By the end of 2020, a highly questionable report was circulating in the UK and was receiving extensive politics in newspapers (albeit basically those on the right). It became known as #AstonGate, in reference to the main company behind the report (which had tried to hide its involvement). The resulting reaction did not reflect well to the other people involved, but it did show something positive. We can’t just look at tailpipe emissions, nor can we simply take into consideration emissions from a vehicle’s fuel source. We also want to take into account the environmental impact in the production and disposal/recycling of end-of-life vehicles. Only then will we be able to know which type of car is the most environmentally friendly. .
Electric cars produce more carbon in their production, basically because of the battery. But it is difficult, as it should be, to calculate emissions over a lifetime because there are so many variables to balance. Many attempts fail. In the last month or so, a TEDx convention posted on YouTube in early 2020 has also begun circulating, supposedly militarized among those who would like to attack the eco-friendly references of electric cars. Titled “The Contradictions of Battery-Powered Vehicles” and presented through Dr. Graham Conway (who works at the Southwest Research Institute, founded by oil tycoon Tom Slick), the presentation is quite compelling. But it also has many flaws.
The first challenge is that Conway doesn’t cite where he gets his numbers from. That’s not necessarily to say they’re not true, however, without sources, it’s knowledge, and many numbers don’t seem right. Conway’s fundamental precept of counting total CO2 and not just exhaust emissions are completely valid. But satan is at the main points, and many of the main points of the presentation raise questions.
Conway’s first argument comparing Corvettes to horses is easy. Animals are not components of a purely circular CO2 life cycle. We want to seriously reconsider the amount of meat we eat because of the methane production of cows. In fact, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 14. 5% of all human-generated CO2 comes from livestock. Not everything goes back to the plants that farm animals eat. One part ends up in the environment and contributes to global warming. Conway argues that horses provide one hundred percent circularity, and he is wrong.
Conway also says, “Much of our electric power comes from coal,” which depends on the country. In 2020, Australia got about 54% of its electricity from coal, 20% from herbal fuel and 2% from oil, for an overall 76% of fossil fuels. However, in the United States in 2021, coal intake decreased a lot: only 18%, of which 43% was herbal fuel and 2% oil, compared to 63% fossil fuels. In contrast, in the UK, 54. 1% of electricity came from low-carbon resources in 2021 and almost nothing from coal.
Conway paints a more negative picture than the existing truth. Many other countries still use a lot of coal, India, for example. But the percentages are falling rapidly. Conway acknowledges this, but his figure of 67% of the world’s electricity from co2-producing resources has already been surpassed. Ember put it at 62% by 2021, and we can’t determine where Conway got his figure from because he doesn’t say so. under. Not a huge difference at 67%, however, the numbers drop (almost) every year.
Another figure for which it does not show a source is the average lifespan of a vehicle, which indicates at 180,000 miles. That seems like a lot if you’ve tried to drive a car with so many miles, use at least that figure. similarly for electric cars and fossil fuel cars. However, it states that an average vehicle produces 30 tons of CO2 over that 180,000-mile lifespan, which equates to 167 g per mile. This is a huge underestimate, when we know that the average new car in 2021 in the UK produced 185. 9g, and that most cars in the world are not new. According to the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. In the U. S. , the average seemed more than 404 g of CO2 consistent with a mile, more than double Conway’s numbers. Again, it would be great to know where your knowledge comes from.
However, those exhaust CO2 averages don’t take co2 into account from fossil fuel production (and it’s clear that Conway doesn’t either). Eindhoven Technical University’s senior advisor on electric mobility, Auke Hoekstra, calculated that you deserve to raise 30% for petrol/petrol and 24% for CO2 diesel from the tailpipe of an internal combustion engine car. Thus, this new average British car emits 242 g per mile, and the average American car 525 g per mile.
The lifetime CO2 figure for an EV in Conway’s video appears to be about 18 tons per 180,000 miles. Since we are global, let’s also check this figure on a global scale. According to the IEA, in 2018, the global average intensity of a kWh car of electric power was 475 g. Most electric cars can travel at least 3 miles according to kWh on average. This means that a typical electric vehicle would produce 158 g of CO2 according to the charging mile on the global grid in 2018, or 28. 5 tonnes more. 180,000 miles, so his figure of 18 tons is an underestimate. But for the same mileage, an average American car would produce about 95 tons, more than 3 times more.
Conway is right that we want to load CO2 from production at the beginning of the vehicle’s life. His figure of 6 tons for a traditional vehicle is quite correct looking at other sources, although he does not say what his source was. However, he then claims that BEVs produce twice as much CO2, which does not fit other sources. It also depends on where the BEV was manufactured. The Nissan Leaf produced in Sunderland, UK, produces more than nine tonnes, for example. .
That’s not that important compared to how Conway’s lifetime CO2 figures for fossil fuel cars and electric cars are incredibly incorrect. You may not want to drive an electric vehicle for a distance of 80 to 90,000 miles before your CO2 emissions are lower than those of a fossil fuel car. Even employing the global network, the figure will be 15 to 20,000 miles, and the networks will become more and more empty in this period, so it is very likely to be much less in the future. If you drive your EV in a country with a relatively blank network like the UK, the distance will be less now.
Obviously, the larger the car battery, the higher the CO2 needed to make it. Conway says his point about the electric vehicle lineup is “where it gets interesting,” but that’s where he really shows how wrong his numbers are. It turns out that they claim that an electric vehicle with a diversity of 400 miles will generate 25 tons of CO2 production. But the 75 kWh battery of a Tesla Model 3 Long Range, which has a diversity of 358 EPA miles and a diversity of 374 WLTP miles, produces 4. 5 tons of CO2 if manufactured at Tesla’s battery plant in Nevada, and only 7. 5 tons if produced in Asia. Therefore, it will not be 25 tons in total for the total manufacture of the vehicle. The worst situation will be 12. 5 tons, and probably even less than 10 tons if manufactured in the United States, so over its lifetime, the electric vehicle will surpass the emissions of a traditional car very quickly.
There are some valid issues in Conway’s speech. His argument that the challenge of climate substitution is global and that electric cars will not be suitable for some countries deserves serious consideration, and his confidence in the desire to adopt renewable energy is genuine. It’s also fair to say that electric vehicle production will likely decline as renewables proliferate. The challenge is the timescale he cites. We’re not trillions of dollars or decades away from getting there. Some countries are lagging behind, but at the time of writing, approximately 75% of the UK’s energy comes from wind, solar, nuclear and other low-carbon sources.
The last mistake is when Conway concludes that the genuine solution is hybrids. They are more effective than non-hybrids, but not enough to make up the big difference. TSI has a rating of 202 g per mile, or 34% more. An additional third of power will not compensate for the large difference in CO2 life of an electric vehicle.
In reality, we should not continue to invest in the internal combustion engine. Although it is priced in the classical markets for a decade or two, its days are numbered in the evolved world and we can no longer do enough for its efficiency. Renewable fuels are also an absolutely different source of wasted energy. If you need to have an effect, right now, on global emissions, buy an EV, not a hybrid.