I’m a little disappointed this article doesn’t seem to acknowledge that what’s really better for the environment is not buying a car at all. Not only do we need greener cars, we need less cars overall.
Ebikes, public transit, walkable cities are all way more environmentally friendly than buying any type of car.
Agreed! Public transportation and cycling+walking infrastructure is more effective and more durable than just building a better car.
This is much easier said than done. Around large parts of the United States you can’t reliably commute by public transit. For me personally, without a car, a one way 40 mile trip to the major city near me would take 5 hours. That’s 2 different trains and 2 different busses.
Add that to the fact that the station closest to me only has a few trains a day and my options are very limited.
Even if we ignore the current train schedule and assume that trains come by every 5 min, it would still be a 2 hour trip that costs me $20 for one way. I could then bike the rest of the way and avoid the last 2 buses.
There are rail passes I could get, but those would cost $477/month. It’s cheaper to lease a Tesla at that point.
Owning a car is pretty much the only reasonable way of getting around for many parts of the U.S.
Yes but you do recognize the person is suggesting we fix our town planning so that a car is not a requirement anymore? We did it before cars existed, we can do it again.
I understand what he’s suggesting and I do agree that we need to fix up our town planning.
And that’s why my point wasn’t that he’s wrong about his suggestions, just that, again, it’s “much easier said than done.”
For the foreseeable future, owning a car is the only reasonable way of getting around many parts of the U.S.
How long do you think it would take to fix up even half of the cities in the U.S?
How can we fast track it and what are reasonable expectations since there will be pushback from people?
In a way we would need some sort of Haussmannization to occur and that will not go well in the U.S.
I think part of it is building support and having conversations with people you know about ways you might improve your town, or why its important that we rethink how our towns and cities are layed out and connected by transit.
Imo the danger with an article like this is that it doesn’t really address the fact that EVs are ultimately in support of a status quo of car dependency that isn’t compatible with a sustainable future, so even when we do improve the tech it shouldn’t distract from the long term goal of reducing car dependency.
Yup, its still from a very car-centric perspective. I bike everywhere I physically can, as a personal protest and a bid to get fitter.
The main problem : we use a 1000kg car to transport our 80kg. i hope to see more self-driving electrical car we can share and used as an alternative. we must invent a new transport system other than old buses or individual car
I think the problem is also that we equal driving our own car as a sign of success and status, esp with electric cars not being affordable for the average buyer. As long as cars = im a successful person, the transportation structure will be centered around cars and motorized transports.
i don’t like ferrari anyway 😉
This may be true in Europe and in cities for those who both live and work in the city. But for the vast majority in the U.S. It’s practically required to have a car if you want to work.
The article contains a massive logical error. It assumes or implies that when people replace their cars after 3 years, they just throw them in the trash. Obviously not. They sell them to other people, and those cars percolate down the economic ladder as they age.
Cars largely only exit the market when you can’t find anyone to sell it to our you can’t fix it any longer. If we increased the average number of years someone owned a car before selling it, we wouldn’t be changing the the production rate or the total number of cars on the road. In fact, I’m not sure anything else would change after we reestablished market equilibrium.
If the question is “should I throw away my perfectly good car in order to buy an electric one?” Well okay, fine, buying a new one is kinda sorta a bad idea. But that’s never the question, you always sell your car if you can get any amount of money for it.
His main point was comparing how a good ICE car could last “30 years” while a battery-powered car might be limited to “10 years” while also being more environmentally taxing to build. That’s object longevity not ownership.
Now I don’t necessarily agree that this is really how it works out, as ICE cars need excellent maintenance to last this long and EV cars might have fewer points of failure but I feel this argument has some merit.
Well if that’s the main concern:
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The battery degradation problems are way overblown. The original leaf cars had issues and that’s about it. Taxi services are using Teslas without any problems. I know of one that specializes in taking people from LA to Vegas and they’ve got cars with batteries in them with more than a million miles on them.
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Supposing that the battery really did quit after 10 years and that everything else about cars lasts 30 years, wouldn’t you just replace the battery twice? The only difference between an ICE car and a BEV car is the motor and drivetrain, so arguably everything else should last just as long in the BEV as the ICE. Add in that the drivetrain for a BEV contains fewer moving parts and wear points…
It’s just a nonsense argument on multiple fronts. He’s talking out his ass without looking at any actual data. I’ve attached a graph here comparing the lifetime emissions of a BEV and ICEV and it’s just plainly obvious there’s no contest. You can find it and the relevant study at the link provided. The massive error bars on the emissions from electricity to power it is because different grids have different CO2 per kWh ratings thanks to different power sources. But notice that even the worst grids (nearly 100% coal) put a BEV on par with an ICE vehicle.
I honestly think he didn’t do his homework before writing this. I honestly think he had a couple of facts in his head, put them together, realized there could be a problem, and didn’t bother to check if his hunch was right.
Good points. I agree. Rowan seems to be far off here.
I wonder when we’ll learn, looking back, what the longevity of EVs is in practice. I don’t have data but I expect to be the same or even better than ICEs. There’s just so much more which can break in an ICE car, and which owners might choose not to fix.
Well now I’m just confused as to the point in sharing, since you provided no criticism of the article. It implied you thought it was a reasonable argument.
Well sharing it was always going to be a bit interesting since it was Rowan Atkinson, but I also believed what I’ve read previously about EVs being disappointingly “un-green” vehicles when battery manufacturing was taken into account. So yeah I thought it was a reasonable argument. I’m happy to have been corrected.
Ah gotcha, yeah this is an argument that comes up every once in a while where well-meaning people accidently do the comparison wrong or just fail to dig deeper.
There was actually a point in time where owning an electric vehicle in West Virginia was actually less energy efficient to drive than a regular gas car. Their grid was comically dirty and EVs were just getting started.
Kinda neat to learn Rowan has an engineering degree, I could have sworn he went to school for acting.
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I’ve often wondered if it’s actually worth switching out car for an electric car. I always buy used but when you put it like that it seems like even if I trade in my gas car there’s still going to be the same number of gas cars on the road since someone else would be driving it?
We need to increase the proportion of new cars that are electric. These these then work their way through the used car market.
Buying a used electric car helps with this, as it increases demand for used electric cars, meaning it’s more likely someone buying a new one can sell it for a decent price, meaning they are more likely to buy one.
Not only that. It seems like the article completely ignores how batteries can be recycled and assumes that every new battery undergoes the same manufacturing process.
When he says “when I was a child, any car that was five years old was a bucket of rust and halfway through the gate of the scrapyard” is he referring to British cars? Some of the American cars from my childhood were quite solid (and no, I’m not an American-made chauvinist, this line just struck me as odd).
interesting article which reflects more on the realities of electric car ownership and the practicalities of switching and maintenance rather than just the theory and promises and hopes.
the automobile, as a technology, is about 150 years old. cars, about 120, and the “modern” car about 40 years old. Comparatively, electrics and hybrids are a pretty new technology and still have lots of kinks to work out, not the least of which is a support and service infrastructure that is both widespread and affordable. How environmentally-friendly it is also is largely a matter of the end-product, not at all how it was manufactured, especially when it comes to Li-ion batteries.
Sure, electric cars have higher emission in production, but that is not the main issue (in my opinion). The break even point compared to usual cars can be reached. The real issue is that electric vehicles are still too expensive for most people and infrastructure is lacking.
And synthetic fuels are a dangerous notion. They have a terrible efficiency (primary source to kinetic energy), so they will be way more expensive than gas. They are only an option for cars that for some (aesthetic or esoteric) reason must use combustion and for Porsche users, cost is not an issue, just as for Formula One. The problem is that not banning synthetic fuels opens a way for combustion engines to stay on the streets, and when the transition from normal to synthetic fuels is not made (because it will economically not be possible) we will still have gas and unchanged C02 emissions.
