I’ve seen a lot of posts here on Lemmy, specifically in the “fuck cars” communities as to how Electric Vehicles do pretty much nothing for the Climate, but I continue to see Climate activists everywhere try pushing so, so hard for Electric Vehicles.
Are they actually beneficial to the planet other than limiting exhaust, or is that it? or maybe exhaust is a way bigger problem?
First priority is to get rid of cars in general. Try to use bicycles and public transportation. If you don’t need a car to get to work, consider a car share service to replace your private car/private parking space.
EVs probably have around 1/10th the lifetime emissions of a gas car, which is still really significant.
Do you have a source for that because that’s radically better than any number I’ve heard. Most analyses I’ve seen have been more like 40-60%.
Doesn’t this hugely depend on the power generation in your area?
No source, but I remember hearing that EVs earn back the cost of their manufacturing through their zero emissions within about a year. I extrapolated based on that with the assumption that a car will last about 10 years. I live in Sweden where our electricity is carbon free/ carbon neutral.
What you heard was probably about tail-pipe emissions which are very low compared to ICEs indeed but they only represent a small part of an EV’s lifetime emissions.
In the EU, EVs reduce lifetime emissions by about 30%. Certainly not nothing but not anywhere close to solving our transport emissions problem.
It’s basically “refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle” except for cars it’s “refuse, cycle, public transport, car pool”