I was thinking Donald Trump myself
What are the Government really doing, to help the country move away from Diesel vehicles etc. ?
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I was thinking Donald Trump myself
What dissuades me from buying an EV is the cost and the fact that about half of the carbon footprint of a car is accumulated before the engine is ever started. It is in the metals and the plastics and the energy used to make it and the energy used to transport all the parts to the manufacturer etc.
I drive under 150 km a week and use my bike to commute to work through the city centre so there is no environmental case to be made for me getting rid of my 2 litre diesel saloon car. When I need to replace it I'll probably buy an electric car.
Forcing people to sell their old cars and buy new electric ones makes no environmental sense. Making sure that the environmentally sound choice is the cheapest one when they choose to get rid of their old car does make environmental sense.
I read that the rates of premature births is down by over 90% since the lockdown. That may well be the result of a number of factors but the reduction in air pollution during the lockdown is certainly one of those factors.
I think that's the profile of the primary car for two car families. Statistically most trips are very short. The EV should be seen as the primary car and the Ice used for longer trips the secondary.
NoRegretsCoyote
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Were Irish women exposed to a material amounts of air pollution before? Some undoubtedly were, but hardly the majority.
Have you ever been to a Chinese city? Or even the north of Italy in November?
The case from a global warming point of view is probably not strong. However your diesel emits much more than just carbon dioxide. While we need to do something about global warming and EVs help, any action we take will have minimal impact in our lifetimes. Getting diesel cars off the road would have a hugely positive impact on people living, working and growing up near roads immediately.
The environmental reason for you getting rid of your diesel is strong and well documented, the global warming rationale less so.
Baby boomer
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Correlation isn't causation! To prove that reduction in air pollution is a factor, you would need to do a multivariate analysis and measure and compare the reductions in premature births in areas with high and low levels of air pollution. It would also be worth looking at current statistics for premature births and seeing if the pre-lockdown rate correlated with levels of air pollution. Even then, air pollution correlates positively with living in cities, and - one would intuitively think - also with living in poverty stricken environs. Both of those factors contribute to stress and very likely maternal health and rates of premature births.
Baby boomer
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Yeah, fair point in a lot of cases. I was thinking of my own situation where the ICE served as the all-purpose workhorse for country runs, towing, load carrying and needed to be reliable.
Yes, hence the "may well be the result of a number of factors" at the start of my post.
There is an established link between air pollution and both birth defects and issues around pregnancy and fertility.
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Thought you might like this Examiner article on this subject this morning (https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/economy/arid-40029842.html). The Irish Car Carbon Reduction Alliance
conveniently overlooking the fact that CO2 is released in the building of a new car as well as the running of!Yep, up to 17.5 tons of carbon dioxide is emitted by the making of the average electric car battery. The average petrol car produces 45 tons of CO2 in its average 160,000 mile livecycle. The electricity used to charge the battery is mainly produced by burning fossil fuels, including turf, so the CO2 per Km travelled isn't going to be massively different.Thought you might like this Examiner article on this subject this morning (https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/economy/arid-40029842.html). The Irish Car Carbon Reduction Alliance
The carbon emissions caused by the manufacture of a second hand car have already occurred. When you buy a new car you are causing new emissions to occur. Therefore the best thing you can do is keep your old car and use it as little as possible. When it dies buy a different second hand car.
Of course if you really want to reduce your carbon footprint just eat less red meat as the farming of grazing animals is by far the biggest contribution to climate change. The second thing you should do is buy fewer clothes. After that start worrying about what car you drive.
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I bought a 3 litre diesel in 2013. The intention at the time, and it sold holds, is to keep it for at least 20 years, hopefully more. Generally speaking, every time you spend money you’re contributing to climate change. I don’t see how buying an EV before my current vehicle dies can help the planet.
Here's how -
1. If you're doing any sort of mileage in that diesel, then there will be a cross-over point where replacing it with an EV would release less lifetime CO2 emissions. Keep in-mind that as that car ages its emissions will increase as the engine wears, runs less efficiently and burns more oil. At the same time the Irish electricity grid will be getting cleaner and cleaner, Eirgrid expecting 70% renewable by 2030 with all coal/peat gone.
2. It's a mistake to think that CO2 emissions from that car are the only thing harming the planet. NOx, SOx, PM etc. are all doing damage to humans, animals, waters etc. Some of these emissions are highly localised, so there's a significant difference between an EV where a certain amount is emitted during production away from where people live/work and a petrol/disel which emits them into the faces of passers-by and in people's windows where they work/live.
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The children digging the cobalt for the battery out of the ground in the Congo would probably question the notion that the damage done during production takes place far away from humans. The related the environmental destruction caused by the mining is also massive. Like so much of the environmental damage and pollution we cause we are just outsourcing it to poorer countries. We do it with food production, waste management and manufacturing. Now we are doing it with transport.
The EV industry is only starting to acknowledge this problem. There are a few battery technology developments under way, including LFP, that reduce or eliminate the need for rare earth metals with lower cost and improved energy density. It'll be a few years before they become mainstream, that's when EVs will become a much more compelling prospect.
That's much too simplistic a view of the world in my view Purple, you're ignoring the order of magnitude entirely.
It is horrific that children are mining cobalt in DRC, but in everything humans do there is risk to human life. 10+ people die on Irish building sites every year, but we continue building because new houses are safer, consumerism, whatever you want to put it down to. It's believed that 500,000 people are dying prematurely in Europe every year as a result of air pollution (European Environment Agency Report). If you're telling me this number of people are dying mining cobalt and other materials each year then yeah lets have a discussion. But saying a guy died in a Tesla factory assembling a battery pack so we need to stop making EVs then a conversation on perspective might be more apt.
Or how about a discussion on the number of people dying and that have died to extract and transport oil to run petrol/diesel cars? Nearly 200 people a year die in the US working the oilfields there, who knows what those figures look like if you include Africa/ME countries where safety standards may not be similar. Now factor in all the indirect deaths caused by the various in the Middle East, the damage being done by the likes of Saudi funding terrorism around the world on the back of oil money.
The cobalt argument is frankly ludicrous and callous in the face of the deaths caused by the demand for oil over the years.
If you still somehow think the balance sheet of horror tilts more towards cobalt mining than the oil industry, this might give you hope
Article link
I'm not sure what point you think I was making. For clarity it wasn't some sort of relative comparison to oil but rather pointing out that the rainbows and flowers view of EV's is ridiculous. The real damage EV's do it they make owners think they are doing their bit for climate change when private vehicle ownership is a small part of the overall problem. Simply not eating meat one day a week will do far more than switching to an EV.
The issue of air pollution is indeed a factor but globally it kills over 3 million a year. This is due to burning coal and wood to cook and heat, the reliance on diesel generators where there is no electricity infrastructure, industry and transport.
As long as we are only worried about ourselves then EV's are a great idea but if we are interested in the whole planet then the discussion is more complex.
Fair enough. Sorry I took your point as the fairly common narrative "EVs are bad because of cobalt, nothing else matters, end of debate"
. 100% agree it is all much more nuanced than that.What is not nuanced for me is that if you happen to be buying a new car today, you will be doing the world and your neighbours less harm by buying an EV instead of a petrol/diesel car. Discussions about cobalt, cost, lithium mining, public transport, cycling etc. are all important and need to go on in parallel, but nobody who can afford it should be talked out of buying an EV on the basis of the cobalt argument is my point I guess.
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The railways, HGV and industrial equipment like diggers uses far more