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SOURCES
Detailed Paper on EV emissions:
Nature paper on EV worldwide:
Gas emissions by powertrain:
CO2 in transport sector:
MIT paper on mobility:
Calculate how green is your EV:
EV myths from EPA:
Transport sector CO2:
Global CO2 emissions data:
Battery manufacturing CO2:
Life of EV batteries:
Article on dead EV batteries:
CO2 impact by fuel type:
Electricity maps:
Electricity mix date:
Global greenhouse study:
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CHAPTERS
0:00 Factors to consider
2:04 CO2 source and EV stats
4:25 Inefficiency of Internal combustion engines
5:25 How much gas cars pollute vs EVs?
6:36 Accounting for CO2 produced in manufacturing
8:00 How long EVs need to be driven to be greener
10:42 Personal vehicles are a small percentage of overall CO2
12:44 The issue of batter recyclability
14:21 Overall picture
SUMMARY
Electric vehicles are not necessarily greener because they create no emissions. We have to take a look at the bigger picture. Source of electricity, depending on the fuel, can produce greenhouse gases. Manufacturing the components of the car, such as batteries also makes CO2. We review CO2 produced by EVs compared to gasoline cars throughout their lifetime.
EVs are about 9% of all new cars sold yearly, and only 1.4% of all cars on the road. The main issue is carbon dioxide emissions from petrol or gasoline cars which causes climate change.
The common internal combustion gasoline engine is inefficient. Only 20-35% of the energy produced from burning the fuel ends up turning the wheels. But in electrical vehicles, about 75-85% of electrical energy is used to propel the vehicle.
How much do gasoline cars pollute? On average worldwide, a gasoline engine car produces 202 grams of CO2 per km driven. When taking into account the CO2 produced from the electricity generated needed to charge the EV battery, they produce 83 gCO2 per kilometer driven – a difference of 119 gr if CO2 in favor of electric vehicles.
But we have to take into account the CO2 generated during the manufacturing process of electric vehicles. Manufacturing a typical gasoline car releases 7 tons of CO2, whereas manufacturing a similar sized electric car releases 10 tons. So EVs produce 3 tons more CO2 in the manufacturing process.
So, EVs are not greener compared to gasoline-powered cars from day one, when considering that they have a substantially larger carbon footprint immediately after they are manufactured. So we have to consider how long, or how many kilometers they would need to be driven in order to make up for the higher CO2 generated during their production.
The math shows that an EV breaks even after it has been driven 25,210 km. But experts estimate that the average EV battery will last at least 200,000 km. So over the life of the vehicle, in most countries, an EV will be greener.
There are 5 countries where on average EVs will not be greener even over their lifetime – India, Estonia, Poland, Czechia and Bulgaria.
#electriccars
But overall cars only only account for 8-12% of overall greenhouse gas emissions. The most significant contributor to global greenhouse gases, 40%, comes from Electricity and heat production. So finding more eco-friendly ways to produce electricity will have a greater impact on CO2 levels than EVs.
In carbon dioxide numbers, you will create about 19 tons of CO2 over the lifetime of an EV, but more than 55 tons of CO2 for a gasoline car over its lifetime.
Here is an overall summary
• Over the lifetime of a car, an electric vehicles are greener in most countries of the world.
• EVs would not be a greener alternative in India, Estonia, Poland, Czechia and Bulgaria.
• Electric cars batteries may harm the environment unless we can recycle their batteries
• Raw material supplies may be limited which may have a geopolitical impact
Watch more new videos about Car | Synthesized by Mindovermetal English
Seems to me that we could save just as much CO2 at vastly less cost by simply making cars smaller and lighter and making tax advantages for buying smaller cars. Small hybrid cars with relatively small batteries could be a good option overall, most journeys are quite short. Electric only vehicles seem to be a dead loss for the mass market, they're simply far too expensive and there's no sign whatsoever of the prices coming down, if anything they're going up.
Skoda, a VW-owned company, delivers its electric models to the customer's door with a CO2-neutral balance sheet.
Like you mention, it’s really about kickstarting the revolution that’ll infect other industries eventually, changing mindsets across. There a lot of research ongoing to revolutionize batteries.
It's ironic that the green movement is trying to lower CO2 emissions which have literally greened the planet.
I do not buy the idea that CO2 is a pollutant or that a little warming isn't a good thing. Cold is the enemy of life, not warmth. Compare the amount of life at the equator versus that at the poles.
I am on board with more energy from nuclear.
In india🇮🇳 charging points for electrical cars🚗🚗 run on generators which uses fuel ⛽⛽⛽….. Epic. 😂😂😂😂
Promote strict public vehicle usage. 🚌
Arvin: Could you please do a video on how electricity "Actually" travels in transmission lines and powers our devices and compare the classical theory to the actual quantum reality of electricity? thanks
In many cases your personal demand for a vehicle is not under your control at all and it is in fact dictated by the place that you live
Shouldn't we take into account the process to create fuel for the powerplants and for the combustion engine. And as well, the infrastructure to distribute it for people to be able to get it? (Gas stations, fuel deriving from oil, charging stations, etc)
Needless to say we need to systemically move to public transportation, reduce the number of cars owner, as well as greatly reduce the overall energy consumption of cars, that means lighter cars with much better Cx coefficient.
Great resource for unbiased information. However a detail was overlooked for tallying up the emissions of ICE vehicles. The pollution to produce the fuel was taken into account only in the EVs not on the ICE vehicles. Please recalculate the emissions of ICE vehicles with the emissions produced by their fuel source as you did for EVs. It’s only fair you do so.
If you don't factor in the environmental cost of ICE vehicle manufacturing your comparison is pointless.
Thorium is the GREEN answer that will cut the legs off of the oil oligarchs and the criminal coal companies.
Tesla is a fraud. Stop promoting it.
More things to think about is the wear on roads due to driving an 2-3 tonne EV and the volume of rare earth metals and chips that are needed to create an EV. Beyond the warranty of the battery it costs anywhere from 5-30k to replace the battery. It looks like it is more likely to send the car to the scrap yard than to swap batteries and that will cost the planet more over time as vehicles become more disposable. Tyres also get worn faster due to being a heavier vehicle.
To be honest I think if you factor in every minute detail they pretty much even out or are even worse for the environment depending on how you look at it.
You missed taking into account the energy costs of pumping crude oil, refining, and then transporting gasoline! That's a huge number please revise!
Yes, let’s shift our economies ti depend on terrible countries like China (I live in China) willing to tear up their environment to mine rare earths like we do now. Greenland has rare earths, but they won’t mine it cause they don’t want to obliterate the environment there. Stay away from politics Arvin. You’ll just make everyone mad.
Meh, stick to physics. How much did you get paid to switch to political talking points?
How much Co2 does private jets produce?
Are the rich producing more but telling the average person they are producing too much?
It's good to see the occasional honest approach to this topic.
👍
Fusion reactor batteries: Hold my beer!
Human population is the primary cause of climate change. The second factor is human consumption. The only solutions are to stop having babies and to shop and travel as little as possible. Purchasing an EV is not a solution. We’ll never shop our way out of the crisis.
Can you do an episode on a process called "flash graphene".
Love this video. Especially the Nuclear plugs. Great job Arvin.
What about the extra CO2 emitted just mining the materials for those batteries? Those machines run on fossil fuels too.
Can't watch to the end after you starting compare FULL cycle of production EV and Electric power to JUST burning petrol in an engine. It is completely useless and unfair comparison. Petrol production alone is producing huge amount of all sort of pollutions. Combustion engines also do not grow on trees. Why everyone always compare full cycle of EV to just burning petrol in an engine?!
Good treatment of the topic but battery recycling is ramping up and the energy cost to recover recycled materials is a fraction of that for mining and refining.
The total amount of materials to be mined is not an issue.
Glad to see that you mentioned the problems with EVs that were not directly addressed. Infrastructure will always be a big problem, as well as the charge times. These are not insignificant issues, either.
The bottleneck is batteries, which means that EVs suck compared to a hybrid, which uses perhaps 1/10 the batteries while saving nearly as much. Let’s say 75%. Times that by ten times the number of vehicles and hybrids are 7.5 times better than EVs.
We could have a near 100% hybrid fleet by now. Instead, we built heavy toys for rich people.
EV is the part of a solution for any problem, including climate change, because it's based on an engineering principle to "decoupling" parts of the problem. The principle of separation of concerns demands such a decoupling to have smaller problems, then we could solve them easier. In fact, EV is decoupling the sources of energy from the consumption part, so we can freely apply different techniques to provide energy to minimize carbon footprint and other factors that could affect climate change.
The only reason people started to rethink this stuff is a political reason and also effect of Elon's personality in this industry. He's an engineer who manages like a kid by trial and error, so as a consequence he lost 44 billions in a year. That's enough punishment for him, and we, as humanity, should not be part of that punishment.
Wow, an evaluation of electric cars without a hint of politics. I am shocked (pun intended). And yes, the first of the new technology is never as good as the last of the old. You run the risk of having extremists from both sides taking shots at you. I see it in the comments already.