this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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I am a bit conflicted on one hand I am sure changing it over will be better than petrol. But on the other hand I am not sure how much emissions are generated from making the batteries themselves. I think we need more bio fuels. At least until we can make batteries don't require lithium mining.
Making a battery causes emissions once, using gas causes emissions for every tank refined, transported, and burned. You cross the threshold into reduced emissions pretty quickly- power generation on the grid is exponentially more efficient than refining and burning gas continually.
This!
I'm sure there's concern there, but I would like to see how that is offset by the elimination of various extra systems a EV doesn't need like the transmission, drive line, gear boxes, diffs, drive shafts, axles, and the various fluids needed for maintenance and lubricantion of these various systems.
Then there is the mining for the various computer controlled components for these systems but that's probably a wash.
Wtf. You obviously haven't looked into EVs. There's still all those things, a planetary gear set because you need Regen braking and you need wheel speed at X rpm and need to keep electric engine below... 12000? Rpm, likely lower.
You don't need fluid clutch, you can reduce brakes with Regen braking, but still need emergency braking. There are some designs with two motors for each wheel, but it complicated Regen energy storage.
I don’t know how the numbers work out in a conversion like this, but in new cars EVs take about 1.5 to 2 times the emissions of ICE cars to build including battery. That being said, 91% of a ICE’s emissions are from the gas, not producing the car.
Bio fuels are just a different kind of oil. Hydrocarbons reacting with oxygen to release CO2 and heat.
Lithium mining is evaporating saltwater with sunlight.
It would be nice if we would actually fully switch to this method of mining lithium. It's slowly happening, but not fast enough. The majority of our lithium still comes from rock mines, at the moment.
Short answer, all the emissions from building a new battery are about on par with a single year of gas consumption. If you include charging from the current US electrical grid, break even is two to three years.
Your average gas car produces two to three times its weight in carbon dioxide every single year it’s on the road. The climate impact of building cars is rather small compared to the impacts of using them, even in modern EVs the co2 cost of building them is only a third of the electricity to power them off the modern grid, which itself is about half of what a gas car outputs.
Ballpark estimate
Finally, while it might improve with further agricultural electrification and carbon reductions, at present biofuels only offer a 33% reduction in co2 emissions compared to using straight gas. By contrast EVs offer a 60% to 100% reduction in fuel co2 emissions.