That's absolutely untrue. The majority of the environmental damage is from the ongoing use of it, not from production.
Every time you fill up on 20 gallons of gas, that is 400 pounds of CO2 that will be dumped into the air.
Used EVs are apparently very cheap. Most new cars are prohibitively expensive, the average new car cost is something like $50k now in the US. If anybody is concerned about cost of new cars, they are buying used anyway.
It is true though, in some cases. The embodied carbon of a Rivian for example is never paid back by operations. So you do have to exercise good judgement in which EV you choose. The category doesn't always win.
In my case I already own a hybrid that I only drive 2000 mi/yr and there is not yet an EV that I could buy with so little embodied carbon that it would make sense to do so. At the rate China is decarbonizing, presumably the embodied carbon of their EVs will soon be minimal, but not yet.
Thanks for linking that Rivian document later, but I think it doesn't support this claim. I'll stick with it's weird 155,000 mile lifetime for the comparison.
Rivian: 60,140 kg carbon per lifetime.
F150, at 20mpg: 78,740 kg carbon, for fuel alone.
So even ignoring the embodied carbon in an ICE vehicle, and paying comparatively high embodied CO2 cost of a new Rivian, it's better to switch immediately, (if CO2 were the sole concern, which it never is.)
An F150 is also a poor choice, so I don't think of it as a point of comparison. As an approximation, the mass of any object is related to its embodied carbon, so smaller vehicles embody less of it. Massive vehicles embody current emissions and that is worth considering.
That only works if you take it at face value that buying either of them is a rational transportation choice, which I reject. Even if I accept the people need a weird truck-shaped thing with a useless 4.5-foot bed, a far better choice on emissions grounds would be the Ford Maverick XL, which has a battery 1% as massive as the R1T's battery, yet this tiny battery cuts the per-mile GHG emissions in half. The embodied carbon payback distance of an R1T versus a Maverick XL is over 100,000 miles.
My kid races mountain bikes so I have become extremely familiar with Rivian (and Cybertruck) MTB Dad, and I think they are a joke. With only a little planning I can get three bikes and three riders in a Honda Insight, while R1T Dad needs an optional accessory to get even one bike in the bed. People choosing these things are, 99% of the time, not behaving rationally. They are buying luxury goods that they believe signal their environmental credentials.
I don't find either truck a rational choice, but the car market can stay irrational longer than the climate can stay liquid.
The cultural irrationality of the truck/car market in the US crosses all ethnicities and class lines. If we are trying to evaluate the effectiveness of EVs, I think we need to compare the Rivian to the closest fossil fuel powered vehicle, even if it's something that causes me to disrespect the people making these choices.
> The embodied carbon of a Rivian for example is never paid back by operations
Really? I could imagine it being significantly longer than an average EV, but never? Regardless of driving pattern? Got a link or can you show your math?
To add to this, almost nobody statistically keeps their vehicle very long. People keeping a car for 20-30 years is extremely rare.
The median length of car ownership is something like 7 years. Even if you are switching between used cars, most people are switching vehicles at some point.
From what I understand even considering battery mining and using dirty electrical generation, you’re still at breakeven within a couple years of driving with an EV.
Yeah lithium mining is bad, but don’t forget that oil is also extracted and “mine.” And your gas car uses a LOT of it.
I wouldn’t think too much about then average new car cost of $50k. That average is skewed by:
1. Expensive new car purchases (average != median)
2. Lower income people don’t buy new cars at all.
Still, some of the best new car deals are EVs because dealers can’t get rid of them due to the sudden expiration of federal incentives. Plus the used ones depreciate like crazy despite having better maintenance and lower miles. The lease deals you might get on an Ioniq are insane, good luck getting a gas car lease with that kind of value.
Let’s also not forget that the majority of housing units in the USA are single family homes where charging at home is likely to be an option.
The EU average passenger car fleet age is 12.5 years.
> From what I understand even considering battery mining and using dirty electrical generation, you’re still at breakeven within a couple years of driving with an EV.
Only when compared to buying a new ICE, as it takes 1-2 years average mileage in the US and 2-4 years in the EU for a new EV to reach emissions parity with a new ICE. It takes well over a decade in the EU for a new EV to recover it's production emissions va driving an existing used ICE. It's never environmentally friendly to scrap an ICE for a new EV.
The average length of ownership is a pretty warped statistic, though. It is dependent on when in the car's life cycle someone buys it. At one end of the market are new car buyers who keep them longer than average, at the other end are people who constantly buy end-of-life junkers for $500.
Every time you fill up on 20 gallons of gas, that is 400 pounds of CO2 that will be dumped into the air.
Used EVs are apparently very cheap. Most new cars are prohibitively expensive, the average new car cost is something like $50k now in the US. If anybody is concerned about cost of new cars, they are buying used anyway.