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EV drivers get terribly upset when you point out the many shortcomings of their smugmobiles. In fact, they’re a bit like Apple computer and phone users: so besotted with the sleek exterior and shiny coloured icons that they’ll furiously deny that it’s a pile of crap at what it’s actually meant to do. It’s not for nothing that I used to call Apple “overpriced Fisher-Price toys for adults”. IPhone users are forever bragging about some wondrous new feature on their latest slave-labour produced fidget-spinner — features which have been standard on boring old Android phones for years.
But no-one, no-one, holds an evangelical candle to EV drivers. It’s a wonder Elon Musk hasn’t yet incorporated a built-in Fleshlight in a Tesla, so EV drivers can finally consummate their love for their crappy mobile firebombs.
Their proudest onanistic boast is that they’re saving the planet. But are they? Sure, EVs may not produce exhaust during use like an internal combustion engine car, but, boy, do they belch the stuff out when they’re being made. Even EV drivers can’t ignore the staggering amount of pollution it takes to make the damn things. So they resort to a bit of confirmation bias called “whole-of-life carbon emissions”.
By this act of statistical prestidigitation, they claim that the lower emissions produced during use eventually outweigh the gargantuan amounts produced during manufacture? But do they? Or are they, like Karen with her bloody “KeepCup” and her dinky hemp shopping bags, simply having themselves on?
The cost of manufacturing a battery for an EV is more carbon-intensive than manufacturing an ICE vehicle. This is because the heat needed to manufacture the batteries is required to be between 800-1,000 degrees Celsius. At present, burning fossil fuels is the most cost-effective way to produce that amount of heat.
Most EV batteries (about 77 per cent globally) are produced in China which uses coal as its primary energy source.
Mining the minerals needed to produce an EV comes at a cost, too. Not just in carbon emissions (some 15,000 tonnes of CO2 per 1,000 tonnes of mined lithium) but also environmental costs due to mining pollution and water usage. Further, the alleged human rights abuses of cobalt miners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (which produces 60 per cent of the world’s cobalt) adds a social cost, too.
Maybe.
The problem with all of that is: is it accurate?
You might have noticed that I have only cited one source for EV data so far from MIT’s Climate Portal. The same source (albeit with different authors) suggests that the amount of CO2 emitted in the manufacture of an EV is 80 per cent more than an ICE vehicle.
This means that manufacturing an EV requires 1.8 times more carbon emission than an ICE vehicle.
Even with an EV produced using coal and using coal-fired electricity to recharge, my trusty source states that ‘the dirtiest electric vehicle looks something like our best gasoline vehicles that are available today’.
But how accurate is this portrayal of the difference between ICE and EVs in different scenarios?
One given figure for CO2 emitted in the manufacture of an ICE vehicle is 5.6 tonnes. But International Energy Agency (IEA) says it’s 6 tonnes. Potayto, potahto.
The IEA states that the base case for an EV is 8 tonnes per EV, or 9.4 tonnes using higher-emitting energy sources.
Which supposedly makes an EV just 1.3-1.6 times more “carbon intensive” to make. Here’s the kicker, though: these ‘estimates shown … are illustrative only’.
So, they’re not hard data at all.
Depending on where it’s made, the “emissions profile” can be very different. An EV battery made in Sweden (with lots of hydro) produces 2.5 tonnes of CO2. A similar battery made in China produces 6.5 tonnes.
But if we use the extreme of the East Asia data (which was regarded as an outlier and therefore disregarded by the MIT Climate Portal), then we arrive at 29.8kg CO2 emissions per kWh for each EV.
This is nearly six times the CO2 emissions for a mid-range ICE vehicle.
Ergo, you’d need to drive your EV a lot before it even breaks even with a petrol car (and that’s not counting the increased particulate pollution caused by extra-heavy EVs wearing tyres out faster).
To be sure, improvements in energy production and EV manufacturing over time may change the data. But so many of the assumptions used in the data models – because that is what they are as opposed to proven facts (a bit like your $275 energy bill saving) – are yet to be confirmed.
If EV batteries fail and need to be replaced more frequently than we thought, then the embedded emissions will double. And if the electricity demand increases as the use of EVs increases, and despite optimistic assumptions about the grid’s capacity we must go back to using coal, then the data will shift again.
So, does all this prove that EVs are better or worse for the environment than petrol cars? It’s impossible to tell, because, like so much of THE SCIENCE supported Climate Cultism, it’s precious little fact and a whole lot of modelling (which is basically I Just Reckon with a spreadsheet).
[So] if you think you are morally superior to everyone else because you drive an EV, you couldn’t possibly have a clue what impact you are having on the environment. And you should probably wipe that smug look off your face, too.
Spectator Australia
