Are Electric Vehicles Better or Worse for the Environment?

I read those three reasons and see: weight, weight, and weight!<p>Of course a 9000lb hummer EV is going to require more raw materials and work to build, more energy to move down the road, and more effort to dispose of... But all that diminishes in favor of the EV if the EV is built less like a Decepticon land yacht and more like a minimalistic car.<p>Combustion cars have more of a static mass from the drivetrain they have to haul around with a pretty light gas tank (hence manufacturers have loaded them with luxury stuff without blowing up the drivetrain&#x27;s mass), but EVs scale down very nicely because the battery dominates the car&#x27;s weight. Its like the tyranny of the rocket equation: the more weight they carry, they more weight they need to carry that weight around, and so on.

Apart from anything else, it&#x27;s great for the environment the EVs are operated in. I live in Ireland, and shittily maintained cars constantly spew awful pollution into the air around me as I walk around Dublin.

What I miss the most in the EV vs ICE talk is road noise levels. EV&#x27;s are not necessarily less noisy at city speeds, unlike what seems logical, they are louder at above ~30km&#x2F;h. Here&#x27;s an example (PDF warning):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vejdirektoratet.dk&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;publications&#x2F;noise_from_electric_vehicles_0.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vejdirektoratet.dk&#x2F;sites&#x2F;default&#x2F;files&#x2F;publicati...</a>

Noise pollution, local air pollution from exhausts, and local air pollution from tires are all far more directly costly to human wellbeing at scale than water use in lithium mining.

Wrong question, the right one is: How to make 10 billion people live with decent life standards and comfort without destroying the planet?

The electric vehicle I commute with (a train) is probably better fie the environment...

Related:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thefp.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;your-iphone-was-built-with-child" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thefp.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;your-iphone-was-built-with-child</a><p>Does anyone have numbers of resource usage of an EV compared to, say, an iPhone?<p>Or, for better perspective, compared to an electric bus divided by its average number of passengers per day?<p>I know, there won&#x27;t be a single definitive answer to the latter question.<p>But I think the problem with vehicles is mostly their numbers and artifical abundance.<p>I&#x27;m all for EVs, but against any state subsidies to purchase one.<p>After all, the list price doesn&#x27;t even include any &quot;externalities&quot;.<p>Taxing the s.. out of individual vehicles (in other words, cash the externalities) and going strong on public transport, that would be &quot;Better for the Environment&quot;<p>The current dichotomy is a self-imposed dilemma with no right answer

A few things that should probably be taken into a account as we move to an electrified future is<p>1) what is the carbon footprint of an EV vehicle when we are recycling batteries<p>2) what is the carbon footprint of an EV as we increase efficiency&#x2F;range<p>3) what is the carbon footprint of an ICE as they increase range<p>The reason this might be interesting is that EVs, I believe, are still in their infancy and are likely to continue to see considerable jumps in efficiency.<p>ICE vehicles are not seeing these efficiency gains at the same rate. The technology is fairly stale. However ICE cars are getting more powerful. With a 2l 4 cylinder engine now getting 200+ hp, which I think would have been unimaginable a decade ago.<p>So where do these developments run in the future?

I copied this from a climatologist&#x27;s twitter last year but can no longer find the source, I suspect they&#x27;ve deleted their account:<p>&gt; All other things being identical, if an EV made from metals that were processed with green electricity only has one (1) order of magnitude less emissions than a petrol engined vehicle of the same size over the vehicle&#x27;s lifetime, the equivalent EV where the metals were smelted with coal is one order of magnitude worse.<p>I don&#x27;t know if the claim is correct but I hope the industry can do better than that.

If you placed a weightless empty box on your head and filled it with the average cars exhaust emissions for one year, the result 4.6 metric tons would crush you like a pancake.<p>If we&#x27;re being charitable we could let you take a few breaths of what&#x27;s in the full box just to ease your suffering.<p>There are 1.4 billion such cars currently operating in the world.

It&#x27;s good to see some discussion on the matter, however it is likely be tossed like &quot;fossil-fuel propaganda&quot; by many.