urbanism

So much of the "bigger car" argument is just "there are too many big cars so I need one too".

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/when-do-electric-vehicles-become-cleaner-than-gasoline-cars-2021-06-29/

The math gets fuzzier than that.

The Tesla 3 scenario above was for driving in the United States, where 23% of electricity comes from coal-fired plants, with a 54 kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery and a cathode made of nickel, cobalt and aluminum, among other variables

It was up against a gasoline-fueled Toyota Corolla weighing 2,955 pounds with a fuel efficiency of 33 miles per gallon. It was assumed both vehicles would travel 173,151 miles during their lifetimes.

But if the same Tesla was being driven in Norway, which generates almost all its electricity from renewable hydropower, the break-even point would come after just 8,400 miles.

If the electricity to recharge the EV comes entirely from coal, which generates the majority of the power in countries such as China and Poland, you would have to drive 78,700 miles to reach carbon parity with the Corolla, according to the Reuters analysis of data generated by Argonne's model.

Of course, if alt energy continues to fill up the grid, you've got to plot that over a shifting timeline that gets better. But that also presumes you don't sit on a used car for five years and get in on the EV when the green energy split improves.

Disposing of a used vehicle has its own environmental consequences, too. And where are you going to throw those used batteries once we've fed all the ocean eels? Etc, etc.

I certainly don't trust a Tesla to outperform a Toyota or a Ford over the full 173,151 miles either. If your EV just plotzes on you, the math gets even worse.