this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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Electric Vehicles
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Electric Vehicles are a key part of our tomorrow and how we get there. If we can get all the fossil fuel vehicles off our roads, out of our seas and out of our skies, we'll have a much better environment. This community is where we discuss the various different vehicles and news stories regarding electric transportation.
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I made the calculation with a 10 years old Civic vs new EV once and the math came out in favor of the EV after a few years anyway, especially if you get green electricity where you live... Now with a 40 years old diesel it's even worse considering how much diesel emissions equipment has improved since it was built. There's a reason why some cities like Paris are completely banning older diesels...
You have to take into consideration that the total emissions from your already existing ICE vehicle keep increasing very quickly over time where an EV has a higher total when comparing two new vehicles, but then the EV has so much lower emissions during usage that they catch up very quickly, even if the electricity they use comes from coal powered generators. Hell, the average big truck probably release as much emissions every year as what it took to produce it in the first place...
Diesel has more NOx emissions and significantly more particulate emissions than cars running on gasoline, which is why cities are banning older vehicles running on Diesel. They're harmful to people's health, especially if they lack modern filters.
For CO2 though, Diesel usually runs miles around gasoline. That's why the EU has favored Diesel engines over gasoline one's since signing and ratifying the 1997 Kyoto protocol to reduce greenhouse emissions.
CO2 is directly related to fuel economy (no filtration of it) which is why diesel do better than gas. OP has a 40 years old diesel truck though, I wouldn't expect it to be getting that great fuel mileage, especially not if they're from the US.
Fair enough, older cars absolutely have worse fuel economy. I wonder how much this is offset by US trucks growing in size and weight though - a modern gasoline truck may even have worse fuel economy despite 40 years of advances. Although that's not a high margin to clear to be honest.
Any chance you can source your numbers? I tried to do the same calculation for my 18 year old gas car, and it came out a being a wash.
Finding hard numbers on the energy cost to build a new car was tough - the green sites showed the EV car poofed into the world with magic and butterflies, while the gas-centric sites made it sound like it took the entire world's GDP to produce a single EV.
Also disheartening, the very few sites I could find that would list replacement costs for a battery pack had the price higher than the vehicle itself - IE, when the battery pack goes, you throw the car away & buy another one. That's been a huge turnoff for me.
I'm trying to find the source again, from memory the production itself was 2 tons of CO2 for a compact sedan and 8.5 tons for an equivalent EV and then the Civic (and that's numbers I've just checked) emits about 3 tons of CO2 a year driving 16k km (which is less than the US average) while the EV emissions will vary depending on what is used to produce the electricity, but after two years the gas car has polluted as much as producing the EV and then a year later if it's green electricity it was above the EV...
So if you take a Civic that's already on the road and replace it with an EV you don't include the original 2 tons from producing the Civic, but it only means three years of CO2 emissions from burning gas before it catches up with the EV production.
From memory after about 6 years the EV came out on top even if it was replacing a road worthy Civic even in the worst scenario...
We have to keep in mind that producing electricity from petrol is more efficient than using that petrol to move cars (even with the losses along the way) as car engines aren't that great at extracting energy from gas...
Edit: just wanted to add that if we don't just look at CO2 the same logic applies to other types of emissions and replacing old cars with newer cars even if both are petrol powered and it even applies to CO2 if someone is driving an inefficient car and is thinking that replacing it with a more efficient new car will be worse for the environment...
I generally agree, but I've driven 14,000kms in six years. I just don't drive that much.