this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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Yes. And a 13.6kW-hr battery (like in the Prius Prime) has 1/6th of the rare-earth metals found in the Tesla 80kW-hr batteries.
Because current battery technology is so dirty that it wipes out the gains you made from avoiding fossil fuels.
When the Silicon-Batteries and/or Sodium Batteries appear two years from now, I'll re-evaluate. But today, PHEV is cleaner.
https://www.aceee.org/greener-cars
Proof is in the pudding. Prius Prime, after accounting for "lifetime" emissions (which include the incredibly dirty mining process behind mining 80kW-hr worth of batteries instead of 13.6kW-hr), is far more efficient and environmentally friendly than a large number of EVs. Even EVs with small battery packs like the 40kW-hr Nissan Leaf
The issue with say, larger Tesla-like vehicles is that their battery packs are too big, too heavy, too redundant, and cause too much pollution during manufacturing. A Prius Prime has ~70% electrification in practice / 30% ICE, and the 30% ICE part is at over 50mpg. Once all the math / weight / costs / environmental effects are added up, the 800+lbs of extra Li-ion batteries from Tesla (and even smaller say ~500lb battery packs from Nissan Leaf) will easily out-pollute the miniscule amount of gasoline the Prius prime uses.
We need to re-evaluate EVs as different battery packs come out. LFP is much less pollution, but its also much less kw-hr and thus heavier per energy.
Their formula for calculating greenness drastically underestimates the impact of carbon emissions. That's the only reason there's a PHEV at the top of the list.
With all due respect, I think I'll take ACEEE's word over yours with regards to the environmental costs of NOx, CO2, PM, and other pollutants.
What do you know of the funding of ACEEE?
https://www.aceee.org/aceee-ally-program
Not a single car company, if that's what you're going for. State of California Energy Commission is one of the bigger contributors.