I don’t think you understand the scale of the carbon footprint of manufacturing a new car. The footprint of all those raw materials. The majority of the materials are virgin and not recycled for new cars.
I’ll look again if you say it’s there, but that article is comparing the costs of new EV to new ICE. It does not show new EV to used ICE.
When talking about individual carbon footprints vs industrial footprints you get some counterintuitive effects. Recylcing often has a larger footprint than virgin and costs more, most corporations only pay lip service to recycling as it is more expensive. That being said, even with virgin materials, the footprint of manufacturing dwarfs the fuel usage footprint for decades when talking about vehicles. Especially if the vehicle is relatively efficient and the annual mileage is low.
Think about it this way, with a large margin of error, you can directly covert the cost of a new vehicle into carbon. Say $30k of carbon. Every step of the process from mining the ore to make the alloy to the carbon produced by workers driving to work. How many years does it take to burn $30k of carbon in fuel?
The person that purchases a new EV every few years has a larger footprint than the person that drives the same old ICE the entire time. The footprint disparity is also increased the lower the ICE driver’s milage.
The article does compare two new cars, but it’s not hard to see that if your ICE don’t have a start “price” (your well maintained ICE), then the EV will have to drive two years on hydro based power, about three years if it’s mixed power (green + fossil), and 13-15 years if pure coal power.
The success of EV (lower carbon emissions) highly spends on green power.
I don’t think you understand the scale of the carbon footprint of manufacturing a new car. The footprint of all those raw materials. The majority of the materials are virgin and not recycled for new cars.
I’ll look again if you say it’s there, but that article is comparing the costs of new EV to new ICE. It does not show new EV to used ICE.
When talking about individual carbon footprints vs industrial footprints you get some counterintuitive effects. Recylcing often has a larger footprint than virgin and costs more, most corporations only pay lip service to recycling as it is more expensive. That being said, even with virgin materials, the footprint of manufacturing dwarfs the fuel usage footprint for decades when talking about vehicles. Especially if the vehicle is relatively efficient and the annual mileage is low.
Think about it this way, with a large margin of error, you can directly covert the cost of a new vehicle into carbon. Say $30k of carbon. Every step of the process from mining the ore to make the alloy to the carbon produced by workers driving to work. How many years does it take to burn $30k of carbon in fuel?
The person that purchases a new EV every few years has a larger footprint than the person that drives the same old ICE the entire time. The footprint disparity is also increased the lower the ICE driver’s milage.
The article does compare two new cars, but it’s not hard to see that if your ICE don’t have a start “price” (your well maintained ICE), then the EV will have to drive two years on hydro based power, about three years if it’s mixed power (green + fossil), and 13-15 years if pure coal power.
The success of EV (lower carbon emissions) highly spends on green power.