Electric Cars-A Different Side to the Story

I was talking to a friend a couple of weeks ago about Tesla right after they launched electric semi trucks. He said he did a presentation about why we shouldn't buy electric cars and why they are bad for the environment. My initial reaction was "hahah don't be ridiculous". Then he started to tell me about his research. You know in the world of sustainability, we see Elon Musk as a big leader so the information I got was so new to me. I wanted to share a couple of points that he made. Let's see if it gives you a different perspective or not.

Manufacturing process of a traditional car releases 16,000 lbs of CO2 to the atmosphere, on the other hand our eco-friendly EV’s release 25,000 lbs of CO2. This is mostly because of the lithium element that is used in the batteries. Lithium mining and their transportation to manufacturing plant add up to carbon emission of manufacturing process. That was only the manufacturing process.
You may think that traditional cars emissions are way higher as they actually burn gas, but EV uses electricity, which has no emissions. This is the other misconception about Electric cars.

If we compare traditional cars to electric cars in terms of their carbon emission in their lifetime, considering manufacturing, electricity or gas consumption, and scrapping; you can see that Tesla Model S is not innocent or eco friendly at all. Mercedes A160 causes 34 metric tonnes of CO2 while Tesla causes 44 metric tonnes. Big engine A7 causes only a little more than Tesla.


Electricity mostly comes from huge coal plants, and as Electric cars increase in number, coal plants number will increase too. Clean electricity only comes from renewables. And only 17% of the US energy comes from renewables. Officials say it will be all renewable in the future but it is only a wishful thinking. Even Obama administrations forecast for 2025 is 20%. So this means, more electricity you need today, more pollution you cause.

Another challenge with electric cars is that they lose value so fast that in 10 years, your electric car might be worth nothing because think of it as an iPhone, the battery life is gonna constantly rise, there's gonna be a lot of technological improvements while your traditional car loses only 40-50% value on average in 8-10 years. 



The photos above of two different Tesla designs from two different time proves how fast the design and technology changes for electric cars. Think about the first iPhone, it didn't even have a front camera, now it recognizes our face to unlock our phones. 

I gotta say the fact that it loses value is not that big of a problem for me, but if it really releases more carbon emissions in a lifetime, then it is pretty disappointing. I found a couple of sources but of course I am not 100% sure that they're reliable.

For example click on this.

For another click on this.

And this. 



Comments

  1. Beihong Yang4 December 2017 at 00:15

    Thanks for sharing your idea and the information you got. For me, I always doubt whether the renewable energy is really economical or not. Before the introduction of electricity vehicles, during the Beijing 2008 Olympics Game, many traditional buses were replaced by hydrogen ones, which aimed to express the sustainability concept. However, I was wondering where these large amount of hydrogen is from, Later I read an article that said the cost on hydrogen cars and hydrogen production is way more than the benefit it received.

    I think the technology now is still limited and many people should concern about the potential cost and value lost of the vehicles, as they only compare the electricity price and the gasoline price to estimate the money they saved.

    Beihong Yang

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