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I love electric vehicles – and was an early adopter. But increasingly I feel duped | Rowan Atkinson
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2023
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Environment
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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:
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.
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 CO~2~ 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.
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.