It's official. EVs are much better for the environment than ICE cars.

Batteries can be reused, and then recycled.

Fuel is burned, and can never be recovered. Each gallon of gasoline is equivalent to 33.7kWh. So, our Bolt EV has a 1.78 "gallon tank". To go 238 miles, a Prius uses "160.4 kWh" equivalent of gasoline.

Referring to the latest UCS map, an EV in my area is equivalent to driving a 102MPG car - INCLUDING ALL the energy needed for both gasoline and electricity. That is using grid electricity.

Since we now have a 10.1kW solar PV array, and generate about 2/3rds of the electricity we use - our EV's are equivalent to about 306MPG.

 

First I am hearing them being recycled effectively. Source?

 

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1115941_nissan-sumitomo-open-electric-car-battery-recycling-plant-in-japan

 

Here is the thing. The generation of electricity and the manufacturing of batteries over time will improve regarding environmental issues. The issues involving manufacturing gasoline never will improve. And even though vehicle pollution is much less than it was, it is still an issue.

 

Fossil fuels are getting dirtier and dirtier - because the oil we get is lower and lower quality, over time. Tar sands bitumen is case in point.

 

I thought I had read that petroleum from tar sands is even worse than that; about 10:1?

I'm certainly no expert on the subject, but from what I've read, there is indeed a wide range of EROI on using petroleum from various sources to refine gasoline, diesel, kerosene and other fractional petroleum distillates. It's claimed that back when oil refining was new and "sweet" crude was easily found, the EROI was around 100:1. But with the easiest to get sources increasingly depleted, of late the average industry EROI has fallen to less than 20:1, and of course gradually gets worse every year. But different sources and/or experts probably have different estimates.

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I really don't understand why any reasonable person would buy into, or repeat, this rather obvious FUD. Making a battery pack for an EV (generally) happens only once during the lifetime of the car. Making a tank full of gasoline has to happen several hundred times over the average lifetime of a gasmobile.

The way EV-bashers write, you'd think that EVs were burning the batteries for fuel!

BTW, I don't know if this applies to all battery packs, but Tesla's battery packs have such low toxicity that they can legally be thrown into a landfill. So just what problem is it associated with disposal of EV batteries that we're supposed to be concerned about? I'm not quite sure this is just more FUD, but it sure looks like it to me!

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Very few are. Tesla has talked about recycling battery packs at its Gigafactory One, but has not yet started doing so. There is a pilot project by Nissan to recycle battery packs, but my understanding is that the percentage of Leaf packs which actually get recycled is quite low. Hopefully that will increase?

From March 2018: "Nissan, Sumitomo open electric-car battery recycling plant in Japan"

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Sadly, EV-bashing FUD is pretty widespread, and has been so for some years. There are powerful political and economic forces which -- correctly -- see the EV revolution as a threat to their cause or their income, or both.

Anti-EV FUD is so prevalent that someone has created a series of articles to debunk the Big Lies told by EV bashers. Here are a few excerpts from the first in the series of three "EV-Haters' Guide to Hating Electric Cars" articles:

Electric vehicles are a sales flop and a dismal failure. Or so I was told this week—and last week and the week before—by respected newspapers.

The “sales flop” part surprised me, since I am one of thousands of people waiting in line to buy my electric vehicle...

Maybe these folks are just too busy to check their facts. Or, maybe something else is going on...

Whatever the reason, the media often has an irrational disdain for electric vehicles (EVs). And a similar disdain is common among the general population too. The same EV-hating arguments are repeated ad nauseum in the media. After analyzing the key arguments of the EV haters, I have compiled what I believe is the first-ever EV-Hater's Guide to Hating Electric Cars. If you really hate EVs—and you know who you are—then this Top 10 guide is especially for you.​

The first of the series can be found here: "The EV-Hater's Guide to Hating Electric Cars" by Steve Harvey.

That was written back in 2011, and the EV bashers are still using the same tired and long-discredited arguments in their FUD!

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Tar sands bitumen is nasty stuff - highly corrosive and abrasive, and much harder to transport, and to refine. And you get a fraction of the gasoline per volume - and a lot more tar. The tar sands operations look like Mordor.

The other nasty oil is the fracked stuff in the Bakken oil - it out-gasses as it is transported, and is what was causing all those trains to explode.

All of these extraordinary oil extraction methods - are proof that we are addicted.

 

I just posted that link so we could know what the opposition is saying in order to be able to logically refute it which several posts above have done so eloquently.
There is just no way (even taking into account life cycle costs and environmental impact) that my Clarity cannot be better in sum total over a traditional ICE vehicle. You can’t argue with no gas consumed or combustion products emitted out the tailpipe in over 3 months, even taking into account how the electricity was produced.
And no one has even mentioned the increase in earthquakes and aquifer contamination caused by hydraulic fracturing (fracking). Or the reduced use of fossil fuel for less frequent oil changes and parts replacement (no fan belts, brakes last almost forever, etc.).
So I say, “soup to nuts”, ICE bad, hybrids better (till BEVs evolve), and solar best (until fusion comes on line; and even then you have to balance rare earth metal vs heat pollution).
I’ve been a card carrying conservative pragmatist all my life, but even I know the ICE has had its hay day and will and must be phased out at some point.

 

Here’s an article on how EVs will reduce the demand for oil.

https://apple.news/Abw-H5_B0SCa5A_a8dMrInw

 

Another interesting article that says what almost all of us know from our less than stellar experiences at the dealerships.

EVs Can't Change the World Until We Change How We Sell Them

https://apple.news/ABNekE_b6Q-y8tAr5Qof9OQ

 

More than a few times I have thought to myself that I should get a job at a dealership so they would have someone who knows something about ev's and phev's. Then I slap myself across the face and come to my senses.

 

ROTFL!!


Yeah, I don't think the stealership dealership model needs to be changed from the inside. It needs to be rendered obsolete by being abandoned in favor of direct sales, cutting out the middleman. (And as a Tesla fan, I'll add that this is what Tesla is doing. Hopefully other auto makers will follow suit.)

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I
Even more evidence that
Pushmi-Pullyu and loomis2 are on to something:

http://www.thedrive.com/news/21061/dealers-discourage-consumers-from-buying-electric-cars-study-finds

 

Quoting from the article you linked to:

The study goes on to report that dealers appeared to ultimately be dismissive of electric cars or even completely avoided talking about them entirely. When the dealer did talk about EVs to the customer, the information given regarding vehicle specifications was often wrong or geared toward swaying the consumer into purchasing a fossil fuel powered vehicles.
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While I'm perfectly happy to participate in dealership bashing -- I think most people hate the hassle of haggling with a salesman who is interested in parting you from as much of your money as possible, not finding what's best for you -- to be fair, there is a good reason for legacy dealership car salesmen to talk up their gasmobiles and not their EVs; a reason that isn't part of any evil conspiracy to keep burning fossil fuels and keep adding to global warming. The problem with a salesman promoting an EV is that to persuade the customer that an EV is better than a gasmobile means denigrating all or nearly all of the other cars he's selling. So, if the potential customer decided he'd rather not have that EV, then the salesman would be faced with the task of trying to convince the potential customer that everything he said about gasmobiles didn't matter.

* * * * *

CAR BUYER: So I've heard about this Bolt EV, but I don't know much about electric cars. Can you tell me why those are better than gas-powered cars?

CHEVY SALESMAN: The Bolt EV, like other electric cars, is much cleaner in many ways; it has no harmful or polluting emissions, and in fact has no tailpipe at all! You never need to add oil to the motor, either. The electric drivetrain gives you instant response and acceleration when pulling away from a traffic stop, even better than the most powerful gas-powered sports car. And they are very quiet, with almost no noise at all from the electric motor! You can conveniently charge them up at home by plugging into the wall, saving money over buying gas, and no need to visit the gas station every week.

CAR BUYER: Well, I don't know. Electric cars are such a new thing, maybe I'd better stick to a gas-powered car.

CHEVY SALESMAN: I can put you into a new Equinox SUV or a Malibu sedan today! Or if you'd like something sportier, we've got the top-rated Corvette Grand Sport and Corvette Stingray.

CAR BUYER: But didn't you just say that gas-powered cars are sluggish? Not to mention polluting, noxious, noisy, dirty, and both inconvenient and expensive to fuel?

CHEVY SALESMAN: Ummm... well, that is...

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Agreed. The most basic problem is that 99.9 of all dealership sales people are not on your side; just on the side of their commission, i.e. close the deal and move on to the next one. I can’t even see that most are looking for repeat customers as I’ve yet to see the same sales person at my local dealers after 10 years. They seem to move around or leave the business frequently. And my 3 local Honda dealer sales people knew practically nothing about the Clarity. I basically sold the car to myself and had the sales person point me to the finance guy to do the paperwork.

 

At this point in time most customers are interested in ICE cars so I would expect the dealer to cater to their whims, but there are customers that are interested in these new ev cars, so I would also expect the salesmen to cater to those customers as well, not actively talk them out of it and admit they don't know anything about ev cars so they can't even answer basic questions (both of which happened to me at a local Chevy dealer). A sale is a sale, right?

 

Not when it comes to selling EVs vs selling gasmobiles. Let's not forget that dealerships make most of their money on service, not on selling cars. Do you imagine dealerships would just as soon sell you an EV, when they have on average 40% less service costs? The average dealership would much rather sell you a gasmobile, so it can make more from you in future visits to its service department.

Dealership sales managers often tell their salesmen to "steer" customers into buying whatever model(s) the manager wants to promote this month or this week. I think that's pretty common, regardless of what dealership it is.

The movie "Glengarry Glen Ross" is pretty enlightening in showing just how much pressure some dealership sales managers put on their salesmen. A quote from the movie: "...we're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired."

I'm not saying every dealership is run that way all the time, but I don't think there's anything in the movie that doesn't happen in real life at some auto dealerships.

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