Originally Posted By: jeepman3071
Originally Posted By: DoubleWasp
Building an electric car is worse for our planet that building an ICE car and running it for a lifetime.
Exporting environmental damage to another country is not the same as solving an environmental issue.
It's a shell game. Nothing but a bunch of feel good bull.
Exactly.
Once upon a time in my early years of college I was a natural resources major. I had an interest in environmental technology. Many of my professors were very "green" and planet impact conscious. NONE of them drove hybrid or electric cars. One drove a biodiesel powered TDI, and the rest drove older fuel efficient cars such as Honda Civics and Toyota Corollas. I remember reading a few studies that they had done, and they had researched down to the PPM how much pollution and environmental impact ICE cars had vs. hybrid vehicles over the course of their useful life. The ICE cars won buy a long shot, especially newer fuel efficient cars with turbos and direct injection. The mining and disposal of materials used in hybrid batteries negated all fuel efficiency claims. This was all before Teslas were popular or even a feasible option, so there wasn't any info on those. The lowest impact scenario from their study was to buy a fuel efficient compact car and keep it as long as possible.
When I have time I'll do some digging and see if I can post a link to the study.
Well to wheels analysis. I recall coming to similar conclusions, well after reading the analysis that I stumbled across, and ran a TDi for a number of years. Even tried to run B20 when I could. Want to say ethanol would give 1.6 units of energy back for every unit put in--but biodiesel was 3.2 units for every unit put in? something like that. Of course, BD seems to have fallen to the wayside, just like diesels.
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Long time ago I came to the conclusion that for any hobby I might like to pick up that I'd need to spend at the same amount (if not more) on accessories as I might on the object of affection. Want to get a kayak? Well, you need a cartop carrier, gloves, lifevest, paddle, ... I'm sure most BITOG'ers know all about how to predict maintenance and repair costs out past 200k, and know for a fact that purchase price can be pretty low in the scheme of things. Or put in other words: expect it to cost $$$ later in life, so plan for it.
We'll see how Tesla's age out. Similar dire predictions were made about Prius battery packs and CVT's.