Everyone knows that electric vehicles are supposed to be better for the planet than gas cars. That’s the driving reason behind a global effort to transition toward batteries.
But what about the harms caused by mining for battery minerals? And coal-fired power plants for the electricity to charge the cars? And battery waste? Is it really true that EVs are better?
The answer is yes. But Americans are growing less convinced.
The net benefits of EVs have been frequently fact-checked, including by NPR. "No technology is perfect, but the electric vehicles are going to offer a significant benefit as compared to the internal combustion engine vehicles," Jessika Trancik, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told NPR this spring.
It’s important to ask these questions about EVs’ hidden costs, Trancik says. But they have been answered “exhaustively” — her word — and a widerange of organizations have confirmed that EVs still beat gas.
Genuine question - are EVs better for the environment if the main source of electricity of my country is coal based? Most of the coal plants are pretty old too…
Yes, whether your electric plant is coal, natural gas, or honestly even if it was diesel. Larger engines are more efficient than smaller ones. It’s been a long time since I broke down the math over 10 years so my information is probably wildly out of date but even 10 years ago when you broke down the math charging an EV from a fossil fuel plant of any kind was still ultimately more efficient than a gas car in the long term.
Couple that with the ability of many EV now to also act as a battery for your house and that just goes wildly into the EVs favor if you utilize that for peak demand offset. Which many people could do easily even if it meant not having their battery fully charged in the morning when they go to leave for work because let’s face it very few people drive more than 60 miles full round trip in a day so even with their battery at say half they would have more than enough for their whole day plus extra.
Do we actually have hard data to determine if coal power delivering your electricity is indeed cleaner than what an ICE emits?
The “break even” point is still somewhere around 150k miles for big batteries (above 75 kWh). And while there are many EVs that have 200k on their first battery, that isn’t necessarily the status quo for most of them. A simple lump of Aluminum or Cast Iron takes a lot less energy to make and can even be produced completely renewable If you factor in synthetic fuels, things look even more grey - especially with algae, there can be huge benefits growing algae in sea water (see the Arctic Algal Boom and the connected pytho plankton growth). BEVs are not “THE” answer, they are one answer to specific questions.
Not only that, the issus (environmental, child labour, etc) with rare earth elements are still not solved and the environmental damages through lithium mining are not something to just sweep under the rug.