Toyota (again) found to be the worst Big Auto lobbyist against climate policies, often teaming up with Big Oil to oppose EVs
Boomers who still dont know about Toyota’s dirty lobbying
fossil mindset 🦕View all comments
EVs are not going to solve climate change on their own. Cobalt mining is not ethical to the workers and has terrible toxic waste products. Batteries typically don’t last forever, so you will need to change an EV battery during the lifetime of a car. Until batteries don’t suck, EVs are not going to solve climate change.
Hey so totally agree that EVs aren’t going to “solve” climate change and they still have all the downsides of cars, as opposed to the longer term changes we need like developing more mass transit and walkable cities, BUT…
In the near term, EVs will seriously bring down transportation emissions (which used to be the top emissions source and no longer is, due to efficiency standards + EVs).
The rare earth minerals problem is a real one and worth a lot of work on, but the amount of material extracted from the earth that an EV requires vs what a traditional combustion vehicle requires over its life is orders of magnitude different. Different people and places are going to be extracting the EV minerals than the fossil fuel material, so it is a matter of harm MOVING, but it is also SHRINKING by a massive amount when we switch to EVs.
The other cool thing is that because EV batteries are recycled (we actually currently have more battery recycling capacity in the US than we have batteries to recycle, because they’re so new), and so expensive to mine, what we’ll likely see is a huge ramp-up in mineral extraction to meet the demand of 100% EVs, and then after that most minerals will just stay in circulation. Compare that to fossil fuels, which require that orders of magnitude greater volume of material to be extracted FOREVER to keep their shit operating.
I generally hate the idea of cars and want rapid buildout in non-car transit in the long term, but because a simple direct-swap alternative is fastest from a political standpoint, EVs are genuinely kinda saving our ass in the short term and I feel called to dispel the doomism notion that they’re just as bad as ICE vehicles.
I get the point, but the EV is only as clean as the source of its power, which is methane where I’m at. If you charge your EV with power from a Coal plant, you have a higher energy efficiency just burning coal in the engine. If we had a nuclear grid (fission or fusion) or renewable energy grid, I’d agree EVs would cause a dramatic drop in emissions with a clean grid, especially with better recycling and less rare earth metals. But since most people charge their EVs with fossil fuels, it’s just moving emissions from transportation to energy production.
Do you have any evidence to show most people charge their EVs with fossil fuels?
What is the majority energy source for the grid? Where I’m from, it’s coal and methane with some renewable. Therefore, all the Teslas I see on the road are powered indirectly from coal and gas power stations. I think Hawaii is the only state taking a full renewable grid as a plan of action, so unless you’re driving an EV there, it’s likely a fossil fuel powered your car
But people can, in most places, choose a renewable generator to provide their electricity. And if people are climate-conscious enough to buy an EV, they're probably climate-conscious enough to use renewable electricity to charge it, including those who use residential solar to charge their EVs. The majority energy source for the grid is not relevant when it comes to the power used for EVs.
Additionally, fossil fuels are burned more efficiently in power plants to create electricity than they are burnt in ICE cars. Driving an EV creates far fewer emissions than driving an ICE. So it's not moving emissions from transportation to electricity generation.
I mean if you assume they own a house and aren’t renting, that’d clean it up, but all those roadside chargers are still connected to the grid. Which the energy balance of the grid is the most important factor to consider because it’s where all of our electricity comes from unless you own a generator. So if your grid is mostly coal, your EV is being charged by coal power (unless you are wealthy enough to own property and build an independent renewable generator). This is especially important because governments are banning ICE vehicles, and the average person is not as climate conscious as the early adopters. If the grid isn’t clean by then, you literally just shift emissions. Besides, the more efficient generation in power plants is usually offset slightly by energy loss over a live wire. EVs aren’t the solution because cars inherently are the problem.
EVs are not the best option, robust public transportation is far more efficient per unit of energy per mile of travel. EVs are like trying to patch a bullet hole with a bandaid.
Even with some or most of the grid powered by fossil fuels, EVs are still less carbon intensive than ICE cars, because they use less energy period, to travel the same distance.