So now companies sell the former minivan cohort SUVs instead, which are basically the same thing.
Occasionally the Germans ship us a sexy sports wagon, but they can't call it that here and have to call them hatches or "cross turismo" etc.. haha.
The ubiquity of SUVs is a phenomenon of the last 30 years. I remember when it started taking off in the 90s. It's not an eternal thing that can't be changed.
Sure, but the idea that we are going to both legislate away ICE and legislate away SUVs in one go.. and not get destroyed in the voting both next cycle is... dubious.
If you live in norther climates there are some advantages to SUVs/crossovers in terms of ground clearance. Winter, even with AWD and winter tires can be a problem in my sedan when I bottom out at every poorly plowed intersection.
Sedans are also a PITA as soon as you want to haul both people AND stuff at once. Or anything with a dimension wider than 3 feet.
SUVs do offer benefits in terms of semi-regular things normies do like moving your kids in/out of college 4x/year with the semester system, taking your family on road trips instead of flying (which is way more polluting!), hauling large dogs, Costco runs, etc.
People with various sorts of outdoors enthusiasm also may use them to haul, roof rack or tow more outdoorsy gear.
Not everything other people prefer is because they are bad people who are evil and need to be stopped.
I'd be curious how exactly you'd legislate away SUVs now that the genie is out of the bottle. What's an SUV, whats a cross over, whats a commercial vehicle, etc. If you go by weight, plenty of sedans violate worse than small SUVs.. In fact if you go by weight class you may ban EVs and allow ICE!
Sorta but not really. If you model the grid as a superconductor, sure, but the transmission lines we use do have resistance and therefore a maximum capacity and the father from generation you are, the more losses are incurred to get the power to you. So you end up actually getting power from the generating capacity close to you and occasionally get power from further away (or your local generation sends excess further than normal).
If you have 2 buckets connected at the bottom by a small hose, and you take from the left bucket at a high enough rate, the buckets will be at an unequal level and at some point either you stop taking and the water eventually seeks its own level again or your take rate becomes that of the connecting hose. (this extension of your bucket analogy, like all water/electricity analogies, breaks in a lot of ways but it gets the idea across at least).
But not really; if your local regional plant is nuclear and is consistently the contributor to the lesser sized coal plant in the next region, then the emissions for your bev are less than the coal region.
And given how often Nuclear does provide greater base load than smaller coal plants; if your most local plant is nuclear, your emissions are less.
Yes and no. It's a shared grid (except most of Texas) but for the most part your power is still coming from local sources. The sharing is to balance out extremes, not for constantly moving power from Vermont to Georgia. That would be extremely inefficient.
In addition to location mattering as others have pointed out, time also matters a lot. Charge up during the day, you might be using solar. At night, that isn't likely anymore.
It’s not a shared market, only a shared grid—through the magic of accounting, you can purchase renewable energy even if the actual electrons came from a fossil fuel plant.
OP is talking about CO2 emissions. 20% of Maines electricity generation is fossil but the vast majority of that is natural gas, which they get from New Brunswick (as does NH).
SUVs should be banned, or taxed the point of economic non-viability. The fact that such a deadly category of vehicle, on top of being much less energy efficient, is being allowed to take over the market, is completely inane.
Whenever I hear someone exclaim that they love their SUV/massive pickups because it feels so much safer than "small cars", I hold my tongue but I want to reply in a chirpy tone of voice: "I love standing up when I'm in a movie theater -- the view is so much better."
For one, there is just the mass: yes, it makes it safer for the SUV driver, but at the expense of the smaller cars/bikes/pedestrians.
But there is another factor. When I learned to drive 40 years ago, I took it for granted that most of the time I could look through the car in front of me, and often the car in front of that, to anticipate changes in traffic conditions. Now I mostly see the rear of the large vehicle in front of me and no further.
An SUV is also more deadly to every other class of driver on the road. Even sedan drivers are more likely to die in an accident involving an SUV than any other accident class. (It's a deadly brinksmanship. The safest people in an SUV wreck are the generally ones in the SUV and everyone else is at a disadvantage.)
But even that's not entirely true that people inside the SUV are safe because you can also look up the history of "rollover deaths". In an accident an SUV is a big immovable object, right until it isn't anymore and then it's a very heavy thing with a weird center of gravity. If an SUV tips over somehow in a collision, or worse rolls over itself more than once, that often has spelled death for the SUV's occupants. There's been more safety measures and center of gravity balancing and rollover cages added to SUVs since the height of rollover deaths in the 1990s, but the brinksmanship of "the safest option is to be inside the SUV" moving "everyone" to SUVs for their own skin, increases the likelihood of SUV versus SUV accidents and the return of rollover death statistics.
SUVs are unnecessarily large and heavy, dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists, blocking the view for other drivers, causing more wear to the street surface and take up precious space when parking in cities. And for what? Hummers might be an exception, but most SUVs aren't even suitable for off-road use. Not that most owners even need that.
So yeah, it is absolutely insane for people to drive a car that causes so much harm to other road users and society as a whole for no good reason other than "me want BIG BIG CAR" and so it should be taxed to offset these effects.
It’s not good to do this analysis with figures from the entire U.S., which has a wildly variable mix of electricity sources depending on where you are and what time of day it is. This also obscures the difference between unavoidable C02 emissions from burning gasoline with emissions from industrial processes that may not emit carbon in the future.
In general people are not careful readers, and in my opinion, headlines like this tend to feed cynicism and inaction.
What I see here is enormous opportunity in decarbonizing the processes that lead to high lifecycle emissions for this and other vehicles.
I don't think this is true at all, anyone engaged with this work realizes how much effort is going to be involved in electrifying the vehicle fleet. It's only when you acknowledge that a problem is tractable that you can even begin to answer the question, "what do I do next to make this happen?"
Readit News
A gallon of gasoline emits about 11.8 kg of CO2 if you include refining. https://innovationorigins.com/en/producing-gasoline-and-dies...
One kilowatt-hour of electricity currently emits about 372grams of CO2, a number that has dropped from 500 grams in 2012.
A new Chevy Malibu gets 32.5mpg combined. Hummer EV gets 47mpge combined, or about 1.394 miles per kWh.
363gCO2 per mile for the Malibu, 267gCO2/mile for the Hummer.
I don’t think using hyper-specific region specific metrics makes a lot of sense considering the grid is all connected. (At least, the East Coast and Midwest, Texas doing its own thing, and then the west Coast.) in any case, the grid is getting lower emissions over time and could go MUCH lower than current (maybe half or less) over the full life of any new vehicle.
Also, a Hummer EV is displacing other large vehicles. And if everybody drove subcompacts or other hyper efficient gasoline cars then we’d have less of a problem anyway. But not everyone is doing that. And a lot of people don’t want to. From a political economy standpoint then this is still a huge net win. Every new car and truck needs to at least have a plug in it within the next 5 to 10 years, and then we can start penalizing larger and heavier vehicles more directly.
EDIT: what we should do is expand the EV tax credit. GM no longer qualifies as they used theirs up, like Tesla. Mostly just foreign EV makers qualify, which cannot be the real intention of lawmakers when they made the law.
We can use the EV credit as a tool for improving efficiency. Instead of subsidizing per kWh of battery, we subsidize per mile of range. The first 50 miles of range (ie to be a plug in hybrid, but need at least 6.6kW charging speed) are incentivized at $100/mile of range. The next 200 miles of range $25/mile (under the condition of 100kW fast charging capability).
That way car companies are incentivized (even more) to maximize miles per kWh. Small, hyper-efficient EVs will be disproportionately credited. For a given kWh of battery, you’ll make more EV credit money as a carmaker putting it in a small, very efficient car than a big Hummer. But unless we renew the EV credit (and make it per kWh), there isn’t this (additional) incentive.
this is the key point, if you are going to compare compare apples to apples. I mean you can always keep making EVs bigger and thus more inefficient till you have total cost & environmental toll parity with some smaller car.
Though its unlikely that somebody who was going to buy a regular hummer was going to opt for a malibu & nevermind the price. a good starting point may be comparing cars with Total cost of ownership parity & that too when both cars are past initial production ramp.
my cynical brain says the truth is much simpler, fossil industry they wants a stream of these type of articles so they can keep the illusion of 'just as bad' alive for buyers on the fence. that is until then next fossil friendly administration shows.
Yes that seems to be the takeaway from Transport Evolved on another recent “study” that compared EVs to ICE cars on tire particulate emissions.
https://youtu.be/aar8njoGgNY
(And for what it's worth, I don't think Tesla should get a free pass here. Tesla Model S's generally weigh about 4,000 to 5,000 pounds, which is awfully heavy for a Sedan. They just don't look heavy, so people don't think about it.)
I'm in favor of EVs generally, but I think the would would get along just fine if there wasn't an electric Hummer.
But you'd get a huge electric battery for boon-docking it, running AC, etc and you get a large surface for solar panels. You might even be able to have enough solar to be able drive for a day to a new local, and then park for a few days to recharge and then drive again. ;)
I bet they'd sell pretty well and still be better environmentally than the RV's that get 5mpg.
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(Which tbh I think will happen more as we near 100% green energy - you'll still end up with special cases where the energy density and portability benefits of storing energy as bonds in hydrocarbons still makes sense and justifies paying a higher cost for such synthetic fuel!)
But with how everything is going with solar, batteries, and nuclear, I suspect that the invisible hand of the free market is going to make the default "I want to make 1-7 people go about 70mph for 0-4 hours" vehicle be an EV, rather than doing complicated and expensive chemistry to make renewable hydrocarbons.
If you want to factor in manufacturing emissions, you would have to do so for both. Unlike the manufacturing process for the battery, fuel refining is not a one time thing, but part of the emissions associated with operating the vehicle.
But if https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-co2-emitted-manufac... is a good benchmark, we can probably assume the battery's manufacturing process releases between 3120kg and 15,680kg of co2, though that does describe a tesla model 3 battery and I don't know how similar it would be. For the sake of expedient math, I'll average them and say it emits 9,000kg of co2.
If we assume a lifespan of 200k miles, no part replacements, and no change in co2 costs/mile for EVs, then the total emissions would be:
~68,200kg for the EV (341g/mile) + the battery = 77,200kg total
~177,800kg for the non-EV (889g/mile), not including the manufacturing emissions associated with the ICE
Ultimately it's not an insignificant amount of co2, but in context it is actually pretty unimportant. It turns 341g/mile into 386g/mile. Of course, it's incorrect to assume an EV will have static "emissions" since they all come from the production of electricity, and given current trends it would be fair to assume those numbers will trend downwards. Gasoline, however, can probably be expected to have fairly static emissions over the life of the vehicle, likely actually getting worse as parts wear.
The one thing about a Hummer EV with a huge battery is it can be used for work requiring towing large payloads. With large tow jobs, the thing that matters most for range is the kWhs of the battery of the vehicle, so it’s somewhat justified to have such a big and heavy vehicle.
The Malibu is a cheap sedan.
Base prive of the Hummer EV is 5x the Malibu ($23k vs $108k)
Is it? Not all hummer drivers are Arnold Swartz. what if the main buyers are just folks who want the largest electric cars? It's possible this mainly cannibalizes Tesla Model X sales more than gas Hummers.
I haven't seen studies for who buys what but until there is we're all just making wild assumptions about consumer demand.
For the record, I'm not saying this is awful or hurts more than it helps. My main point is brands offer more EV options shouldn't defacto be applauded.
Even renewable capacity creates CO2 when it's made. So does the grid. So does maintaining these things. And so does drilling for oil, & shipping it around the world, processing it, and shipping it again.
> That way car companies are incentivized (even more) to maximize miles per kWh.
As long as battery charging times are so slow, IMO car companies already have a ton of incentive to make their EVs efficient, as range is a big differentiator and batteries are such a large cost component. I suspect there isn't a lot more efficiency that would be gotten out of a change to incentive structure.
> Also, a Hummer EV is displacing other large vehicles. And if everybody drove subcompacts or other hyper efficient gasoline cars then we’d have less of a problem anyway. But not everyone is doing that. And a lot of people don’t want to.
This is a big source of waste and inefficiency though. People just needing to commute by themselves from A to B and buying pickup trucks or large sedans with poor efficiency, then whining whenever energy costs shoot up.
As a taxpayer, I would much rather if my taxes subsidized programs that encouraged people to be more frugal with their vehicle type choices.
Weight is an okay stand-in for that metric, but isn't perfect (there are ways to distribute load on the road using the wheels that reduce wear, and there are design features like a low hood or even external airbags that could be used to reduce fatalities to pedestrians and other vehicles).
But we shouldn't go there until we've all but eliminated fossil fuels from our roads.
A gallon of propane emits about 0kg of additional CO2, if you consider that it's just going to get flared off as waste gas anyway, and we need to refine lots of oil to make the plastics to make electric cars.
Why are you still wasting time running things on petrol when propane is better in just about every way?
I have no idea where this leaves us.
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Not if it's coal. 1 kWh from a coal power plant generates 820-940 grams of CO2 (down from 1130g [5])
The EV Hummer actually gets ~631g CO2/mile - nearly twice that of the Malibu - if your electricity comes from a coal plant.
60% of the USA's power comes from coal, oil and gas. [6]
In many parts of the country, going to EV does not substantially reduce CO2 emissions nor save money. We have a very long way to go until we can say that EV is always better for the environment than ICE.
CO2 emissions from energy generation are now higher than they've ever been in history. More coal is being burned lately due to higher natural gas prices. And as emerging markets have more need for electricity, they are ramping up more non-renewable power production facilities, because gas, oil and coal are cheaper/easier/more available. [1] [2]
(aside: the EIA considers electricity generation "from biomass [..] to be carbon neutral" [3], which is bonkers. Biomass co-firing generates 740g CO2, non-cofiring 240g [4])
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-fuel [2] https://newatlas.com/environment/energy-related-co2-emission... [3] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11 [4] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and... [5] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/average-co2-i... [6] https://app.electricitymap.org/map
This is a meaningless point as you can make this argument about literally anything. Please point to the person you think is making a purchasing decision where it’s heads = Chevy Malibu, tails = Hummer EV.
An H1 Hummer gets 10 mpg rated, but at the performance levels listed for the EV it would be substantially lower. So an equivalent performance gas H1 Hummer would have four, five or more times the emissions of a Chevy Malibu.
Your position is irrational. I’m really looking forward to urban gas stations being deleted and replace with nice things that don’t contribute to childhood cancers.
Efficient natural gas plants can actually do pretty well, about the same as the 372g/kWh grid average. Almost no oil (or petro coke, etc) is burned for electricity. I think less than a tenth of the amount of electricity from solar (solar is currently somewhere around 5% to about 4.2%, depending on how you count "now", i.e. annualized amount based on the last month of data in April with seasonal effects taken out... or the more conservative 12 months rolling average).
This is a key point so many people miss.
Perfect World: We reduce our emissions.
Good World: We transition our infrastructure to things that can be decarbonized in the future. That Hummer EV could theoretically run on completely renewable energy (once other changes are made) the Malibu will never.
Edit: fixed units
We can agree on that. But also, a 7000 lb Hummer would as well.
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Stupid.
This page [1] says biodiesel emits 2,661 grams of carbon dioxide per gallon. Let’s say a 1988 F250 gets 15 mpg => 2,661 g/gal * 1/15 gal/mile = 177.4 gram CO2/mile.
Pretty cool it’s less than both the Chevy Malibu and Hummer but wonder how it compares to other petrol cars - it is just proportional to fuel economy but im not gonna run the numbers. In my head a pure gasser car would need to get above about 40mpg of petroleum fuel to emit less grams of CO2 than a 15mpg vehicle running pure biodiesel.
TLDR biodiesel is what’s up if you can’t afford an ev (and still has its place if you can). Pure petroleum diesel still barely emits more co2 than gasoline anyway [2]
Disclaimer: only comparing carbon dioxide and not other greenhouse gas emissions
Edit: i'm seeing some numbers around that the average human exhalation per day is emits 1 kg of CO2, for reference. [3]
[1]: https://impactful.ninja/the-carbon-footprint-of-biodiesel/
[2]: https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/Gas%20_v%20_Diesel_%...
[3]: https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/how-much-does-huma...
The problem is the fossil fuel that is concentrated carbon from millions of years of plants and now just adds to the CO2 in the atmosphere without a corresponding mechanism to take it out again.
If we create gasoline by capturing CO2 from the atmosphere there isn't a CO2 problem with using it for fuel. Processes exist, but all have some (major) inefficiency issues.
Of course it is because the capitalist state prioritizes shareholders over stakeholders.
Of course you are!
And we're allowed to think what we will of you, should you choose to do that.
No we don't, that will increase inflation is basically a tax on poor people to pay for rich people to buy new vehicle
The EV Tax credit needs to do away completely, EV can either compete with ICE in the market or they cant, government should not be picking winners or losers.
>>Also, a Hummer EV is displacing other large vehicles.
Not until batter tech improves, I am interested in an EV truck, none of them have the towing range that makes them practical for a weekend trip to the dock with your boat, or a camping trip. One of the Youtube channels I watch just did a head to head with a ICE truck against the Ford Lightening, they did not get 80 miles with the truck before they ran out of charge pulling a normal sized trailer, that is with the Truck claiming a 150 or so mile range at the start of the trip. TERRIBLE towing miles.
Current batteries may be good for a car like the Model 3 and Model S, or the Mach E, but it is TERRIBLE for large SUV's or Trucks that are made for towing
One of the governments jobs is to make sure externalities are accounted for, and ICEs should not get a free ride by not dealing with their pollution.
There are many things that do not make sense on the open market, unless we can collectively agree to tip the scales in the direction it should go for a better society, till the "market" can manage it on it's own.
But what we need is a full carbon tax of about $250/tonne of CO2 (eventually), as that's approximately the fully accounted social cost and is also about the long-term cost to suck the CO2 out of the air and store it. Then there wouldn't be any need to subsidize anything except for the usual industrial policy/tech dev reasons as the externalities would be priced in.
So 1/3 the emissions of a normal hummer… I don’t think the normal hummer owner is going to ever switch to a sedan so that seems like a major improvement
I think the current state of affairs is actually worse than that -- big trucks are popular not just because some people like big trucks, but also because there are regulations that prevent small trucks from being a viable market segment in the U.S.: that class of vehicle has much more stringent fuel economy standards (perversely forcing people into larger vehicles with looser regulations), and light trucks imported from other countries are subject to a 25% tariff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
The only light truck I know of that you can get currently is the long version of the Jeep Wrangler. I'm not sure if they actually meet the fuel economy standards, or if they can somehow claim to not technically be a light truck. Maybe there are some others, but as far as I can tell almost all trucks sold in the U.S. are huge and have comically tall grills.
If I wasn't already in the middle of an EV conversion project, I'd be tempted to get something like an old Datsun 620 and load it up with batteries. I wish there was a product on the market like that.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/44642/imported-1000-hp-henness...
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That's one of the reasons what governments were made for.
Tell me in that climate how the government does it’s job? People keep electing government officials who are expressly against what you’re suggesting.
If you're powering it with coal, this is horrible. If hydro/solar/nuclear power, well it's still a big load on the grid, but carbon wise it's a small fraction of the footprint.
Of course you need to factor in where the power is actually coming from on your grid. And definitely factor in the time of day (are you charging overnight and actually using a higher carbon source, etc).
When you do the math on this Hummer on the cleanest sources, it's still far cleaner than even a small ICE engine. Even though I still hate it :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmBGSKRGs6A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmk6z3qqfIw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaQ-s_P5mwM
Because of this alone, there are many EVs that are still worse for the environment than many gas-powered vehicles
38%[0] of an EVs emissions are in the manufacturing alone. Ultimately, the best thing you can do for the environment is still to STOP BUYING NEW CARS
[0] https://energy.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Insights-i... (page 90)
If your annual driving distance is low (<5,000 miles) and your grid is relatively dirty (e.g. the midwest [SRMW] grid), a range of EVs have more CO2 emissions/mile than conventional internal combustion vehicles.
(This is a project from the MIT Tranick lab / http://trancik.mit.edu/)
Right now. I'm sure you know but the beauty of this is that those cars' emissions can be reduced without changing anything about the car simply by changing the fuel used to generate electricity which can (and has to) happen in the future.
Such as Germany currently decommissioning nuclear plants...
https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/plug-in-or-gas-up-why...
https://www.epa.gov/egrid/data-explorer
Carboncounter seem to be using the eGRID subregions, but I'm not sure how much green power actually flows from southern Wisconsin all the way to western Virginia. Maybe there's a power expert here that can comment on whether state or eGRID subregion numbers are more appropriate.
That the graph origin is not 0,0 by default and includes tax credits doesn't inspire much confidence in their impartiality.
This is a very complex problem to measure.
https://www.epa.gov/egrid
or there's a map
https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmuth/plug-in-or-gas-up-why...
In the long run, manufacturers making all of their halo cars ostentatious EVs is a good thing. Offroad car bros are not one wholesome lecture away from switching to a bicycle. Let's let car makers make electric cars cool and then focus on actually providing better sources of electricity.
We're closer to losing women's and gay rights than to setting new environmental laws and standards.
The thing is Americans just do not buy sedans.
We can hem & haw and browbeat consumers, but if they want to buy big trucks.. better EV flavored ones than V8 coal rolling polluters.
The more form factors are available in EV flavor, and the more price points they can hit.. the better.
Yes, or perhaps regulate these tanks that are a disaster for human life in all the years past 2150 (i.e., a time people born in the next twenty years will live to experience)...
I mean, I can't just bring a gigantic 500 kilo suitcase on an airplane. There's costs associated to the airplane and other passengers, and thus doing this is priced such that nobody does this for fun or mere convenience, but rather only very rarely out of necessity. In fact, only on the rare occasion when the costs are worth paying because the value is equal or higher than the price.
There's rules & conditions to using certain services and infrastructure like an airplane. Roads aren't any different, we just happen to accept rules & conditions that are ridiculously imbalanced, aren't pricing in the costs, and are disastrous on a whole range of categories: from climate change, to environmental pollution, to human health and safety, congestion and geopolitical issues around oil dependence.
I am mostly trying to drive home a point I think a lot of perfectionists miss..
A lot of people drive gas vehicles. A lot of people drive big trucks. The more form factors that EVs come in, the more gas vehicle drivers can be converted to EVs, which is a net win. I am not sure we are going to magically regulate and legislate away everything al at once in one Great Leap Forward of banning ICE, mandating smaller vehicles, changing land use and road design all in one go.
I am simply putting forward the opinion that every EV Hummer sold to a former gas Hummer buyer, is a net good. Every F150 Lightning/EV Silverado/Rivian sold to a former F150/Silverado V8 buyer is good. Every Tesla Model 3 sold to a former Camry/Accord buyer is good. Every VW ID4 sold to a former CRV/RAV4 buyer is good. Every Chevy Bolt sold to a former Honda Fit/Chevy Sonic buyer is good. Etc etc etc.
Look at the list of top vehicles sold in America. Most of them don't have EV versions available or affordable today. The more we can convert the merrier.
I don't think you are going to convert a lot of Chevy Suburban buyers into a Polestar 2, or BMW X5 buyer into a Tesla Model Y, or a Toyota Highlander into a Chevy Bolt. You could get some of them into a BMW iX or Mercedes EQS SUV or Rivian R1S, etc.
Some vehicle bloat is also crash safety regulatory driven as you see how much crumple zone growth cars have experienced if you compare say a BMW 3 series from 1990/2000/2010/2020.
This is the sort of things governments can be good at if they choose. Otherwise gas/energy prices will eventually do it for us. And it won’t be pretty.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/small-cars-are-getting-huge-ar...
I keep hearing communism is a nice idea but fails in practice.
Well, unchecked capitalism is a nice idea until the world collapses.
I'd be cautious about blaming it all on fuel prices. I'd argue that the increased wealth of California residents relative to the rest of the country also plays a part in why a vehicle that is too expensive for most people made it so high on that list in California.
I would argue it's more because auto manufacturers wish to streamline their production lines. Body-on-frame is very flexible and allows them to re-use most components across different products.
The marketing departments then produce Television ads questioning your masculinity if you don't drive a vehicle based on a commercial truck frame. Suddenly "it's what the customer demands".
I'm not sure what the prices and fees are in California, but for comparison, in Mississippi it costs me about $45/year for registration and today I paid $4.17 for fuel. If I recall correctly, vehicles newer than 20 years old can cost significantly more to register here, but I don't have anything that new.
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In the early 2000's my own situation changed, I was needing to haul relatively heavy/bulky items. I acquired a Honda Pilot because of its rated 1300 lb payload, better than a small pickup. After a while that need ended, but I kept the Pilot and still drive it. However since then it's used <3000 mi/year, a good thing with price of fuel being what it is now.
The Pilot was/is built on the same platform as the Honda minivan, albeit with slightly modified drive train. Pilot and minivan have essentially identical mileage ratings. So with these models switching from minivan to "SUV" makes no difference in fuel usage.
Can't disagree that old-style "station wagons" were more fuel-efficient than minivans and similar size vehicles. However, station-wagons seem to have disappeared from the scene at least to my observation. Out of fashion I suppose. And from the fuel usage point of view that's unfortunate.
EVs are the future but expense factors will keep ICE in the picture for some years to come. Do you suppose the current increased fuel prices will inspire a resurgence of smaller vehicles for routine transportation? In the interim that would be a good thing.
The government put fuel efficiency regulations on sedans in the 1970s. This effectively killed station wagons. The rules around light trucks were different though, and that's why the minivan was created.
The SUV is an outgrowth of the same thing.
Simply put, you need to meet the voters were they are.
Companies know this and meet consumers where they are.
Why do people buy SUVs? Because the generation that grew up embarrassed by their parents minivans never wanted to buy a minivan! So now companies sell the former minivan cohort SUVs instead, which are basically the same thing.
Occasionally the Germans ship us a sexy sports wagon, but they can't call it that here and have to call them hatches or "cross turismo" etc.. haha.
If you live in norther climates there are some advantages to SUVs/crossovers in terms of ground clearance. Winter, even with AWD and winter tires can be a problem in my sedan when I bottom out at every poorly plowed intersection.
Sedans are also a PITA as soon as you want to haul both people AND stuff at once. Or anything with a dimension wider than 3 feet.
SUVs do offer benefits in terms of semi-regular things normies do like moving your kids in/out of college 4x/year with the semester system, taking your family on road trips instead of flying (which is way more polluting!), hauling large dogs, Costco runs, etc.
People with various sorts of outdoors enthusiasm also may use them to haul, roof rack or tow more outdoorsy gear.
Not everything other people prefer is because they are bad people who are evil and need to be stopped.
I'd be curious how exactly you'd legislate away SUVs now that the genie is out of the bottle. What's an SUV, whats a cross over, whats a commercial vehicle, etc. If you go by weight, plenty of sedans violate worse than small SUVs.. In fact if you go by weight class you may ban EVs and allow ICE!
I see more sedans on the road than any other type of vehicle. Crossovers I see almost as much, though.
https://www.edmunds.com/most-popular-cars/
Keep this in mind. If you live in VT you’re at 0. If you live in TX or FL maybe don’t bother. https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/state/excel/electr...
If you have 2 buckets connected at the bottom by a small hose, and you take from the left bucket at a high enough rate, the buckets will be at an unequal level and at some point either you stop taking and the water eventually seeks its own level again or your take rate becomes that of the connecting hose. (this extension of your bucket analogy, like all water/electricity analogies, breaks in a lot of ways but it gets the idea across at least).
And given how often Nuclear does provide greater base load than smaller coal plants; if your most local plant is nuclear, your emissions are less.
That's why we can speak regionally.
For one, there is just the mass: yes, it makes it safer for the SUV driver, but at the expense of the smaller cars/bikes/pedestrians.
But there is another factor. When I learned to drive 40 years ago, I took it for granted that most of the time I could look through the car in front of me, and often the car in front of that, to anticipate changes in traffic conditions. Now I mostly see the rear of the large vehicle in front of me and no further.
A better analogy is sitting at a concert and complaining that the people are standing in front of you.
SUVs are allowed and expected to be on the road. Standing in a movie theater is not.
But even that's not entirely true that people inside the SUV are safe because you can also look up the history of "rollover deaths". In an accident an SUV is a big immovable object, right until it isn't anymore and then it's a very heavy thing with a weird center of gravity. If an SUV tips over somehow in a collision, or worse rolls over itself more than once, that often has spelled death for the SUV's occupants. There's been more safety measures and center of gravity balancing and rollover cages added to SUVs since the height of rollover deaths in the 1990s, but the brinksmanship of "the safest option is to be inside the SUV" moving "everyone" to SUVs for their own skin, increases the likelihood of SUV versus SUV accidents and the return of rollover death statistics.
SUVs are unnecessarily large and heavy, dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists, blocking the view for other drivers, causing more wear to the street surface and take up precious space when parking in cities. And for what? Hummers might be an exception, but most SUVs aren't even suitable for off-road use. Not that most owners even need that.
So yeah, it is absolutely insane for people to drive a car that causes so much harm to other road users and society as a whole for no good reason other than "me want BIG BIG CAR" and so it should be taxed to offset these effects.
The damage to roads scales O(n^3) by vehicle mass.
The death rates have already been spoken for.
The space taken by SUVs on roads and parking is subsidized by people who drive smaller cars, cyclists, and pedestrians.
Road-goers should not be subsidizing SUV owners.
In general people are not careful readers, and in my opinion, headlines like this tend to feed cynicism and inaction.
What I see here is enormous opportunity in decarbonizing the processes that lead to high lifecycle emissions for this and other vehicles.