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Electric Cars Emit 50 Percent Less Greenhouse Gas Than Diesel, Study Finds (theguardian.com)
entirely_fluffy shares a report from The Guardian: Electric cars emit significantly less greenhouse gases over their lifetimes than diesel engines even when they are powered by the most carbon intensive energy, a new report has found. In Poland, which uses high volumes of coal, electric vehicles produced a quarter less emissions than diesels when put through a full lifecycle modeling study by Belgium's VUB University. CO2 reductions on Europe's cleanest grid in Sweden were a remarkable 85%, falling to around one half for countries such as the UK. The new study uses an EU estimate of Poland's emissions -- at 650gCO2/kWh -- which is significantly lower than calculations by the European commission's Joint Research Centre science wing last year. The VUB study says that while the supply of critical metals -- lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite -- and rare earths would have to be closely monitored and diversified, it should not constrain the clean transport transition. As battery technology improves and more renewables enter the electricity grid, emissions from battery production itself could be cut by 65%, the study found.
It's cool that you......believe.....that but there's a study here that shows otherwise. Maybe you'd at least like to give some reasoning to back up your assertion? If you do, that would be interesting (implying that your current comment is lacking interest).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Because that 25 year old 4-cylinder has terrible safety features.
Well, his car is 19 years old, so lets go with that. 19 years ago we had seat belts, crumple zones, airbags, ABS brakes, and some even had traction control. Those have been the major safety advances.
Most of the rest of the "safety features" like lane departure, rear and front sensors, automatic braking, etc. are almost purely for distracted and poor drivers (People who really should not have a license). Yes, these newer features add to the the overall safety. But if you've been a safe driver for 19 years (the fact that he has owned the same car for 19 years is a good indication) then it's highly unlikely that a newer vehicle would make him a safer driver than he already is.
Remember, it's not the car that you need to trust, it's your fellow driver. Even when full automation takes over some driving situations, you'll still have to trust that "Hal 9000" doesn't have a bug in it's driving routine.... (grin)
Fig 3 shows how GHG emissions from the use of EVs varies across the EU: while in Sweden the use of BEV would produce only 7–9 gCO2eq/km, in Latvia EVs emit 169–234 gCO2eq/km and the EU average is 65–89 gCO2eq/km (the first number of these intervals refer to the 14.5 kWh/100 km BEV while the second to the 20.0 kWh/100 km BEV). According to these figures, the use of BEV in countries relying on big shares of nuclear or renewable electricity would contribute to reducing GHG emissions at the national level, while, in countries with a highly carbon-intense electricity mix, electric cars would not necessarily contribute to GHG emission reduction targets than relying on ICE vehicle fleets.
tl;dr the paper itself says if your country has clean energy then electric vehicles are cleaner than diesels, whereas if you have dirty energy, like much of the USA or worse, India, electric vehicles are a wash.
Id add that looking at fig3 it also looks like the worst countries would benefit more CO2 wise from hybrids than electrics at least in the short term till the power isn't so dirty.
If you look at the figures for some the the eastern European nations, the EV is about the same as the reference ICE figures.
The usual argument for EVs is that it's easier to replace a few power stations with something less polluting than it is to replace every car. It's also likely easier to do carbon sequestration and to filter particulates from a large industrial installation than from a few million tiny portable generators.
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