Short answer, all the emissions from building a new battery are about on par with a single year of gas consumption. If you include charging from the current US electrical grid, break even is two to three years.
Your average gas car produces two to three times its weight in carbon dioxide every single year it’s on the road. The climate impact of building cars is rather small compared to the impacts of using them, even in modern EVs the co2 cost of building them is only a third of the electricity to power them off the modern grid, which itself is about half of what a gas car outputs.
Finally, while it might improve with further agricultural electrification and carbon reductions, at present biofuels only offer a 33% reduction in co2 emissions compared to using straight gas. By contrast EVs offer a 60% to 100% reduction in fuel co2 emissions.
Short answer, all the emissions from building a new battery are about on par with a single year of gas consumption. If you include charging from the current US electrical grid, break even is two to three years.
Your average gas car produces two to three times its weight in carbon dioxide every single year it’s on the road. The climate impact of building cars is rather small compared to the impacts of using them, even in modern EVs the co2 cost of building them is only a third of the electricity to power them off the modern grid, which itself is about half of what a gas car outputs.
Ballpark estimate
Finally, while it might improve with further agricultural electrification and carbon reductions, at present biofuels only offer a 33% reduction in co2 emissions compared to using straight gas. By contrast EVs offer a 60% to 100% reduction in fuel co2 emissions.