Following is in video description by @MoneyShift
The most common argument against electric cars is that once you factor in battery manufacturing and lithium mining, they aren't actually cleaner. MIT tested that directly, and the answer is no longer ambiguous.
Researchers Marco Miotti and Jessika Trancik built a lifecycle model covering thousands of US zip codes, drilling down to individual driver behavior rather than comparing broad regions. They accounted for battery and vehicle manufacturing, fuel extraction and refining, regional electricity mix, local meteorological data, traffic density, trip length and duration, acceleration patterns, gas and electricity prices, and state fees. The study appears in Environmental Research Letters.
The concession first: building a battery is dirtier than building a comparable gas car, and an EV starts life with a larger manufacturing footprint. MIT states that plainly rather than working around it.
The findings: in most US locations, a battery electric vehicle reduces lifetime greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 60 percent compared to a similar gas vehicle, with larger reductions in urban areas. On cold weather, MIT found that in a climate like North Dakota, efficiency can drop as much as 50 percent on a particularly frigid night, but the effect on annual emissions benefits is minimal. Miotti's own conclusion was that even in the most unfavorable conditions, EVs still reduce emissions substantially.
On cost, EVs are competitive with comparable combustion vehicles in lifetime ownership cost across most of the country, even without clean vehicle tax credits. Where electricity is relatively affordable, battery electrics tend to cost less outright. The study also found that individual driving behavior matters roughly as much as regional electricity mix, with the biggest reductions going to people who drive more, drive larger vehicles, and spend more time in traffic.
MIT also updated their public tool at carboncounter.com, where you can compare lifecycle emissions and ownership costs for nearly any car on the market.
None of this means you have to like electric cars. Dislike the steering feel. Dislike the brake feel. Want a manual. Those are real objections. The emissions one is finished.
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I believe studies have shown that EVs still lead to less carbon emission overall, even if the electricity comes from fossil fuels. Plus, having the emissions be centralized (at a power plant where you can ameliorate it with CO2 scrubbers) is arguably preferable to having them emitted just kind of everywhere around highways and so forth.
Also, we need electricity either way, we don't necessarily need ICE cars in the same way, and the power plants are gonna be on either way. Besides which, ultimately, these are separate problems, there's no reason we can't support EV adoption and transitioning to more renewable energy at the same time.
It's better to keep driving the ICE cars that exist than all run out and buy new EVs, but we should be replacing them with EVs when the wheels fall off, not new ICE cars. Some ICE cars will probably always continue to exist in various specialized roles, but they're ultimately just too complicated. Fewer moving parts, less work = EVs will take over in the long run.