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Mr Bean actor Rowan Atkinson blamed for slow electric car sales (news.sky.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
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[–] 13 points 2 years ago (3 children)

They offset all those emissions by the time they've reached like 80k km in places where electricity is produced using coal (compared to a gas vehicle that increases its total emissions as time goes) so no, he's not right actually.

That's not even taking into consideration the wear on emission equipment and cars age.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    If most people replace their cars every three years they're not getting to 80,000 km before they buy a new one.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Do they though?

    And it's not as if these cars were sent to the scraper, they're sold on the used market and replace gas cars.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    According to Mr. Bean's original article, that's the average length of car ownership in Britain due to the prevalence of three year leases.

    And it doesn't matter if they're going on the used market because there's still another new car getting built that doesn't have to be.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    Yeah, the policy causes more cars to be sold, which is also an important thing to take into account.

    But you initially said "If most people replace their cars every three years they’re not getting to 80,000 km before they buy a new one.", and that is plain wrong, the car is not scrapped after those 3 years, so when it changes owner for the first time is irrelevant. And that 80k km is worst case scenario, that assuming all electricity is generated in the least environmental way possible, in practice it's often <40k km that there is already a break even because not all electricity is generated by coal.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Except that is ignoring the filtering effect of the used market. As a car ages and changes hands, it is likely to replace an older, less efficient car. How else could we replace the oldest cars that are going out of service due to being at the end of their life?

    It’s not like the people that are buying old used cars are suddenly going to afford an expensive new car. Instead, they need an affordable used car.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Are we sure newer cars are more efficient ? With dieselgate and recent articles about how Co2 emissions are better in lab but same on real conditions, we are allowed to have fat doubts.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    If like the guy further up this thread you only drive 8k km a year that's going to take 10 years to reach parity. The Li-Ion battery may not even last that long.

    Obviously if you drive for work or commute long distances that can't be covered by public transport then an EV makes sense, but with the expansion of WFH it may not for many.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    That's 80k km if you live somewhere where electricity comes 100% from coal, where I live with hydro it's under 20k km. You're also making an assumption without knowing how much that 8k km emits with their gas car.

    To give an example with numbers...

    Gas car produces 5 tons of CO2 when being manufactured and then emits 1 ton a year driving 8k km

    Electric car produces 10 tons of CO2 when being manufactured then emits 0.25 tons a year driving 8k km

    After 6 ⅔ (we'll round it up to 7) years the EV compensated for the extra CO2 required for its production and has emitted 10 + (7 x 0.25) = 11.75 tons of CO2. Meanwhile the gas car has emitted 5 + (7 x 1) = 12 tons of CO2 and the difference will keep increasing.

    As for the battery failure scare, it's a non issue with the vast majority of models and it ignores the extra maintenance required on the gas car that also pollutes.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    We're about 10k past that mileage where we're supposed to be having battery issues, maybe need a replacement, with our Prius and they aren't happening. I've been wondering if it was just a scare from the salesman to push me to an ICE. We've kept on top of the maintenance and it's been the most reliable car I've ever driven. Might just be a Toyota thing tho. I set aside the money for the repair and I'm waiting, but I'd really rather spend it on hookers and blow.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    I know that the hybrid version was/is a taxi driver favorite and some drove 600k km and the battery was still ok 🤷

    The Nissan Leaf is the biggest culprit I think, they decided not to actively cool the battery and if people drive to work, charge, go back home, charge, it cooks it...

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    The best car for the environment is the one you have.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    That's the thing though, no it isn't.

    If you continue driving a gas car it continues to generate emissions, if you switch to an electric car it offsets it's emissions (compared to switching to another gas car or keeping the same gas car) after max 80k km and after that it's a better car for the environment than whatever gas car you would have been driving instead and that you keep driving and that keeps increasing its carbon footprint.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    You're taking a useful piece of equipment, a perfectly running car, and doing what with it? Scrapping it? Reselling it? Just letting it sit? None of those make sense from a "save the planet" perspective.

    You can scrap the internal combustion car. Sure, it won't make any more emissions itself, but it does cause demand for another EV to be manufactured RIGHT NOW, which has opportunity cost - manufacturing is expensive, monetarily and environmentally. Would this eventually even out, yeah, probably but it'd cause a lot of stress in the short term.

    Reselling it is probably the MOST environmentally friendly option, but that car is still making emissions. If the buyer of your internal combustion car already had a car, it's the same problem as scrapping it, kicked down 1 more chain link. the emissions necessarily increase. If they didn't already have a car, well now there's the same combustion engine car on the road, and we made a new EV to fit demand.

    Letting the car sit is a bit of a sunk cost fallacy, I admit. The manufacturing cost of the car has already been paid, and it has useful life left in it. This is where we have to actually make a cost-benefit decision. If the car is older, yeah probably don't drive it anymore. If it's less than 20 years old, it probably has enough life left in it to offset the benefits of producing a new EV right now. This just feels like scrapping it, with even more junkyard requirements.

    Obviously this isn't all on the individual level, one person doing any of these things isn't causing any shift in demand, but if everyone suddenly started having that mentality, I don't think it'd end well at all. Use what you have, don't buy until you have to or comfortably can. Reuse is as important as reduce and recycle.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (1 child)

    It makes sense to resell it only if it replaces another car that pollutes more than it does, otherwise your logic only works if you ignore the fact that the gas car has a carbon footprint they keeps increasing when the electric car doesn't (or it increases slowly enough depending on what's used to generate electricity that it still eventually becomes carbon negative compared to continuing to use the gas car).

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    There's a sunk cost already spent for an ICE car that's already been produced. There's an opportunity cost to swapping to an EV immediately. My point is simply that the situations are complicated enough that the only reasonable "one size" approach for a heuristic to balance those costs is one along the lines of "replace your ICE car when it's reached the end of its useful life, and replace it with an EV".

    No, this probably won't be the best overall. That requires individualization. Someone still clinging to a 40 year old gas guzzling truck would be better off scrapping it. Someone who bought a sedan in, like, 2017, it still has a few years of well performing life in it would do best to keep it til it dies and then replace with an EV.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Hence what I'm saying.

    From a purely environmental perspective the person who bought a car in 2017 that has the financial means to get a new EV car would be better off getting one, selling their 2017 to someone who drives a 2005 that would sell to someone that drives a 2000 that would send their car to the scrap yard or keep the chain going. Your analysis implies that the 2017 car gets replaced and doesn't get sold to someone else, either the owner keeps it and doesn't drive it or it gets sent to a scrap yard, which isn't what happens in reality.

    The point is, it's better to intentionally introduce a new car on the road that emits zero pollution (or close to) and that allows us to get rid of an old car that emits tons of CO2 every year even if it's still drivable than to just wait for the old car to die to get the process going from the bottom up.

    I could make a complete mathematical breakdown to show it but I've basically already done it in another comment just with two cars instead of a long chain of cars.

    Funny you should mention sunk cost because it's a sunk cost fallacy to say we shouldn't get these cars off the road just because they've been produced already (as long as the total number of cars stays the same in either scenarios, just to be clear).

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    I specifically mentioned sunk cost because it can be fallacious. I was aiming to get ahead of that. Not every sunk cost is fallacious, and that's why I went into depth about sunk costs vs opportunity costs.

    And again, on an INDIVIDUAL level I agree with you. Individuals don't have that kind of impact on demand as something like a ban of ICE engines, or broad adoption of them to the point of masses of people looking to buy at the same time does.

    Individually, buy one as soon as it makes financial sense for you, ideally when you'd be buying a car anyway.

    Systemically, buy one when your car dies, keep your running machine for as long as possible.

    Specifically the opportunity costs I'm referring to are manufacturing related. Right now, producing EVs is more costly than producing ICE cars, in terms of carbon footprint. If too many people adopt too quickly, it results in more being produced while the manufacturing process is still shitty.

    There's a problem with the "pass down the cars" thing too. At the end of that chain is still a car being decommissioned. If it's still usable, that's a higher net carbon footprint. A new EV still had to be produced for that chain of used car sales to go through.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    You'll really have me show you with maths that it doesn't work the way you think, will you?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Go for it, or link me to where you did before. All I'm seeing is the math working in certain individual cases, not broadly at least not yet, and at best moving the emissions 2 or 3 steps down a chain of emissions.

    There will be a time when, broadly speaking, it's best to just nuke your car and get an EV. That time is not there yet. It's probably when the manufacturing emissions are roughly equal to those of ICE cars, and/or when there's more renewable energy than coal. Please, though, show me math.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/sustainability/358628/car-pollution-production-disposal-what-impact-do-our-cars-have-planet

    5.6 tons of CO2 to produce a gas car, 8.8 tons of CO2 to produce an electric car.

    We'll use 10k km/year as a baseline (with is way less than average)

    Three Toyota Corolla, 2010, 2015, 2020

    They release 1.8, 1.7, 1.6 tons of CO2 a year respectively driving 10k km (fueleconomy.gov)

    The EV is a 2024 Toyota bZ4X (what a stupid name) and it releases zero CO2 a year to drive 10k km

    So we're in 2024, the emissions from the gas cars so far are:

    2010 > 5.6 + (1.8 x 14) = 30.8 tons

    2015 > 5.6 + (1.7 x 9) = 20.9 tons

    2020 > 5.6 + (1.6 x 4) = 12 tons

    Total: 63.7 tons

    So we can already see that the 2020 has released enough CO2 in 4 years to beat an EV.

    Let's say we add another 5 years to each cars... We're now at 39.8, 29.4, 20 tons respectively for a total of 89.2 tons

    Now, what's the impact in 5 years if we take the 2010 off the road and introduce a 2024 EV instead? Scraping the 2010 releases CO2, it's evaluated at half the production so 2.8 tons. So our new numbers are:

    33.6, 29.4, 20 and 8.8 for the EV for a total of 91.8

    After five years with the 2010 off the road we're at 91.8 - 89.2 = 2.6 tons extra so two years from being carbon negative compared to never changing the 2010 for an EV.

    Two more years of gas car: 89.2 + (2 x 1.8) + (2 x 1.7) + (2 x 1.6) = 99.4 tons

    What's the portrait in two more years if we had scraped the 2010 in 2029 instead?

    89.2 + (2x1.7) + (2x1.6) + 8.8 = 104.6 tons

    By switching in 2024?

    91.8 + (2x1.7) + (2x1.6) = 98.4 tons

    By scraping the 2010 in 2024 we saved 6.2 tons of CO2 in 2031(equivalent to 3.4 years of driving the 2010) compared to doing it in 2029.

    If we didn't scrap it at all and didn't introduce an EV to replace it, we would be at + 1 ton in 2031 and it would keep increasing the longer we keep the 2010 on the road.

    Keep in mind that that's with less than half the annual average mileage in the USA (14k miles/22.4k km) AND it doesn't take maintenance into consideration and gas cars need more of it and it pollutes more (lots of oil) so the real difference is even greater!

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Cool, some numbers. First off, looking over your math, it looks correct, so that's good. The article seems to be a bit confusing, however, or you're taking a best case scenario they don't approach in the article. It states that an EV takes 8.8 tons of co2 to produce. It later states, however, "However, a BEV (battery electric vehicle) produces less harmful emissions over its entire life. The study found that a medium-sized petrol or diesel car produces around 24 tonnes of CO2 versus a BEV’s 18 tonnes" this seems to imply to me that we shouldn't keep emissions at 0 throughout the EV's lifetime? I would assume this additional tonnage is from less-clean electrical generation methods and overall maintenance requirements.

    If this is the case, it paints a bit different of a picture, more in line with what I said - that you should buy one if you're going to buy a car anyway, and drive yours. What the numbers provided does give us now, though, is a point at which the sunk cost DOES become too large, and that seems to be a car in the age range of 10-15 years at present.

    Please, if I've misunderstood something with the article, correct me, and thank you for the write up with sources.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    I added a "disclaimer" after the fact to mention that it's based on mileage way under what people actually drive and it doesn't take maintenance into consideration, with "real" mileage we're better off switching to an EV now because the switch makes you carbon negative after 5 years or so. The numbers used are appropriate in the sense that in both cases we don't count the CO2 coming from the production of the energy source used by either of them. If the vehicle life is the same, the 24 and 18 tons numbers (which seem to be under what would be expected based on the math I've done, that's a 10 years life expectancy for the gas car???) also show that the quicker we get rid of the gas cars, the quicker we reach a point where we're carbon negative compared to continuing to drive the gas cars until they're not drivable anymore.

    If we go with a number much closer to the actual average (20k km/year) you can buy a new Corolla, replace it the next year with an EV, park the Corolla and never drive it again and the math goes like this:

    5.6 (prod )+ 2.8 (scrap) + 3.2 (driving) + 8.8 (EV) = 20.4 tons

    Years to reach 20.4 tons if we drive just the Corolla > 5.6 + (3.2 * X) >= 20.4? X = 5 years of ownership = 21.6 tons

    After 4 years of owning the EV you're carbon negative in comparison.

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