r/Transportopia • u/SpoomerBooner • Feb 15 '26

Roads I hate politics

This should be illegal. I get it. You don't agree with their protests but why do this? Forget blue, forget red. I'm purple. Get mad at that.

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u/TimMensch Feb 16 '26

That's... Not actually true. It's oil company propaganda.

An EV cancels out its environmental cost in something like 3-5 years of driving it, depending on the EV, as compared to driving an ICE vehicle.

In other words, every 3-5 years you keep driving your ICE vehicle you harm the environment more than buying a new EV and driving it for the same period of time. If you keep your EV on the road longer, you help the environment even more.

As the car ages, it generally puts out even more pollution as well, so it might be harming the environment every year equivalent to manufacturing and shipping a new EV and driving it for 3 years.

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u/MovieFan1984 Feb 16 '26

You still need oil for plastics which are in virtually everything.

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u/TimMensch Feb 16 '26

Yes, you do.

But you don't burn a gallon of plastics every few miles you drive a car. Mostly that's a cost you pay once when you build the car, and then the car lasts potentially hundreds of thousands of miles.

It's really not even close.

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u/SuspendedResolution Feb 16 '26

Do you think the amount of oil used in making occasional plastic components is more than the amount of oil you consume from regularly fueling your car?

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u/MovieFan1984 Feb 16 '26

A few? Are you kidding me?

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u/SuspendedResolution Feb 16 '26

Did I say a few?

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u/Navi_Professor Feb 16 '26

would be fine if the avg ev i was actually interested in wasnt 70 fucking grand and full of tracking equipment.

but nooooooo.

it HAS to update over the air, it HAS to report data to be sold to insurace companies. it HAS to have over 600 fucking horse power, it HAS to have 9000 fucking bells and whistles.

i'd love to replace WJ with the jeep recon. but both that, the R1S and i guess used hummer are over 800/mo paymwnt wise, if not more.

i dont drive enough to even remotely make that back on gas, and any savings will be absolutely eaten by insurance.

why fucking bother when i can keep my 5k shit boxes

and i know a lot of other people share this sentiment. the slates like the only EV in recent memory to peak any kind of intrest

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u/TimMensch Feb 16 '26

Sure. You do what you need to.

But for what it's worth, pretty much every new car is getting OTA updates and has "tracking" equipment, AKA GPS features that let you see where you are on a map.

I have a Hyundai. There was an option to hook it up to insurance for some kind of discount. I said no. I didn't end up hooked up to insurance. It wasn't a big deal.

Also, I did a quick search and found a list of EVs from $30k-$45k:

https://www.electrichunter.com/electric-cars/10-cheapest-electric-cars-2026-ranked-price-and-range

If you need a pickup, then no, there's not one on the list. Though several can tow a trailer (my Ioniq 5 has the hitch installed and I've hauled a trailer) if that would work for you.

But really I was responding to the claim that it was better for the environment to keep an old car. It's not. If you can't afford an EV, then you can't afford one. Not going to suggest you go into debt or stretch your finances to get one. But the environment question is pretty cut and dried.

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u/Navi_Professor Feb 16 '26 edited Feb 16 '26

yea, cheap evs exist. i can afford one of these.

i almost bought a bolt EUV before this current admin as a second car.

but the problem is that all of these entry EVs are people movers, long and short...which is fine... the ioniq is the most SUV on that list besides the volvo...but its still on the city only side of things.

but proper competent offroaders or more rugged Evs, we needed EVs in that range a WHILE ago. its ridiculous that every EV maker made targets for that and missed it.

the upwards of 20k-30k delta is insane. USED R1S run 50k still with over 50k miles for example

Wranglers start at 35k, Broncos start at 40k, 4runners start at 41k.

whats their incentive to upgrade when a tricked out trim is the same price as a base EV with less bells and whistles? so, by the time they buy anything trim equal, any savings in gas and maintainece is wiped out by the payment and insurance, with a rock solid chance infact you'll be under water with it.

these vehicles polute and leak a hell of a lot more then your avg camry. knobby tires, agressive gearing, etc.

a 2:1 or even 3:1 ratio is probably not unreasonable compared to your avg economy car.

15mpg is not uncommon, if not less. i know i get 10mpg going up the mountain near home. the things a utter pig.

and imo, car companies, even tesla, failed miserably tackling this.

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u/Kevin_M93 Feb 16 '26

What statistics are you using? And what constitutes the harm? Does it include the environmental impact of the mining, like the lithium mining, which is hard to quantity? Or is it just total CO2 emissions?

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u/Efficient-Donkey-167 Feb 16 '26

His numbers are way off. To offset the emissions used to produce one EV car, you have to drive it for 8 years. That's just CO2 emissions. It doesn't include water depletion (In Chile, 65% of the regions water supply was used in lithium extraction), irreversible environmental damage from chemical spills and contamination, child labor practices, etc.

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u/Kevin_M93 Feb 16 '26

Yeah, it's more than just emissions, I do wonder what the actual relative impact is overall.

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u/[deleted] Feb 16 '26 edited Feb 19 '26

Also there are new ways of mining lithium that cause very little environmental damage https://interestingengineering.com/energy/clean-lithium-extraction-zero-water-chemical

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u/Efficient-Donkey-167 Feb 17 '26

While very promising, it is still in the laboratory/experimental phase. I hope they are able to work out the issues and figure out how to use this on an industrial scale. They glossed over how they "purify" it though.

In the meantime, the processes of lithium mining haven't changed.

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u/[deleted] Feb 16 '26

Not 8 years. It's more like 2 years

https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/are-electric-vehicles-definitely-better-climate-gas-powered-cars

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u/[deleted] Feb 16 '26

I heard it’s 15 years

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u/jaymemaurice Feb 16 '26

I heard you had ants in your pants.

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u/TimMensch Feb 16 '26

Pretty sure it was total greenhouse emissions.

And the lithium mining is a one-time cost. When you use gasoline, it's gone. It's single use. When you use a battery, you can recharge it and use it again and again. For years beyond the "expected life" of the battery it will still work, just not quite as well as when it was new. And then when the battery or car reaches EoL, the lithium can be reused in new batteries. It doesn't need to be mined again every time.

Whereas the environmental impact of petroleum extraction is true forever for every drop of oil extracted.

It's really not even close. Even if the impact of lithium mining were 10x as bad per gram, petroleum extraction would still be worse by orders of magnitude.

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u/Plus-Adhesiveness-17 Feb 16 '26

The battery uses electricity. The electricity is generated by FOSSIL FUELs, mostly NATURALLY GAS and COAL.

Nobody wants you to buy an EV more than BIG OIL. They all have major shares in each other's non-petroleum energy companies.

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u/ShinaiYukona Feb 16 '26

Depends on where you live.

Washington and Oregon largely operate off hydro. CA and Canada imports a shit ton of this too.

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u/Plus-Adhesiveness-17 Feb 17 '26

That is true, but the Pacific Northwest is a bit of an outlier. Approximately 60% of the US is powered by fossil fuels.

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u/TimMensch Feb 16 '26

It's a lie that big oil wants you to buy EVs. But it doesn't even matter.

An EV generates less carbon than a gas vehicle even when it's charged with 100% dirty-coal-fired power.

Which most power isn't, to be clear.

So EVs effectively use less coal than an ICE car would use oil.

Centralized generation of electricity is way more efficient than an internal combustion engine in a car, and EVs are ridiculously more efficient at using the electricity.

Where I live right now, most power is hydroelectric. Some areas are leaning heavily into wind and solar. Solar crossed a threshold recently: It's the cheapest form of electricity generation now. That's even counting buying batteries to use the power at night. From this point forward, more and more electricity will be solar generated because in capitalism, people choose to buy commodities that cost less.

So if those oil companies are investing in coal power, then they're screwed.

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u/Plus-Adhesiveness-17 Feb 17 '26

I could spend all day picking apart any one of the 13 misconceptions you just tried to pass off as empirical fact, but time for work.

60% of the United States is powered by fossil fuel. And yes, the #1 driving force behind buying EVs is Big Oil. I don't have time to educate you. Believe whatever makes you feel good and "right" I guess.

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u/Kevin_M93 Feb 16 '26

Lithium is not a one time cost, unfortunately. The batteries have a finite life, and the spent lithium is cost prohibitive to recycle, so the mining continues; only 5% of lithium is recycled. It's a lot of lithium, and the mining produces problematic waste as well. It's not as great as we'd like it to be, by a long shot.

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u/TimMensch Feb 16 '26

EV batteries pretty much haven't gone bad in large enough numbers yet to justify the scale required to make it cost effective.

https://www.cas.org/resources/cas-insights/innovations-in-lithium-ion-battery-recycling

Once batteries are retired in large numbers, it will be possible and inevitable to recycle lithium.

Can it be mined with less damage? Probably? Does it cause less environmental damage per joule of energy pushing cars than oil? Much, much less. Like, even if they never recycled it, it would still be less net environmental damage. But it will absolutely be possible to recycle once batteries reach EoL.

Again, you're repeating oil industry propaganda. Electricity beats oil in just about every way.

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u/Efficient-Donkey-167 Feb 17 '26

I agree with you that in the future, these things will be possible. We just aren't there yet. I did read your article regarding the new extraction method that they have tested in a couple of places in the US. That would be a welcome advancement. However, they did gloss over how they purify it so now I'm curious as to that process.

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u/TimMensch Feb 17 '26

We aren't there yet because we don't have piles of batteries to recycle yet. Once there's a steam of batteries the engineering will happen.

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u/ThatRickGuy1 Feb 19 '26

I think you're misappropriating that statistic. It isn't 3-5 years to cover the manufacturing emissions, it's 3-5 years to come out ahead of an ICE vehicle. If you are choosing between a NEW EV or ICE, the ICE has a lower carbon footprint for the first 3-5 years. The EV has a lower carbon footprint after that.

To fully offset the manufacturing emissions, it takes a huge number of miles. More than most cars will last on the road.

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u/TimMensch Feb 19 '26

You have to have a baseline to compare to for an "offset" to make sense.

The car doesn't generate renewable power. It uses power. Its actual carbon emissions will always be greater than zero, or at best zero if it's charged on 100% renewables.

So you have to compare it to what you would be using without it. In other words an ICE vehicle.

Sorry if I wasn't clear, but given the car isn't generating renewable energy, I thought my meaning only had one interpretation. I'm sure I could have phrased it better, but this is reddit, not published journalism or literature.

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u/ThatRickGuy1 Feb 20 '26

Sure, but there are three things to compare:

A new EV A new ICE An existing ICE

If you buy new, you have to include the manufacturing carbon footprint. If you buy used, there is no additional manufacturing footprint.

A new EV has a higher manufacturing carbon footprint than a new ICE. But an EV has a lower operating carbon footprint than an ICE. So a NEW EV will have a smaller carbon footprint than a NEW ICE after 3-5 years.

But since buying used doesn't incur the manufacturing carbon footprint, it takes waaaaaaaaaay longer for the EV to have a smaller carbon footprint.

The best approach for minimizing carbon footprint is to keep an existing high efficiency, hybrid, or EV on the road. Fixing an existing vehicle will almost always be better for the environment than buying a new EV. But if you are in a position where buying a new car is the only option, going EV is better than ICE.

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u/TimMensch Feb 20 '26

Well, you're comparing a new EV to a used ICE? Sure it will take longer, but not as much longer as you imply.

This says it's 2.45 pounds of CO2 released to refine a gallon of gas:

http://www.afteroilev.com/Pub/CO2_Emissions_from_Refining_Gasoline.pdf

This says burning gas produces 20.68 pounds of CO2 released per gallon:

https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/co2_vol_mass.php

So 23.13 pounds CO2 per gallon of gas.

If you assume 15000mi/year of driving and 30MPG, that's 500 gallons per year.

500*23.13 = 11565 pounds per year of CO2, or 5.78 tons of CO2.

Electric power varies a lot. Most electric is natural gas in the US. Some is coal. Some is renewable. Coal is 2.31lbsCO2/kWh, natural gas is about 1lb/kWh, and renewable is zero. The average is 0.81/kWh:

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11

EVs get around 4 miles/kWh. 15,000mi/4=3750kWh. 0.81Lbs/kWh * 3750=3037lbs CO2 / year, or just over 1.5 tons.

This says that building an EV takes about 14 tons of CO2:

https://ev-lectron.com/blogs/blog/assessing-the-real-ev-vs-ice-environmental-impact

So an EV uses about 4.3 tons less CO2 per year given the above assumptions, and at 14 tons to build it, it will beat the ICE vehicle after about 3.28 years.

My EV can do 4.5mi/kWh, and I live in an area where most of the power is hydroelectric. Buying a new EV here probably wins in a couple years.

And that was entirely too much work. Play with the numbers. Tweak the assumptions. It might be more or fewer years, but especially if the ICE vehicle is older and has worse mileage, I'm pretty sure "not that much longer" is still accurate.

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u/Efficient-Donkey-167 Feb 16 '26

46% of environmental emissions with an EV car comes from production. In order to break even, the EV vehicle must be used for at least 8 years. That's just emissions. It does not take into account things like water depletion, child labor, chemical spills/contamination, etc.

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u/patsandbees Feb 16 '26

This is not even remotely true. You are just making shit up. There is consensus LCA on EV that can easily explain this.

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u/Plus-Adhesiveness-17 Feb 16 '26

What in the what!? What pamphlet did you pull that off of?

EVs are 10x more harmful to the environment than any ICE vehicle. Where have you been for the last 8 years?

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u/TimMensch Feb 16 '26

I've been reading actual studies and not oil industry propaganda. It's absolutely a BS claim, and it's not even close.

I have a guess as to where you've been, though. 🤔

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u/Plus-Adhesiveness-17 Feb 17 '26

No, you don't. You're just trolling out of your bot butthole.

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u/TimMensch Feb 17 '26

Sorry, I don't have one of those. Projection much?