> the environmental cost of producing a new electric car is WAY greater than the petrol I’m burning.

The environmental cost of producing an electric car happens once. But driving a car is an ongoing environmental insult. This is an apples/oranges comparison unless you integrate the driving damage over time.

This analysis suggests EVs are overall a win for the environment after 5 years of ownership, assuming your electricity comes from coal. If it comes from hydro or renewable sources, it's more like one year.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/when-d...

Ive driven 5000 miles since I bought the car as a panic purchase at the start of lockdown.

So according to that article it’d take 13.5 years of driving an electric car to pay it back.

You let me know an electric car that lasts 13.5 years and I’ll head on down to the dealership.

Otherwise I will wait out the remaining 8.5 years as best I can

Depends on where you are, but I think you have the wrong stats, unless you are in a place where all your electricity is from coal (pretty rare). Otherwise, for an average US mix, you only have to go another 3k miles or so to breakeven.

I think we are comparing different things here - I am talking about KEEPING a petrol car vs BUYING an electric car.

The stats from that article are about buying vs buying.

The cost of making a car are huge - something like 20 tonnes of c02. Vs my running cost of about 250kg per year.

If I BUY a new car it will of course be electric. But hopefully dumb. And definitely not a Volvo.

Oh, I see. Your 5000 mile car is petrol. FWIW I think the math still works to get a new EV, because it isn't like you are going to toss away the current car, but sell it to someone used. I think. It's tricky to work through.

Plus, I'm pretty sure EVs will easily last 13+ years, although we have few examples, but EVs are way less complex so they should generally last longer. Even batteries seem to be doing great at 10+ years.

If you don't agree it's apples and oranges, go buy a 13 year old Leaf for ~$3000. Unless you have a narrow definition of 'lasts' it checks everything you need.

Unfortunately I have a narrow definition of a car that’s big enough for a family of four, and the leaf is not!

> You let me know an electric car that lasts 13.5 years and I’ll head on down to the dealership.

What electric car won't? There are still 2010 Nissan Leafs on the road, and v1 Nissan Leafs had horrible battery lifetimes, lasting less than 100,000 miles. OTOH there are several Tesla's that have gone >500,000 miles on a single battery.

It doesn't take much driving for a new EV to balance out the environmental cost of harvesting, shipping, pumping, and burning all that petrol. As I understand it, about 20k km or 15k miles, on average.

This is comparing BUYING a new gas car to BUYING a new electric car.

I already have the gas car from 8 years ago.

From what I can tell keeping this is way better than buying any new car - of course if I do buy a new one it’ll be electric. But keeping an existing car uses way less co2 than buying a new one.

The markets for EVs and gas cars are fairly established, so your personal choice to keep fixing your car vs selling it to someone else who will fix it instead doesn't have a net change on the environment. Nor does your choice to buy a new car or a used car.

The only thing that matters, really, is whether you are personally supporting the oil market or the electric market, how much, whether electric generation in your area has a good mix of green sources, and your support for political willingness to embrace policy that identifies and prices-in the side-effects on the environment, such as eliminating subsidies for oil companies. It all boils down to your willingness to put your money where your beliefs are, which for some people is very hard to do, for some people is not very hard to do, and for some people the environment just doesn't factor into their decision making at all. Tragedy of the commons, or will enough people actually care? Those who have the means and the awareness, definitely should.

If I sell it to someone else, they will probably drive 10X-20X more than me.

My car mostly just sits there.

The most environmentally friendly car is a stationary car.

You cited fill time as a reason to keep your petrol car. Yet you claim you don't drive very much.

I think we're not talking about cars any more. I think we're talking about a security blanket.

It is still less environmental damage to keep an old vehicle on the road and not create a new one. Some cars can literally last forever (these models are well known) if they are looked after.

The scrap yards are btw filling up with modern cars quite quickly because people cannot afford to repair new cars, or the cars are uneconomical to repair even after minor collisions. Whereas a lot of old cars (pre-2010) can be fixed on your driveway with easily affordable tools.

> I also still get to feel smug because the environmental cost of producing a new electric car is WAY greater than the petrol I’m burning.

Citation very much needed.

Electric cars are still cars, and therefore terrible for the environment, but they do emit significantly less pollution over their lives and require a lot less oil to operate.

It’s not hard to estimate. The car is a sunk cost from 8 years ago.

I drive about 1000 miles a year. That’s about 250kg of co2 a year.

A new car uses something like 20 tonnes of co2 to make it.

So that’s 80 years of driving for me.

Obviously if I BUY a new car, it’ll be electric (but hopefully someone will have made a dumb electric car by then)

”I have to press a button on the key fob to open it so it can’t be stolen by relaying the signal.”

Having to press a button on the fob for it to transmit a code key via radio does not mean that the key cannot be captured with an SDR by someone close by.

Only a monotonic code as a part of the key can prevent replay attacks, and only proper encryption can hinder the code from being totally cracked.