Electric Vehicles

Determinants of electric vehicle emissions savings and costs across locations and individuals Marco Miotti and Jessika E Trancik*

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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