EV vs ICE vehicle comparison

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Some sources on the environmental impact of ICE vs EV vehicles:





Couple of interesting things about these links:

1. They are the first 4 Google results when searching for ICE vs EV environmental impact, they are not cherry picked links that prove a point. I could keep going but I'm on mobile so I have to decode these Google amp and PDF links and I couldn't be bothered, but you are welcome to count the number of results you need to skip to find one that says otherwise, and

2. You raised battery manufacture. Link number 4 above points out that Australia is the biggest lithium producer in the world (by a mile, actually, we produce 2.5x what our next largest competitor Chile does). So next time someone spins you a story that lithium batteries are mined by children in Sierra Leone or whatever the narrative is, question it. I don't see huge opposition to Australia's gold or iron ore exports but Lithium is a no no, you'd rather use oil sold by middle eastern countries and refined in Asia on an ongoing basis because battery production using Lithium mined in Australia is an automatic no no?

And then there's this, renewable production of Lithium, a whole new industry which has cropped up.


So writing the technology off at the start of the cycle is pretty silly, we haven't even been given time to innovate yet. Tesla has done a lot for sustainable battery production technology already because it is critical to success long term. As EV penetration moves mainstream, new chemistries, technologies and approaches are inevitable. Anyone who says this is as good as it's ever going to get is as wrong as a person can be.

If you were an ancient old industry with no chance of drastic improvement looking at a game changer, you'd be trying desperately to poke holes by playing on people's natural instincts to write off something unfamiliar too. But as it becomes mainstream, you lose that ability. If there's one thing youtube is good at, it's archiving those brilliant old "the internet? that will never catch on" videos. I can assure you views like these will be the modern equivalent soon enough. Bet you have a smartphone today, hey? (the one with the dirty Lithium battery no less 😬)..."I just need something that makes calls, I already have a computer" etc etc. It's a script I've seen play out over enough cycles already.

And hey you all know where to find me if you want to come back in 5 years and tell me I was wrong. I am certain this thread will age just fine, hydrogen vehicles and all.
 
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I'm certainly not about to buy an EV but happy to drive a hybrid.
But the world is definitely in love with EVs and the problems of mining are well known
So I for a change beat the crowd so invested in VUL-lithium.
EMN-manganese

AXE and AOU cobalt.
Especially with VUL have done very well.
 
Just purchased a BMW X3E PHEV (New).

Getting around 50km battery only but more importantly getting around 78mpg (3L/100km) on my daily commute.
 
Well, having owned one since Sep 2019 and having hung out in the various Facebook groups I've never, ever heard of this. Anyone can join the groups, I suggest you do if you have any interest for real, since YouTube is nothing but glorified clickbait these days.

There's also all the forums out there if Facebook isn't your cup of tea. If you had an actual forum thread of someone having to shell out $15k for maintenance I'd be reading it with great interest but vague references in YouTube videos are generally as useful as they sound.
I dig up the reference for you. Especially to the T3, where it was actually repaired for $700 after Tesla quoted many thousands.

Everything is click bait, even here….
 
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I dig up the reference for you.
Please do. Keep in mind that the Model 3 comes with an 8 year / 160,000km warranty for battery, which is the only component I could imagine approaching 15K in cost unless it was major chassis damage, and the Model 3 was only released in late 2019 so you can see why this doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
 
Here's the two. Now the first is a largely entertainment, but it does ask some interesting questions. The second shows that major damage is not necessary...

I'm not anti EV by any means. As I said previously, I tried to make the T3 work for me. I'm also happy to admit that non EV car makers are doing their best to make their cars non repairable. It's nevertheless interesting, and perhaps becomes a question that will dramatically affect second owners, or perhaps old farts like me, who probably don't have too many new cars left in them.


Sadly it's mostly people talking, but the repair starts at 13:55.

If nothing else, it's telling us that we'll need a new form of Ultratune.
 
Thanks for those links, @jb747. I'm just sort of reserving a slot here to give some feedback as a Tesla owner, but I'm also busy building a shed this weekend so have only had a chance to watch one so far, and I was pretty underwhelmed, so wanted to make a suggestion.

I think I can find you a better video on the same subject than your first video that is absolutely not more favourable to Tesla but is more factual and less able to be put down to clickbait which is absolutely how I class the first video I've watched that you've linked to. The youtuber I am referring to I highly respect and I agree entirely with their views on Right to Repair and agree Tesla has some way to go on this - Louis Rossmann.

The problem with the first video is simple. This guy bought a 2013 Model S, it threw up a battery error, he did not take it to a Tesla service centre or order mobile service (he claims he can't... I've never heard of a report of no mobile service in AU and I suspect it's just as unlikely in the US) but he's predicted he'd be charged... in his words "15K? 17K? 20K?" by Tesla for a new battery so he took it to Rich Rebuilds because he somehow knew it was just a loose wire.

Without Tesla even looking at it I don't think you can claim it would have been a battery replacement. They'd have just plugged the wire in too. What Louis and Rich refer to in their video is a completely different scenario, where minor damage occurred to a battery - which makes a lot more sense. Sorry, but that first video was like nails on a chalkboard - so many dubious claims.

The way he described "battery gate" was so laughably wrong - Tesla released a software update for a specific battery pack in older Model S cars which detected that they had built up dendrites within the battery and then scaled back the speed of supercharging until they could be replaced. It only affected one single battery pack and was entirely intended to do so to reduce risk of a fire.

His claim was that a software update went out over the air which destroyed a bunch of batteries. He states that his wife went from a Tesla back to an ICE vehicle because they installed a power socket but it wasn't near where they park the car at one of their houses?? He's got less knowledge than 95% of Tesla owners so listening to him cough on is just painful.

Here's an article on what really happened: Tesla owner lawsuit claims software update fraudulently cut battery capacity

Anyway, this and your second video are the two videos I'd personally invest my time in watching. I assure you they won't be friendlier to Tesla - Louis goes in hard on companies like Apple and Tesla who make it difficult to repair their products by not making parts easily available. I hope pressure and the Right to Repair legislation that Louis himself (and Steve Wozniak of Apple fame) have pushed and which are being legislated by Biden's government fix it across all industries: Biden's right-to-repair order is good news for people who always break their phones

Ultimately, what both Louis and Rich do is to own repair shops which cheaply and effectively fix devices that have faults rather than expensive part replacements that the manufacturers do because they're too lazy and swapping it out is much more economical for them. It's the difference between getting your iphone fixed by Apple or the repair shop at the mall. They exist today and I'd use Louis / Rich or their local counterpart anyday if I had an issue that was not covered by (or was outside of) warranty or insurance.

Here is the video I'm referring to:

 
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Will not even consider one. Issues with batteries, how batteries are made, where the materials for batteries are mined and how they are mined and so on, people seem to think that the batteries just appear, along with the electricity to charge them. :)
This also is a major factor for me as well.


More than happy to wait for hydrogen, even if it is a hyundai.


33kft's already inundated you with information so I won't pile on the sources. But regarding your generalistic views of BEVs (you didn't really make specific arguments or cite specific sources, so I'm just calling your argument for the spade that it is), the simple and inconvenient truth is that if you're worried about the impact to the environment, you're better off walking/cycling/catching public transport. Nobody that's done serious research in to BEVs is so ignorant as to think that batteries just 'magically appear' and have minimal impact. That's quite presumptuous on your part.

Buying a car is going to have a massive environmental impact whether it's a BEV, hybrid or ICE. However time and time again it's been shown that if you're going to have to buy a car, then from an environmental perspective the net win (i.e. total life cycle) goes to the BEV. I'm not an EV fanboy however - I think if you can get a good price on a 2nd-hand ICE, that is probably the more sensible financial decision for you. Though with the used car market the way it is atm...

Yes, mining for BEV materials is a big problem that isn't shared by ICEs, but companies like Tesla actively work on reducing the impact of this (the biggest offender - cobalt - is something they're working on phasing out entirely), and presumably I don't need to get into all the areas where ICEs aren't exactly sunshine & lollipops.

Hydrogen has its own challenges, primarily scaling: if you think ease of charging accessibility for BEVs is a problem, just wait till you see how easy it is to refuel your Toyota Mirai's fuel cells. I don't think the problem won't be solved - I'm sure it will be. You say you're willing to wait - are you willing to wait 10-15 years? After all, the first Teslas came out in 2012 and if in 9 years the EV charging infrastructure is presumably still not your cup of tea, then a decade+ of waiting for hydrogen's fuelling infrastructure to spin up seems fair? For what it's worth, even as a BEV owner, I'd be up for hydrogen if the point on scaling were to be resolved and assuming similar prices, and no material lags on key specs.

Last point on battery fires: ironic, when people are OK commandeer a vehicle sitting a handful of inches away from a box whose job is to literally make thousands of small explosions a minute using a fuel source that is the literal concept of 'flammable' in many people's heads. BEV fires are their own special kind of bad and harder to put out, but I wonder why nobody makes a big deal about the nearly 200k car fires (the vast majority which are obviously not from EVs) in the US every year?
 
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Here's the two. Now the first is a largely entertainment, but it does ask some interesting questions. The second shows that major damage is not necessary...

I'm not anti EV by any means. As I said previously, I tried to make the T3 work for me. I'm also happy to admit that non EV car makers are doing their best to make their cars non repairable. It's nevertheless interesting, and perhaps becomes a question that will dramatically affect second owners, or perhaps old farts like me, who probably don't have too many new cars left in them.


Sadly it's mostly people talking, but the repair starts at 13:55.

If nothing else, it's telling us that we'll need a new form of Ultratune.

I will admit the FUD (some of it probably true, some of it likely not) surrounding Tesla, which is probably the most polarising car company - if not company - in the world right now, doesn't help. Even as a MS owner for 3.5 years, I can't help but get the impression that I'm going to be up cough's creek with respect to getting repairs/parts if I ever get into a major accident that requires it. Obviously this is just my 'impression' as I've never needed it - and I bloody sure hope some minor rattles remains the biggest problem I've had to deal with.

It's hard to get objective, statistically significant data about this stuff but the absolute best I've seen so far has got to be this: Bloomberg - Tesla Model 3 Survey.
 
Not interested in arguing, I do know a bit about evs, but they are not for me, ymmv

A friend in NZ who is a former much underrated WRC driver has been building this over the last couple of years, it is an impressive beast!

 
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