People love to talk about the emissions associated with electric car production, or the materials and disposal of batteries. I'd encourage you to watch these videos before making assumptions. Production Emissions: nolocal.info/have/video/a4ScqM2Jyp6N3oQ Battery Production/Disposal: nolocal.info/have/video/Zp-Mh7Gwv42gp4w

Liam Balog

Måned siden

@MoonStudio cuz he don't wanna get his fast charging privileges taken away from his tesla 💀💀💀

Cortney Bergeron

3 måneder siden

what about sourcing materials?

Robert Davis

5 måneder siden

@Phoggbank Hell, my electricity is produced 87% from COAL. That makes it a coal powered vehicle, but I appreciate the lower cost of operation of an EV.

Robert Davis

5 måneder siden

@Circuit Breaker 100*.975*.6*.92*.86=46%

Klemeq

År siden

Can you do this same thing with some hypothetical Cybertruck vs F150/1500/Tundra and the Semi vs modern diesel big rig?

Mark rober?

So the winner is hydrogen then. Comparable emissions and eficiency to battery cars, but with the benefit of the gasoline car that you can fill them up in 5 minutes tops. And if you make the hydrogen with green energy instead the eficiency will drop like a rock, but so will the emissions. And you save on a lot of nasty stuff used in battery production and a lot of chemical trash from worn batteries.

How much do one of those coal powerd cars run??? I have ALWAYS wanted to DESTOY OUR planet and I think everyone should drive one of the coal powerd cars!!!😜

This might be a silly question, but what about the amount of emissions regarding the production of the battery itself that goes into the Tesla? I don’t know how to figure that out of course, but I think that would also play into the overall thought into environmental savings.

how nice and easy it is to do math when you dream up the initial premises

Screw carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide is what’s bad. Carbon dioxide helps the atmosphere carbon monoxide hurts it

Any analysis on the environmental impact of the manufacturing and disposal of the batteries, or the other energy sources? i.e. what happens with the spent uranium in nuclear powerplants, what do you do with Tesla batteries once out of life, how efficient is manufacturing a Tesla battery, how bad/recyclable is an internal combustion engine?

6:19 Almost a year later, my question still stands: "How is natural gas and not coal 'the worst case' for this analysis?"

ShoX

2 måneder siden

He only initially presented how he would use the worst case, but all the time he uses natural gas as a source of electricity and pretends that lithium mining "is not so bad".

I ride an electric scooter to work and can go 30 miles per kwh. So if 33.7kwh equals 1 gallon of gas, I believe that means I can go 1011 miles per gallon. I think micro-mobility is undervalued at times. I wonder how much in CO2 I'm giving off.

actually, diesels are only more efficient on the highways, not around town.

So CA is going foreward with its gas powered ban in favor of all electric cars. This is funny as CA can't even keep power to homes some of the time. "sorry, I can't come to work today because we have no power at the house". If only the cell phone "CAR" chargers actually charged the cars.

most efficient is buying a used car with good fuel mileage, getting anything new requires manufacturing which uses alot of energy from the supply chain shipping parts from all over the world etc.

What about all the materials used in battery production? What about building a whole EV charging infrastructure? What about EVs having a smaller life compared to normal cars resulting in more production of cars? What about building new factories around the world? What about the fact that bigger part of the world still uses polluting means of electricity production?

Some serious bias going on here. gives a few percent benefit to internal combustion and then completely ignores the fact that 28% of electricity is generated by COAL.....seriously. If those numbers were included it would completely change both the MPG and CO2 output numbers.

What I learned today: We need more EV and more nuclear.

Powering a Tesla with a generator they are only about half as efficient as my Citroen C2, but then so is a similar performance petrol powered car.

But natural gas is much cleaner than coal, and what electricity is trying to move to. Most countries use more coal if they arent as developed, (or if they arent in the middle east).

Sean Ali

5 måneder siden

Shouldve been done with ratios. A bit lazy on that end, but decent calcs.

I don’t mind Tesla is good or bad for environment. Nobody cares Tesla stock is rising like sky rocket, that’s important point. If people were really worrying about environment,they would use bus or train not stupidly heavy ev. Publicly transportation doesn’t make money for rich class,that’s answer.

A classic example of how multiple inefficiencies snowball.

Only 23 mpg? My Citroen C2 gets better than that if you floor it in 5th gear. Normally it's nearly 50 mpg using the smaller US gallon. Not much point in getting a Prius when that Citroen cost me £800 with similar fuel efficiency and it's not a hybrid. I mean a Tesla is 4-5 x quicker to 60 but oh well.... you can't win 'em all. My most "gas guzzler" car was probably my 1.4 Peugeot 206 at about 40 mi/USgallon and it probably dipped to 37 mi/US gallon when a brake pad started rubbing against the wheel (checked by jacking the car and the wheel was a bit stiff to turn).

Are gas turbines really 60% efficient. I would have thought it difficult to get over 40%

When it comes to bicycles I've worked out that e-bikes have less of a carbon footprint than your legs. By the time it comes to food production, food packaging, energy used transporting the food, energy used going to the store, energy used cooking the food, energy used washing the dishes and energy used showering your sweaty body more often, not to mention the relatively low conversion efficiency of muscles (similar to the 25% of an internal combustion engine rather than the 80% of an electric motor). it seems like a win for the electric motor powered bike over good old fashioned muscle powering the pedals. That is unless your food is grown at home and you are a raw vegan who takes cold showers.

But what about emissions created when burning fossil fuels to produce electricity?

He also doesn’t account for the environmental damage of the materials needed for the batteries.

He missing a lot of information when it comes to efficiency. There is loss of power in electrical lines by at least half. Hydrogen extraction is a terribly inefficient process because it is locked up with other elements in its natural state. It takes a lot of energy to break it apart and then to transport and use again. If it was effective, we would already be using it. This is based on bad or missing information.

Your data interpretation and analysing is excellent

What about the impact of extracting the battery chemicals, like lithium and cobalt, etc?

This video is like a gem 💎

What about electric motorcycles? I imagine those would probably be like 10-30 grams per mile.

The vast majority of CO2 emissions are created in the production of the vehicle, before it even hits the road. Please do a comparison of 1) the CO2 emissions created during production electric v combustion engine vehicles; and 2) Buying a used combustion engine vehicle and operating X number of years v buying a new electric vehicle and operating the same X number of years.

404 co2 emissions Not found. Gas cars are better for environment.

You included hydrogen fuel cell efficiency in the total hydrogen efficiency, but you didn't mention gasoline engine efficiency, which is ~35% @ 8:06

The flaw in any of these 'Green' analogies is the false assumption that Co2 is bad for the earth. Without it we would not have a green planet and food to eat. The

Jason, you know a lot about cars, you cannot possibly think the most efficient diesel car averages 37mpg... It's like double that! Come on man.

you somehow look 21 and 40 at the same time

I'm glad you mentioned other types of emissions from the tailpipe as well!

The percentage for nuclear should be higher!

Thank you. Since the question relates to environment, shouldn't we close the cycle and also check which system is easier to recycle with less pollution and whether it is sustainable?

Does the 81.7% gasoline efficiency include pipeline leaks?

But to recycle an electric car is 200 to 400% less efficient and has a lot more damaging chemicals to dispose of.

Nick Lukefahr

8 måneder siden

The batteries are mostly recyclable.

Why not use the percentages of the different ways to make electricity and get those numbers instead of just using NG?

and for best diesel engine? ;)

To me, your math showed that the EV is nice but not that nice - which is probably why people are not adopting it yet. It’s interesting how people can draw opposite conclusion with the same data. Also, please consider the recycling of lithium battery and the impact of those 90%+ lithium batteries worldwide ended in landfill.

Do you think ethanol, specially the one created from sugar cane, would be still better in emission than electric?

PhazonBlaxor

Måned siden

Not sure about emissions, but I think bio-energy is kinda a non-starter simply because it uses so much area to get the X amount of energy compared to even solar panels, which are also notorious land hoggers. Photosynthesis is actually very inefficient process, this snippet is from Wikipedia photosynthesis page: "Ethanol fuel in Brazil has a calculation that results in: "Per hectare per year, the biomass produced corresponds to 0.27 TJ. This is equivalent to 0.86 W/m2. Assuming an average insolation of 225 W/m2, the photosynthetic efficiency of sugar cane is 0.38%."" 0.38% efficiency per area used is absolutely terrible, even cheap commercial solar panels are 15%-20% efficient.

He's talking US electricity generation - 2019 numbers updated : Natural Gas 38.4% (continuing growth displacing coal) Coal 23.5% Petroleum 0.5% Nuclear 19.7% Renewables (total) 17.5% consisting of Hydro and Wind below Hydropower 6.6% Wind 7.3% Biomass (total) 1.4% Solar 1.8% Keeps getting cleaner every year. Wind did better than hydro for the 1st time in 2019, and it wasn't a bad water year for reservoirs either.

There is just one problem, you use official mpg ratings, that actually useless, check how the official mpg testing is done and you will find is anything but reallystic

Nick Lukefahr

8 måneder siden

@Juan Ignacio Croce Francescone mpg calculations aren't 100% accurate, but they're not far off either. it "costs" to make ICE cars too. The extra 50% or so it "costs" to make electric cars it more than made up for during the life of the vehicle. On the subject of adding thermal plants, plants to refine petro into gasoline also have those emissions, so? On the subject of longevity, batteries today are coming with an 8 year warranty, so you can expect them to last at least that long. Some won't, but some gas engines don't last 10 years either. They're saying that new batteries are pushing 1 million miles, more than just about any ICE car can even pretend to get.

Juan Ignacio Croce Francescone

10 måneder siden

One more for the giggles, how about whe take into consideration longevity of the vehicle? Batteries just do not last long, they need replacing every 5 years or so of use, when a average internal combustion engine can last for 10 easily, many pushing into 15 and 20

Juan Ignacio Croce Francescone

10 måneder siden

lets keep adding, as if all the thermal plants were not emitting all those Nox, sulfur and everything else, you did not take into account where all the energy production

Juan Ignacio Croce Francescone

10 måneder siden

Adding to the problem, you are not taking into account all the cost of making the lithium ion batteries

Still don’t trust electric vehicles, I’d much rather putt around in my gas powered car.

Don't even watch the video, the answer is Yes. Unless you want to see a bunch of numbers on a board.

No they are not better for the environment. I keep coming across Tesla drivers that are extremely aggressive drivers. That can ruin your environment if they crash you. Prius drivers doing 75-80 mph is pretty common as well. If either driver releases their energy into your car your environment will be ruined permanently.

If the door handles work and they do not break down. Tesla are rubbish as are most US cars they cannot make them. No mention of Toyota or Lexus. Reliability has to come int the equation

The last few seconds say it all.

I know electric cars are better for the environment and the future of cars plus automation but for some reason I inherently hate them. An unconscious bias if you will.

Nick Lukefahr

8 måneder siden

Brainwashing to love oil company products :P

I have grown up as a car kiddo, and I have never liked Teslas. They are bad for the environment and are extremely overpriced. They get their energy from dirty sources. IF YOU ARE READING THIS AND ARE SAYING WHAT ELSE SHOULD I DO, you should buy a Toyota Mirai Toyotas are known to last over 20 years!

What about onboard generation electric hybrids? Say a vehicle with 30KWh of batteries and a combined cycle natural gas generator onboard? Wouldn’t it be best of both worlds. Smaller generators are less efficient but no grid losses.

Very good video. One thing you didn’t consider is the energy, resources and pollution required to produce each of the different types of vehicles. There is a recent study in Germany that states the amount of resources needed to produce an electric car (water, lithium etc) have a very negative impact on the environment. Other studies say that an EV would need to travel over 80k miles to break even the env impact vs combustion, which with the current rate of degradation of lithium batteries, is a important factor to take into account

And I would still say the best type of vehicle to own in the modern world would be a plug in hybrid, whether it be an ioniq phev/prius prime or an avaitor/xc90. You get healthy amounts of efficient driving while still having the gas motor for when you need it. Allowing people to slowly transition into electric by letting them keep a backup gas generator will allow the infrastructure of EV's to expand at a much healthier rate. If everyone switched to EV's right now our grid and economy would collapse.

Great video. Out of curiosity, you had assumed Natural Gas for "worst case" but wouldn't coal source be far less efficient with higher emissions?

You failed to take into account the amount of co2 created in the transporting of the hydrogen and the gas which make the electric vehicle even cleaner.

But what is the the impact of battery recycling? It would be nice to get numbers somehow.

The efficiency of U.S. power generation is 33%. You used 60%. Your electric emissions are WAY too optimistic. Gas turbines are a very small percentage of U.S. generation, Electricity is, thermodynamically speaking, very high grade energy. That's why it takes 3 units of heat energy to make one unit of electrical energy and also why electric vehicles, once you have ignored or underestimated the penalty of electric generation, appear so efficient..

If i try to write a comment and a commercial starts i am fucked9

Why does he take a 37/39mpg Diesel car? There are lots of them with 4,5 L/100km (~52mpg). I respect the result but I’m just irritated by his choice of diesel car.

Simple answer.... Yes

only 30% of electricity is produced by nat gas!!! coal is the biggest source why wasnt this factored in?

Nick Lukefahr

8 måneder siden

copying and pasting someone else's comment: He's talking US electricity generation - 2019 numbers updated : Natural Gas 38.4% (continuing growth displacing coal) Coal 23.5% Petroleum 0.5% Nuclear 19.7% Renewables (total) 17.5% consisting of Hydro and Wind below Hydropower 6.6% Wind 7.3% Biomass (total) 1.4% Solar 1.8%

When electricity produced by hydrocarbons the pollution moves from exhaust pipe of ev to power plant stack

About the energy use to decompose battery

Yes. Great video. This argument gets thrown out the window once you buy your own solar, which I plan to do!

Why does this video exist?

You left out a big factor. They cost so much, how much carbon is used to work so long to pay for it. I have no idea how to figure out all the varaibles? For instance if you have to work twice as long to pay for it which = twice the mileage unless you have 60 k to spend get easy.

wow man youre incredible. please keep it up!!

Mazda's new compression ignition gas engines are cleaner and less environmentally impactful over the entire life cycle of the engine, all factors of manufacturing, sourcing energy for use, and recycling considered, than EV's. It's just that few in a politically driven world are willing to admit it outside of Japan's engineers.

My diesel in the UK is over 64MPG

The generation of electric from oil or coal is only 36 percent efficient...the figures for the electric car aren't so great in that more realistic scenario.

Public transport is more efficient than the cleanest Tesla ever.

Nick Lukefahr

8 måneder siden

Just wait until all your public transportation vehicles are Tesla vehicles :P

Good analysis. Several years ago I lived in a area with frequent power outages. If more people own and drive electric cars and are charging their vehicles at home, it's there going to be more power outages? I'm not sure if the present infrastructure will be able to handle the additional power consumption by the charging station. Certain locations in California had several days of power outage due to large fires that destroyed homes and forest. The people whose homes were not destroyed had no power for several days. This is one of my concerns about owning an electric vehicle.

Nick Lukefahr

8 måneder siden

Some people don't use home charging at all. Even in a power outage, you'd likely be able to drive a little bit and get to a functioning charging station. In a larger-scale outage, you're not going to have gas pumps working either.

With the CO2 emissions per mile figure for hydrogen. Does that figure include the CO2 for the creation of hydrogen from natural gas? Based on AutoExpert's video, it's a filthy process. Particularly for us Australian's whose primary power source is coal. That last comment is just for info.

Omg my mum would love that VW *heart eyes*

So are the electric cars using the braking to charge the battery like the hybrids or not? I’m still unsure of this..

0MindSwept0

År siden

@Mark Abele I was thinking they should because it only makes sense, but I didn't want to assume anything; thx

Mark Abele

År siden

Yes, every EV that I know of has regen braking just like a hybrid would.

Dear Hyundai Ionic, Prius C would like to know your location

Did I skip something? How would the chart look like if we were to include Lifecycle assesment? Like mining rare-earth elements for batteries, building better grid İnfrastructure to support charging? Investing in new charging stations etc. Team Tesla here

How do you calculate mpg for an electric car? You really just skimmed over that part.

hooplehead101

År siden

The energy content of diesel or petrol in kWh per volume is known, so you can convert from and to either value.

I think the Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicle came out pretty good...Yes Tesla fans I know BEV are more efficient and better...I will not argue you there...but I think Hydrogen FC vehicles will have their place in our transportation future for vehicles that need quick refuel times, must operate in very cold climates (talking -10C or colder on a regular basis), and have to haul large amounts of cargo where having massive heavy batteries to haul tonnes of cargo may not be the most practical... BEV are great, and if solid state batteries come true they will be even better...I just think some alternative power systems may work better in some situations...

Great video!

EVs don't make sense until batter tech improves

When i buy a tesla i’d do it for the tech, quite ride and acceleration not at all for environmental reasons.

2006 Jetta Diesel regularly gets 38-39 with 90% City driving, highway is closer to 40-45

There's no way that production & transport efficiency of gasoline is anywhere near 90%. Probably much, much lower.

That is the wrong question! The right question is will buying a Tesla instead of an ICE heal the environment? The answer is no. You are not green or saving the environment buy driving a Tesla. You are in fact still damaging it.

Dan Hammond

8 måneder siden

@Nick Lukefahr Please do not act like you are saving the planet. Because you are just destroying it slower by buying an EV. Very disingenuous of you!

Nick Lukefahr

8 måneder siden

You're damaging the environment by being alive. The answer to the question of will EVs damage the environment less than an ICE cars, is yes.

Wait you trust the gasoline companies to give accurate numbers fore thier own efficiency..

Nick Lukefahr

8 måneder siden

gasoline companies don't tell you what a car's efficiency is.

Your numbers are completely wrong and electric is much more efficient than you calculated. You should skip the conversion of oil to electric as Tesla’s are actually MORE THAN 100% Solar powered. Telsa's solar Panels have Produced 13.25 TWh of energy to date but all Telsa’s combined only consumed a total of 5.26TWh. Tesla has a 250% surplus of Solar Energy and feeds the grid the surplus. I know that’s hard to digest but let me explain. Tesla and its superstations already generate surplus energy. They generate the solar energy to power 100% of every single electric vehicle on the road from all manufacturers combined. They make 250% of the energy needed to power all Teslas and I'm not even counting SolarCity (a Subsidiary of Tesla) that owns a third of the market for U.S. residential solar installations. Right now the energy needed to produce solar panels is about 1/20th the energy those solar panels will put out in thier 30 year lifespan. energy returned on energy invested (EROEI or ERoEI), or energy return on investment (EROI), Meaning the energy you need to mine, smelt and produce solar panels is 5% of the energy solar panels will put out. 5kWh’s in gives you 100 kWh’s out so you should include those numbers for energy efficiency. Google tesla-impact-report-2019 Also explain why in the very near future you couldn’t mine (with electric trucks and machines, smelt and produce solar panels using the energy from solar panels? At that point almost all C02 production is completely eliminated.

Just curious: What's the worst EV on the market?

I wonder why nobody makes a diesel hybrid.

Really, we don't have any diesels that get more than 37 mpg? That's pathetic. I've seen diesels elsewhere that get 70+ mpg.

Thanks Jason. I really wasn’t sure I would buy an electric car knowing that the source of electricity would come from mostly non renewable sources. But I had no idea of the much superior efficiency of an electric car-now I know what an mpg equivalent rating for an electric car actually is. Elon Musk is truly a visionary for developing the Tesla power wall and his plans for solar charging stations and complete solar city of the future. When this earth warm up so much and the sea level is so high we all would be living in the desert in these solar cities as a necessity. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that if we all drive electric cars.

Oh wow, I think I may buy a Tesla after seeing this. I'm also thinking of coming out.

You missed something very crucial, that combustion engines are very inefficient within themselves, and don’t get anywhere near all of the energy from the fuel that they could

Nope . Lithium strip mining

how about the emissions to built the Motor/ battery / car ...?

Superman

År siden

he linked the videos discussing that in the first and pinned comment of the video also at 0:48

Awesome ! !!!