This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Oh wow, another EV thread with a bunch of oil industry mouthpieces telling us how the studies are wrong and what we didn't think of. Thank you Mr. Shell, I almost forgot not everyone has a charging point at their house and it takes time to charge an EV.
Color me surprised.
I'm sure we'll eventually get to the point where they invent rapid charging batteries that can fully charge in 5 minutes. But realistically we don't need it, you just change the way you think about fuelling up.
It's fun to imagine an opposite world where everybody has EVs and other more efficient forms of transit, and then industry wants to introduce ICE vehicles to the market.
You fill it with flammable liquid poison and it shoots gaseous poison out the back while it's running, and nobody can refuel at home, and it's immensely more mechanically complex, but at least it's quick to fill with fuel at the fuel store! Just try not to inhale the poisonous explosive fumes or spill the poisonous volatile liquid on yourself while you do it.
Most issues require nuance, and the internet does not have the concept of nuance at all. I did my research and bought my EV, no regrets at all. Not only do I know it's better because I haven't consumed gas now in over 2 years, it's also simply the best and easiest car I've ever owned. It's a no brainer to get one. Anyone who says otherwise I think firmly needs to think about their connection with propaganda.
If you want to be better than that, look for cars with LFP battery. They tend to be used in the less expensive cars and in lower capacity configurations. Their carbon footprint is roughly half of the regular NMC batteries and the only mined metal they need is iron and no zink, mangan or cobalt are needed in their chemistry.
That and try to use renewable energy, eg with home owned photovoltaic. If you do all of that, the break even is way before even 2 years and life cycle CO2 footprint is only a fraction of an ICE vehicle.
"We decided to let the earth and all living things on it die, as it would be too hard on the economy if we tried to save it". /s
Burning petroleum is one of the most destructive things you can do and it is absolutely common to do it. Everyday a single vehicles emits enough pollution to kill countless people. It gives them cancer and when combined with lead has resulted in hundreds of millions of deaths. It is absolutely insane people continue supporting this technology.
Burning gas is so extremely bad that even throwing away your old ICE car and buying a new electric car is better than driving the ICE car until it „falls apart“. This was the research finding in Switzerland, but this result was so unwelcome that the research got hidden away. https://www.republik.ch/2025/06/11/amtliche-selbstzensur
Everytime you bring it up, you get a whole lot of people with gasoline powered cars getting very angry. Sure batteries are not 'perfect', but they are a whole lot better in almost every way compared to gasoline powered vehicles.
The anger is less about how bad EV's are and more about being expected to buy a hilariously expensive EV when someone has a perfectly functional car. Make them cheaper and people will buy them, because other than the environmental aspect EV's just require less maintenance overall, making them cheaper to run.
I’d rather spend $100k converting an old ICE car to electric than give the auto industry another dime. The surveillance crap is literally a life or death decision for me. I have a 20y/o ice car I’ll likely have to convert, so no one try your dumb “new car math” with me.
If any fuckers want to make what I’m doing illegal, people will die.
Yes THERE is the issue that everyone seems to forget about new cars. I have a project car that I'm thinking will become an EV when it needs an engine because it will be so much easier to deal with. And it won't call home to the feds every day.
Old muscle cars converted to EV I think are so cool. There was a show that converted an old K10 truck and hid the batteries in the bed tool box.
A 80s station wagon, a Country Squire, or 70s luxury cruiser like a Cadillac or Lincoln would be awesome.
EVs, or just newer cars in general, are just so boring and cramped. Not to mention all the connection and surveillance concerns.
Boring, cramped, and almost impossible to see out of.
I think Ford straight-up sells an electric motor swap that will fit right in their older cars.
I have a weird little 4x4 that would be amazing if it were electric. I wouldn't have to worry about getting in a situation where the engine is tilted too much and it's simultaneously starving for fuel and oil.
Literally no one expects that of you. We just want the bootlickers to stfu and stop being part of the problem.
The difference between the cheapest EV and cheapest ICE is 7k currently, the savings on gas cover it.
The price difference between the car I have and an EV is considerably more than 7K. Also, 7K is quite a lot.
That's new, there is also used. But the fact is you can't compare it to your junker since, like I said, no one is asking you to switch right away.
The 7k seems like a lot but it isn't since you get it back quickly with the savings on maintenance and gas.
Except the comment I originally replied to literally said it was better for the environment to trade in my car rather than drive it until it dies.
Burning gas is so extremely bad that even throwing away your old ICE car and buying a new electric car is better than driving the ICE car until it „falls apart“.
Yes it is, and that's a step to take if you can, but no one is saying you are a bad guy if you don't.
It's being an oil industry mouthpieces that is the problem.
throwing away your old ICE car
But most people wouldn’t send their old car to the scrap heap, they would sell it on the secondary market to someone else (or a dealer, who would auction it into the secondary market). The old car would then continue to burn gas for likely many more years, until it “falls apart” anyway.
Stepping back, your old car may be the first in a chain of older (or more falling-apart) vehicles getting traded out, all the way down to one that really does get fully retired, or replacing one that was totaled in a collision. So choosing to keep it deprives someone else of its availability and thereby drives up used prices slightly.
For any study of this type of net effect, the authors need to pick a boundary for what gets considered. How many secondary market transactions do you study in that replacement chain, and what do those buyers substitute when the original ICE vehicle is not replaced with an EV? How far do you go in the pollution and other supply chain effects of manufacturing a new vehicle? I didn’t read a machine translation of your Swiss link, so I don’t know where the study authors drew the bounds, but I suspect it’s easy to choose and defend framing that supports either conclusion.
In my personal calculation, I can only see one step down the used chain, wherein my old vehicle would continue to be driven by someone else, so replacing it with an EV wouldn’t make a substantial difference. I love my old car with no surveillance, so I’m in no hurry to switch even though I’ll presumably buy an EV eventually.
Ultimately this is just one more example that that’s no ethical consumption within capitalism.
