A Small Electric SUV Produces 52% Fewer Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions than a Comparable Gasoline Vehicle
A Small Electric SUV Produces 52% Fewer Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions than a Comparable Gasoline Vehicle
The emissions from the EV are largely because we've not yet gotten fossil fuels out of electric generation.
This is with the US electricity generation mix. That is a significant amount of gas and coal. In a country with a greener mix the emissions will diverge further.
I wonder how many EV owners in the US have solar panels on their houses? I bet it’s a larger percentage than ICE drivers.
Solar panels on houses aren't the win they seem to be unless one lives in a market with an unstable grid and requires self-powering. It's nice to feel like you're "helping" but grid-scale solar will always win. Plus the whole home solar market is a complete scammy racket now unless one can find a reputable local company.
Looked into it a while ago, oftentimes the agreement has the solar company leasing your roof space for 30+ years, and during construction they have a carte blanche permission to access any part of your house at any time. After install, you have to then seek permission through them if you want to do anything to your roof. Hail storm caused a roof leak? Well, you'll be waiting a bit to have that taken care of. My favorite agreement was one with a California firm, you had 72 hours to cancel after signing and the only way to cancel was to telegram their California office.
They also do a piss-poor job of factoring in things like the expense of having to rewire your utility panel or the necessity of lopping off the tops of trees (which then reduces the carbon sink they were doing, and shade on the house) in the initial estimates and try to wave away the mushrooming expenses. If the company goes under and there's not a transfer of stewardship of the generating equipment, it can arbitrarily be disabled until the homeowner finds a way to manually override or a new vendor takes over in their stead.
Where I live, the majority of energy contracts are explicitly green, in which the producer guarantees the power was generated by renewable sources (mostly wind, water & solar). That would indeed skew the "greenness" even more.
Depending where you are, a lot of those “green” supply contracts in the US are worthless RECs like overnight wind surplus in Texas, sold to consumers elsewhere (in an entirely different grid). In which case I would argue they are greenwashing.
In the PNW, we've been all hydropower for generations.
Lifetime vehicle miles traveled is 183,363 miles, and the assumed grid mix is the 2022 U.S. average in R&D GREET 2023.
EVs vehicle should last longer than that (though the battery will require replacement) so I think the EV production part will shrink.
Notice they break down the production and distribution of gas (not including the burning). Interesting.
Yeah, refining some oil deposits involves absolutely huge inputs of methane to turn heavy oil into something that's suitable for use in motor vehicles.
Small electric SUVs? They exist?
"Small" is the non-monstrous size.
They used to. GM had the Chevy Bolt and Kia had the Soul EV. The bolt is supposedly coming back, but I don’t have much faith that it will be small and economical like the previous version.
MG ZS for example
It's called a cross over. Basically a large hatchback. It's not a SUV if it's not built like a truck, IE body on frame construction
Please I just want a modern style electric bronco
It seems like you're putting form before function.
my problem with those is that production is where most emissions are. we need them to be repairable and not disposable, and its not looking good how they are trying to turn cars into smartphones.