Yes its true. I do not have a source handy so I'll have to rely on some other HN commenter to help me out.

Basically the math works like this:

An internal combustion cars cost X tons of carbon to produce. An an EV costs Y tons of carbon to produce. If you need a new car, it will probably require the same amount of carbon to produce an EV as a combustion car. But if you can drive a used car and extend its life 5, 10, 15 years, you save all the carbon of producing the car (which is where the majority of the carbon cost comes from).

> I don't see the issue with rich people benefiting from it, because it's exactly those rich people buying 100K Teslas that are paying for the cost of driving research into better battery technology and cheaper cars so everyone benefits from cleaner air and reduced global warming.

I love investing in technology. However, there's probably more efficient ways of doing it. Every dollar spent to help the rich could have been spent helping the poor, or the environment, or funding research.

> 5, 10, 15 years, you save all the carbon of producing the car (which is where the majority of the carbon cost comes from).

False [0].

[0] https://group.renault.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/fluence...

Page 91, Figure 49: "Comparing carbon footprint of EV and ICE vehicles".

Up to 85% of the carbon footprint of a car comes from driving it. Heck, even a typical hybrid during its lifetime saves roughly 150% worth of its weight in CO2 emissions. Taxis easily double that figure.

Yep. Completely false. The in-use phase of ICE cars belches so much carbon that the car's construction phase carbon can safely be ignored in a first approximation of impact. The reason construction phase carbon is important in an EV is that it can be the only carbon that matters. When an EV is recharged exclusively from renewable sources, as many are, the use phase carbon is effectively zero. Which makes the construction phase important to measure, but the total lifecycle carbon impact of an EV can still be orders of magnitude less than that of an ICEV.

But used cars eventually do have to be replaced, and in the long run it is better to replace them with electric vehicles. It may not be an immediate net benefit but new cars are being built either way and increasing the percentage of new cars that are electric is better in the long run unless Y in your equation is greater than X + the total amount of carbon produced by a internal combustion car across its lifetime.

To be fair if you keep the EV long enough then it will work out to be better for the environment.

Though I can't find a reliable number for how many years that actually is and I'm not sure if the average person who owns an EV would even keep it that long...

Maybe not better in the long run. You need to overhaul the batteries (replacing dead cells can be done individually) every decade with current technology. You also need to overhaul a combustion engine (cylinder bore/hone, worn parts replaced, warped parts milled flat) every decade-ish, so their sustaining carbon costs are about the same. It's at least a lot closer than most people realize.

A PZEV (very low emission ICE vehicle) is the sweet spot right now in terms of overall environmental impact. It will be a few years before EVs are the clear winner.

One question is: what happens to the IC vehicles that don't get re-sold in their home country? Do they get shipped to other countries, or just junked? I live in the US and saw many older cars when I went to South America. Many were 25 or 35 years old.

So the question is what is the dynamic interplay between different markets for used IC vehicles? Should we be shipping 1995 Camrys to less-developed countries so they can junk their 1985 Camrys?

And then of course note that the 1995 Camrys probably get worse gas mileage than the 1985 Camrys because they have are heavier due to safety features....

2017 Camry: 40 MPG> for hybrid or 27mpg (2.5l) 2005 Camry: 25 MPG (2.4l) 1995 Camry: 23 MPG (2.2l)

Meanwhile the definition of "Camry" has changed - they are a lot larger, more powerful and more refined now. Note, for example the engine sizes going up as the MPG gets better.

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/findacar.shtml

Plus there's the environmental impact of strip-mining lithium for the batteries. This impacts hybrids as well as EVs.

Owning a Tesla (the current fad) or Prius (the previous fad) has long been about looking like you are environmentally conscious rather than actually being environmentally conscious. True lovers of mother nature ride the bus, train, or ride a bike.

Owning a Prius was about feeling good.

Owning a Tesla, from what I can tell, is about operating a truly excellent vehicle that happens to be electric.

The Mercedes-Benz S-class is a better car than the Model S in many ways (not all). A lot of people could afford either but buy the Model S because it is electric, not just that it happens to be electric.

Just a quick thought from someone that actually went shopping and drove both: The MB S-class beats the Model S in terms of luxury feel. Hands down. The Model S is faster. And quieter. But it does not feel as good as a MB at all. Before you ask, no, I ended up buying neither. I bought a Subaru Forester and an airplane for the same money.

The carbon footprint of mining and refining oil for gasoline certainly dwarfs that of lithium mining. Partially because there are a lot more ICE cars than EVs now, but also because gasoline is needed repeatedly over the lifetime of the car, while lithium is mined only once per car.

So basically, your argument only works if you assume that the people buying EVs would have either kept on driving their old cars OR sold their old cars and replaced them with a used car?

So now EVs are some kind of evil temptress?

I think I can do without reading that source now.

> I think I can do without reading that source now.

This is crazy, man. I'm just saying it costs less carbon to keep a used car. I'm not accusing EVs of "being an evil temptress".

A strong argument is that using an already existing car (buying used) is way better for the environment that creating a new car, regardless of the MPG.

Obviously if you play with the numbers (CO2 per mile driven, # of miles in life of car, CO2 per new car, expectation for expected reductions in total CO2 reduction by waiting if you want to get fancy) you can get it to tilt in either direction.

> The problem is that external costs like pollution are not being priced into the cost of ICE vehicles by, say, a pollution tax. This limited subsidy is a backhanded way of doing that.

Using the carbon offset market, you could offset 760 Tonnes of CO2 with $7500. That's the carbon equivalent of driving an ICE for over 2 Million miles.