Source: Analysis: When do electric vehicles become cleaner than gasoline cars? | Reuters The model was developed by the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago and includes thousands of parameters from the type metals in an electric vehicle (EV) battery to the amount of aluminium or plastic in a car. Argonne's Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions and Energy Use in Technologies (GREET) model is now being used with other tools to help shape policy at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California Air Resources Board, the two main regulators of vehicle emissions in the United States. Jarod Cory Kelly, principal energy systems analyst at Argonne, said making EVs generates more carbon than combustion engine cars, mainly due to the extraction and processing of minerals in EV batteries and production of the power cells. The cost to making batteries includes the 'formulation' step that is a series of charge-discharge cycles in a thermally controlled environment. Traditionally, this has increased the amount of CO{2} attributed to building an EV. However, Tesla has a new patent that substantially reduces this battery manufacturing CO{2} cost: Bob Wilson
Be careful with that title and quoted text. It is easy to misconstrue. My comment is not aimed at bwilson4web and I'm not saying he misunderstands, but this topic can be reported in a confusing way, so maybe the following will help: Emissions for light duty vehicles is computed in two parts, the vehicle cycle and the fuel cycle. The vehicle cycle accounts for emissions related to building the vehicle. When you buy the vehicle, those emissions are already in the air. The fuel cycle emissions are those from making fuel, whether gasoline or electricity, and using it in the vehicle. Fuel cycle emissions accrue over the life of the vehicle. What Jarod Kelly is saying with "making EVs generates more carbon than combustion engine cars" is with regard to the vehicle cycle *only.* More emissions go into the air to put an EV on the sales lot than an ICE. Some people misunderstand this to mean that EVs are worse than ICEVs overall, but that is not what is being said. Now start driving them. Depending upon where the car is operating, after some amount of driving, the sum of the vehicle cycle plus fuel cycle (over the miles driven) will be LESS for the EV than for the ICE. That's ballpark 10,000 miles. Considering a lifetime of about 100,000 miles, the EV has lower "well to wheels" emissions with today's grid and EV technologies. If you buy an EV, drive it 5000 miles and total it, well then you'd have been better off buying an ICE. The comment about reducing CO2e during battery processing means that the breakeven can come even sooner (fewer accumulated operating miles).
Having watched the YouTube "Battery Day" presentation and several others, it became clear this energy deficit was associated with current LiON battery manufacturing. A big part being assembly with the electrolyte followed by 'formulation' where the initial charge cycles occur. However, Tesla is pioneering in faster, lower energy LiON cell manufacturing: dry electrode forming - so instead of a paste with the electrolyte that requires days of handling, the cells are manufacture in hours or less. automated formulation - the energy needed for the initial charge/discharge cycles is fed into the machines handling this process. No humans needed unless the machine breaks. Tesla is very clever at optimizing manufacturing which suggests less energy, lower cost, and improved performance. Bob Wilson
Let me see what I can find. I thought emissions largely happened upstream during mining and processing, especially if any electrochemistry is needed for separations. I'm out of date on the details of this (and have forgotten a lot). One of the "grand daddy of them all" reports is https://greet.es.anl.gov/publication-c2g-2016-report but there will be updates to backfill into that in subsequent years by going up to the https://greet.es.anl.gov/publications link or to the broader literature. Also, it can be hard to get a birds eye view of this as reports often are at the process level and it can be hard to find the integrated pathway result. If I don't get back to you, poke me, but I'll look.
