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This is one way to drive EV sales
EVs will not solve climate change. Only a low-enenrgy use scenario is sustainable. We have so much more to do than just drive a different kind of car and people are not organizing this sort of effort enough.
While you are not wrong, the enemy of “perfect” should not be “good”.
In this case, presuming folks get into a new vehicle ever 4-5 years on average (I know the number is skewing more toward 6-7 in the US, but the point stands) having them switch to a car that has a slightly higher production impact but makes up for it after the first 1.5 years of ownership still means we achieve net lower emissions. There are numerous studies showing that EVs, even when used on less clean electricity sources, drastically reduce total lifetime emissions compared to combustion engine vehicles.
And let’s not forget that we can power EVs using renewable sources (solar, wind, hydro) which is just an economically and environmentally more sustainable practice than the single-use burning of a bunch of hydrocarbons.
I think it’s also more efficient to burn the hydrocarbons in a large generator and using the power to charge an EV,
combustion engines on vehicles are limited in weight size and shape, and since its rpm varies a lot during driving it is not operating at peak efficiency
a large and heavy generator can extract more of the energy, and always runs at the optimal operating speed, making it way more efficient, producing enough additional to cover the conversion losses of the mechanical->electric->electrochemical->electric->mechanical chain and then someThe last time I looked the difference in efficiency isn’t large. Somewhere like 10%, but it does make a difference at scale.
That doesn’t track with what I’ve seen. I’ve seen a few sources mention much larger efficiency gains. E.g. From motor trend: https://www.motortrend.com/news/evs-more-efficient-than-internal-combustion-engines
- If you were using solely coal power plants to run EVs, that would use 31% less energy than gasoline cars.
- That number goes up to 48% with natural gas power plants.
- And you have the option to instead use complete renewable sources.
I was talking about the efficiency difference between a generator and an internal combustion vehicle engine running on the same fuel.
Unfortunately, the leaking and/or burning facilities are creating years worth of pollution in a fraction of the time.
Unburned methane escaping is far far worse for climate change than burning it so yeah these strike are bad.
It’s the so called payer-decider gap. The costs of this are spread out among basically the whole world (payers) while the deciders of when to end this war are basically just the US and Israel (deciders).
Since they don’t bear the full consequences of the war, they don’t have to consider the full consequences when deciding.
