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Burning Gas Pollutes So Much, Dirty EV Battery Manufacturing Evens Out In About 2 Years
(www.jalopnik.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2026
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I keep hearing this and the opposite
What about different battery types? Those with/without kobolt for example
Also manufacuring might be done differently in different places.. wonder how much pollution renaults batteries do (made in france) compared to those made in asia
Any sources I can read?
Yeah, they're all over Facebook!
/s
Here's one out of MIT: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ae0c23
Nowhere in that article does it state or even hint that ICE vehicles pollute less or are more efficient than EV's or even PHEV's. If I missed something, feel free to link directly to the line/paragraph, by selecting the text and clicking "Copy link to highlight": Example:
I never heard the opposite. Sources?
I'm surprised you haven't heard the opposite. It's wrong, but a really common talking point for a while was buying an EV wasn't actually good because of the pollution involved in manufacturing the car. Then a few years later they updated the rhetoric to talk about the minerals mined for batteries. I assume it was pushed by Fossil Fuel companies.
This The Guardian article mentions the minerals one. You can see an example of The Daily Telegraph pushing the myths with the headline: "Electric cars are made of pollution and human misery."
But the guardian article mentions the points but comes to exactly the expected conclusion:
Well yeah, it's a myth pushed by fossil fuel companies and climate change deniers. I was just saying I'm surprised you haven't anyone say it, it was the biggest 'gotcha' people would try to use when pushing back against EV adoption for years.
These figures are also heavily dependent on where and how the car was manufactured, too. If the factory is powered by clean energy, doesn't that reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emitted during manufacturing? If EV tech advances enough that the mining rigs are electric-powered, does that not also reduce the amount of GHG emitted mining lithium? Eventually we'll also have enough batteries to recycle that too (batteries are basically a very rich lithium ore), can't we do that in clean-powered factories?
Basically, I think the conversation on "how much manufacturing a given product pollutes" is entirely focused on the wrong thing...
Also, a lot of these studies compare an EV's complete lifecycle with just the tailpipe emissions of an ICEV. Mining, refining and transporting gasoline has a huge carbon impact before you even put it in the car.
Batteries can have their materials 99.9% reclaimed. No need to keep mining after a certain point.
I’m not trying to inject FUD, but don’t some recycled materials wear out? I believe paper products do
Unfortunately, even if their batteries are 100% EU made from raw materials, their cars still suck ass compared to everyone but Dacia (worse) and Peugeot/Citroen (same level).
But isn't Renault just assembling the cells into larger packs in France, with the actual single cells manufactured elsewhere?
Compared to what?
And says who? Renault 5 is pretty awesome. I know someone with a dacia spring who absolutely loves it. What about VW's EVs? BWM/Audi/Merc?
Compared to many others in the same price range that I've tried. It's marginally worse than VW ID3 AND ID4 which also aren't a joy to drive. Personally I've found KIA and Hyundai the best budget options for EV, at least the ones I've tried. I tried the megane etech and it was absolutely horrible. The entire car interface was a shitshow, the driving felt awkward and disconnected, and their charging and BMS seems laughable compared to other new models.
The Dacia is just a fucking death trap, some of the lowest EURO-NCAP scores in a long time, along with other Renault models.
As a former owner of a dacia spring I have to say I disagree.
And I say former because mine was totalled during a car crash that people say it was a miracle I could survive it, let alone walk out of the car by myself.
I was in a highway, there was a traffic jam and all the cars were still in their lane. I was the last one to arrive so my car was the last one in line. Behind me arrived a semi-trailer at 90kmph that, according to the police report, was "driving distracted". So distracted that he didn't see the cars in line and hit me at almost full speed. My car was overturned and ended completely destroyed, but the cockpit didn't deform and all the airbags worked, so I just got 4 broken ribs and a broken vertebrae that fortunately didn't touch the spinal cord.
In a car with better safety you probably would have sustained fewer or less severe injuries. There's also a heavy dose of survivorship bias in your story.
Sure, if I had a €60k car, I probably would have sustained less injuries, but I had a 15k city car because that's what I could afford. And because this kind of car wasn't probably designed to withstand a semi-trailer impact at 80-90kph. Yet it did, I've seen people in similar city cars and even bigger ones get wrecked way worse than me with just another car.
There are also €20k cars that are also significantly safer, you don't need to spend €60k for a notably better car.
4 years ago? An electric city car, in Italy, for 20k? Yeah, no.
Wow, that must have been some shock!
Yeah I agree, Kia and Hyundai make better cars full-stop.
I've never been a fan of Renault but the Renault 5 has turned my head. Regardless of my minor gripes with Renault/Stellantis I'd rather one of their cars over a Tesla or something Chinese.