Life Cycle Comparison EV vs Gasoline Cars
Politics aside, and they really don’t make much difference, does moving to mandatory EV adoption make any ecological sense? They are impractical in many rural areas but I presume they will eventually gain enough range to be practical.
So I want to take a look at whether they make any sense ecologically.
EVs are the darling of the environmental movement, at least of those who only take a superficial view of the actual environment.
It seems at first thought that an electric vehicle must be better for the environment since it doesn’t burn oil and therefore has no emissions.
But, while estimates are that it will cost the average commuting driver about half as much for electricity than an equivalent driver would spend on gasoline, in the vicinity of $700/year for electricity vs about $1,200 for gasoline, that is not the entire story by any means and could change markedly if either price goes up (likely), or down (unlikely).
EV vs Gasoline Life-Cycle Analysis
A couple of decades ago I did an analysis for Google Answers of the life cycle of a typical sedan or light duty pickup truck from iron ore mines to final scrap yard processing.
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/433981.html
That needs to be done for electric vehicles but even an entire life cycle analysis is not the whole question for EVs which have additional costs not included in the vehicle and infrastructure which is already amortized for gas cars but which haven’t yet been spent for EVs.
I refer to the infrastructure needed to support 100 million Electric Vehicles.
In addition we have to look at the amount of gasoline which “evaporates” between the refinery and the gas station where it sits in sealed, cool underground tanks vs the electrical grid loss.
For gasoline it is only a tiny fraction of one percent.
But for electricity it depends on how far the station is from the generators, not just the local substation. Transmission line loss is determined by “P = I^2R,” where P is power loss, I is current, and R is the resistance of the conductor.
But that is complex and much worse for very rural areas I propose to take the 5% average loss from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
So there is a basic 5% loss due to transmission that would add about $35/year to the $700 electric cost.
Now we have to look at the lifecycle of the actual vehicle, but wait, we already have nearly 200,000 gas stations in the U.S.
There are about 183,000 EV power charging points.
That sounds good until you recall that gas stations often have five or more pumps and it only takes about 5 minutes to fill a tank and move away from a pump to go in and buy chips and a coke.
That means there are about 1 million gasoline filling points in the U.S. or five times more than charge points.
It takes from 20 minutes for a quick top off to several hours to even add a half charge for the average Electric Vehicle.
Given that we need 10 to 20 times MORE charge points than gas pumps just because of the time factor.
Also, many people only need to “fill-up” once or sometimes twice a week.
Many EV owners will need to recharge daily.
Now consider how much it will cost to add charging stations at all those existing gas stations – a logical place for them at larger gas stations with the space. Or at parking lots in cities, parking lots at suburban train stations, or in long term parking areas at airports.
A new public EV charge point costs between $1500 and $10,000 for the hardware, plus boosting the power available at the station and installation cost.
OK so far but what about the environmental cost of producing the machines, transporting and installing them, and boosting the power capacity at the location?
A fraction of that should be added to the environmental cost of producing the motors and batteries for each car. The motors probably cost less than producing even a small gas car engine, but batteries are a different matter and both motors and batteries use exotic metals or at least vast new amounts of unusual materials.
Lifecycle Gas and EV Vehicles
Taking my old analysis of the lifecycle of a gas vehicle as probably similar to that of an electric vehicle minus the battery as about equal, we are looking mostly at the environmental cost of the batteries and their life.
EV batteries are not like the car batteries we have used for a century to start cars. Those lead acid batteries last about 5 years but the “estimates,” we have no real history to go by, for EV batteries is 10 to 20 years with 12 years considered a reasonable projection which is about what the average US car lasts.
(Author Note: I have a half-century experience collecting and restoring vehicles and know that proper maintenance and better planning could make cars last much longer than 12 years. I usually drive a car for 15 years and that is mostly a used car to begin with. The cost of buying a new car every four or five years is so high that recently people have begun to keep them several years longer with 65% of Americans driving the same car for more than 5 years. Car purchases and long term financing are a major expense which keeps many families living from paycheck to paycheck.)
EVs, Gasoline, and The President
A lot of people were concerned about who would be elected President this time because they feared a Republican would not work to fix what they see as climate change.
In reality it will make little difference.
While many Democrats complained that a President Trump would destroy the environment, they neglected to mention that Democratic presidents did little to actually help the environment either.
Perhaps many of President-elect Trump’s followers saw the situation much more clearly than so many Democrats.
We are already headed down a steep slope to worse storms, higher tides, more wildfires, worse floods, less food production (some crops don’t grow well when it gets too hot, including corn, rice, and soybeans), and hotter summers.
President Trump won’t change that, but a President Harris couldn’t have done anything either, she would just have made it sound like she was doing something.
I guess the real bottom line is that it will be almost impossible to have every American family or Australian family for that matter, switch to a family EV in place of their old gas guzzler.
China builds nearly 60% of the world’s EVs and just in 2023 sold and registered 8.1 million NEW EVs.
To really change the environment every major country would need to adopt some important change.
There are 42 models of electric cars now for sale in India and they are starting to sell in important numbers with 2.8 million registered EVs in 2024.
It might prove different in India but probably not since their car buying habits have recently shown they REALLY want SUVs, just as many Americans. Americans won’t stop buying impractical pickup trucks, not even if they never put anything in the back but a few groceries.
It also doesn’t really matter much who the President is or what political party is in power as far as the environment goes.
Democrats did little or nothing to actually reduce hydrocarbon use and the Republicans did little to increase it.
Increasing oil production as candidate Trump proposed won’t lower prices. Oil is an international commodity, and producing more in the U.S. won’t increase the amount we use. Since 2016 the U.S. has been the largest crude oil producer of any country.
The head of Exxon Mobil recently pointed out that there is no economic incentive to produce more oil or drill baby drill.
Even given permission to drill, why would big oil producers really spend money drilling when they already produce more oil than the U.S. uses? Yes, we import from Canada but that has more to do with logistics and price than lack of supply.
EV vs Gas Power, Would Mileage Mandates Be More Important?
Author note: I recently drove a mild hybrid (20hp battery power) for a month, it was fine and in ECO mode the engine stopped all the time, with no hesitation starting up. But it got about 25 mpg. and my own vehicle is a nearly identical 4,500 lb. diesel SUV that gets 37-40 MPG. My diesel with nearly double the mileage has about the same acceleration and, because of higher torque, can tow more.
Car companies have proven they can build a 2 ton car that easily gets 35 mpg. Would mandating better fleet economy have made more sense and caused less social disruption than demanding people buy EVs?
Gas vs EV Vehicles Bottom Line?
This is an extremely complex problem with a score of variables.
I probably included some here you never thought about and I probably missed some.
Honestly the real answer is that we don’t really know if EVs are a good idea or not and certainly not whether mandating them for everyone is even possible.
They certainly aren’t the miracle environmental cure which so many liberals seem to think.
For people living in suburbs who can have their own home charging station and who only commute and make runs to a local restaurant and grocery along with weekly trips to Walmart, an EV makes a lot of sense if it is priced similarly to an equivalent gas powered vehicle.
But the total environmental impact of building millions of charging points, upgrading power supplies to rural stations, not to mention the real wolf hiding among the environmental sheep is the point that, unless you live near a giant water powered generating station the electricity being used to charge that EV battery may be coming from burning oil, coal, or natural gas which means you are only shifting the point of release of the pollution.
About a decade ago which took a clear eyed look at the environmental movement surrounding climate change and decided it was already, by 2015, too late to put pressure on governments for change even if that ever worked. The succeeding 10 years since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed and celebrated, not one single country which agreed to reduce pollution has actually reduced petrochemical use. In fact, they have all INCREASED use of oil, gas, or coal despite signing the agreement.
Other EV and Gas Vehicle Sources I Found After Writing the Above Analysis
Journal of Industrial Ecology
Volume 17, Issue 1 p. 53-64
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012.00532.x
“We find that EVs powered by the present European electricity mix offer a 10% to 24% decrease in global warming potential (GWP) relative to conventional diesel or gasoline vehicles assuming lifetimes of 150,000 km. However, EVs exhibit the potential for significant increases in human toxicity, freshwater eco-toxicity, freshwater eutrophication, and metal depletion impacts, largely emanating from the vehicle supply chain. Results are sensitive to assumptions regarding electricity source, use phase energy consumption, vehicle lifetime, and battery replacement schedules.
Because production impacts are more significant for EVs than conventional vehicles, assuming a vehicle lifetime of 200,000 km exaggerates the GWP benefits of EVs to 27% to 29% relative to gasoline vehicles or 17% to 20% relative to diesel. An assumption of 100,000 km decreases the benefit of EVs to 9% to 14% with respect to gasoline vehicles and results in impacts indistinguishable from those of a diesel vehicle. Improving the environmental profile of EVs requires engagement around reducing vehicle production supply chain impacts and promoting clean electricity sources in decision making regarding electricity infrastructure.”
Another report with many additional references here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969721079493
