Putting a literal ton of rechargeable AA batteries into a car form factor just so you can move one person 20 kilometers is already the peak of insanity, so why not go the whole hog on craziness.
Look, if you want to complain that cars exist, fine. But they aren't going away, so we need to make them more CO2-efficient. Even if you could get rid of most cars, that wouldn't be enough, and it wouldn't be able to happen quickly enough to avoid electrification.
That could only be true if you lived somewhere with an old-fashioned grid that had no renewables. Using an electric car means C02 emissions per mile will continue to drop over time, as utilities add new solar and wind capacity.
Whoa, I've never seen this `#:~:text=` thing (apparently called "scroll-to-text"), but it seems to work on every page I try it on. How come I've never heard of this browser feature?
So, that's 180 kg of CO2 for enough lithium to make a large car battery. If your first quote is actually referring to 15 tons of CO2 per ton of lithium carbonate mined, then there's 63 kg of that, the mining of which causes about 945 kg of CO2 emissions.
Burning a gallon of gas emits about 9 kg of CO2. A car that gets 30 miles to the gallon will burn about 6700 gallons of gas over a 200,000 mile lifetime, resulting in 60,000 kg of CO2 emissions.
There are other environmental issues with mining lithium and cobalt and other energy costs involved in making the batteries, but CO2 emissions from mining is way down there on the list of things to be worried about.
That is until our primary electrical sources aren't releasing sequestered CO2 from the earth's crust, assuming we get there before destroying ourselves. A lot of people do own EVs thinking they're saving the earth while being ignorant to where their electricity is coming from. That doesn't mean EVs aren't going to help us get there in terms of clean energy.
This isn't true and you know it. Producing an electric car releases slightly more emissions than an ICE car, but as soon as you start actually driving them the EV has a far smaller carbon impact, even if your electricity is 100% coal (which it almost certainly isn't).
EVs are way more energy-efficient than ICE vehicles. Something like 80% of the energy from the gas you put in your car is wasted.
Why? And if not, why can't we apply your argument to other things, eg, coal power plants?
>Even if you could get rid of most cars, that wouldn't be enough, and it wouldn't be able to happen quickly enough to avoid electrification.
Estimates for the lifetime CO2 savings of EVs vary from 40% to 70%. Assuming the be best case (70%), the CO2 impact would only be the same as "getting rid of most cars", which you say isn't enough.
Comfort, convenience, speed, separation from other people, etc, etc. Changing the balance there requires significant investment in alternatives which doesn't seem to be forthcoming (at least in my country).
We can't apply the same arguments to power plants because we don't have to go to / see / interact with the power plant in order to use electricity. It just appears at the wall socket like magic. Where it comes from is functionally irrelevant to the consumer.
An electric car produces no CO2 over its lifetime. It uses electricity, not a fossil fuel.
If you are observing that electricity is currently being produced with some fossil fuels, I will respond that we should get rid of fossil generating capacity. This does not require getting rid of electric cars.
In the ultimate zero fossil fuel economy, we can still build and operate electric cars. This will not involve any release of CO2 whatsoever; do you imagine this would create carbon atoms out of nothing?
There are two things involved: CO2 emission inherent in operation and construction, and CO2 emission that just happens to be occurring today because of how the materials and electricity are presently generated.
The anti-EV argument is deliberate confusion of the former with the latter.
There is no inherent CO2 emission required in construction and operation of an electric car. This is unlike gasoline powered cars, where petroleum has to be involved in their fueling.
From a policy point of view, an EV that replaces a gasoline car is a good thing, even if there is at the moment some CO2 emission in the construction and operation of the EV. It reduces CO2 emission in the near term, while also pushing EVs down their experience curves to enable total replacement (and abolition of CO2 emission) in the far term.
Ignoring the fact that there are no renewable energy-powered EV factories, there are also plenty of industrial processes that inherently emit CO2. Steel manufacture first comes to mind.
By your same argument, I could say that there's no inherent CO2 emission required to manufacture petrol (as in, there theoretically is a way to do it).
>The anti-EV argument is deliberate confusion of the former with the latter.
I'm not confused about the distinction between the two. The pro-EV crowd seem happy to ignore the former, as long as it's far away, or could be solved by some as yet unimplemented technology.
Steel manufacture does not inherently emit CO2. The current CO2 emission is overwhelmingly from reduction of iron ore to iron metal with coke, but this can be replaced by reduction with hydrogen. Some carbon needs to then be added to the iron to make steel, but this is small compared to the carbon that was in coke, and is not an energy source and need not come from fossil fuels.
The pro-EV people are not ignoring the distinction here. Stop putting your lies in other peoples' mouths.
> Didn't realise these were valid arguments in the face of the Climate Catastrophe!
They're not even arguments.
I'm not saying that people should keep driving.
I'm answering the question "why aren't cars going away".
Unless you think that people just aren't aware that public transport / riding / walking is more environmentally friendly than driving, the only conclusion I can come up with is that people care more about the factors I mentioned than environmental impact (or at least, that time-discounting of delayed negative externalities is significant).
> It's by far the most convenient and quickest to burn coal.
For who? I'm talking about the factors that influence consumer choice, not producers.
This isn't a good comparison. A more appropriate one would be to compare the environmental damage, cost, and deaths due to cars to the "wall socket like magic" versus seeing a physical car on the road. You don't have to go to the hospital to see people who were maimed, and you don't really see the strip mining taking place to create cars, for example.
The person I replied to said (paraphrasing) "Why aren't cars going away? If they aren't, why can't you make the same arguments about coal power plants".
I'm saying:
- Cars aren't going away because they are much better than any available alternative for a large number of people from a short term perspective
- The same can't be said of coal power because electricity is electricity is electricity, there is no immediate difference, so the longer term differences have a greater impact on decision making
> We can't apply the same arguments to power plants because we don't have to go to / see / interact with the power plant in order to use electricity
My reading was that you were comparing physical presence of cars + coal plants and also the negative externalities of coal plants but not accounting for the negative externalities of cars.
But I may have misread and I apologize if I did :)
They're not going away because nobody is seriously talking about getting rid of cars because it makes no sense.
Figure out how to convince people to do it worldwide, figure out how to replace all auto transport with other modes, then build those alternate modes. I'll bet that will take longer and result in more CO2 emissions than electrifying cars.
We don't solve global warming by fantasizing about deleting cars, we solve it with good engineering and passable policy.
Frankly the limitations of electric cars might be a step in the direction of pushing out car culture. They’re more expensive, it’s not clear there are enough batteries for all the cars people want, and we may never solve the range problem. This might naturally push more people to public transit, albeit not all at once. The big issue in my mind is that public transit cannot be a solution _everywhere_, even if it could and should be greatly expanded.
The hybrid plug-in models seem like a very good solution in terms of practicality and efficiency. Most can go 40 miles atm, which is a commute for most. Eventually cutting out fossil fuel work commutes for those who can’t work at home, or even the weekly run to wherever would eventually have a significant impact.
E-bikes are a very good solution for trips not well served by public transit. And E-bikes do have manual transmissions, for those who like that sort of thing...
In some special cases a transmission may make sense on an EV.
Electric motors are very inefficient at low revs. Most cars don't spend much time at low revs with a lot of torque output so this doesn't matter. But a car like a jeep that may haul a high load at low revs up a hill may be more efficient with a transmission.
Of course you have to account for the weight of the transmission and its inefficiency as well to see if it makes sense overall.
IIRC the Tesla Roadster had a 2-speed transmission initially, due to engineering challenges with high-rpm bearings. But they struggled with the engineering challenges of high-torque transmissions, and eventually sorted out the bearing issues and went back to 1-speed.
For conversions you usually find an optimal reduction ratio for your motor and whilst you can reuse the transmission it’s fairly rare that you continue to operate it.
The article is about a fake transmission, but that's separate and mostly unrelated topic from whether other manufacturers might want to use a real transmission.
It's not terribly clear from the article, but the headline is false: Lexus isn't developing a manual transmission for electric cars, they're developing software and controls that mimic the presence of manual transmission.
I don't know why journalists think it's okay to engage in such blatant dishonesty. It's not just evo.co.uk:
Man, this is awesome. While my next car will be electric, I will be really, really sad to lose the clutch pedal. Shifting (with a clutch, paddle shifters are stupid) turns driving from a chore into a joy. Losing the clutch is going to turn driving 100% into a chore. I never thought a car manufacturer would actually make a fake EV shifter, and I'm still skeptical this will make it to market in any reasonably-priced car. But a convincing fake clutch pedal/shifter in an EV car would be a massive, massive checkmark in that car's favor.
I've driven a stick forever. But I won't miss the clutch or the clutch pedal. Less to go wrong. Adding some kind of fake clutch/shifter where one isn't needed only adds more failure points. One of the big advantages of EVs is the simplicity of the drivetrain. This would make it not so simple and thus more prone to breakage.
EDIT: Except, I guess in this case when it breaks the car will still function fine because it's not really connected to anything.
> But I won't miss the clutch or the clutch pedal.
More power to you! EVs are great and I'm thrilled to see them catching on. But every time I have to drive an automatic I just want to slide into an early grave. No rev matching, no heel-toe downshifting, no holding on to a gear a little too long on an onramp, no deciding whether to downshift up a hill or coast down a hill in higher gear. Autos leave you with only the most mindless parts of driving. Zzzzz. No wonder they're building TVs into the dashboard now.
I tried to explain this at friendsgiving a few weeks ago. I think roads have gotten wider (and speeds higher and vehicles bigger as a result) to make people feel safe because people feel more out of touch with their vehicles now. People can't parallel park, but if you parallel park a few times on a hill in a standard, you _know_ your car.
To be clear before I continue: I think all cars should go the way of the dodo and we can and should redesign our societies to not be dependent on them because we have the technology and resources to accomplish such a thing, we just waste them. Manufacturing electric cars IS NOT GOING TO REDUCE OUR FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have never understood how anyone could think that. You have to mine for the batteries, the metal, you have to smelt it, is all that green? What about the energy to smelt it? To charge it? What about the environmental impacts of Lithium refining? What about the oil needed for all the plastic pieces inside? We absolutely need to abandon cars and start thinking realistically about how to accomplish it _yesterday_.
But while we live on this highway to a mad max hell scape, there is an argument to be made for standard transmissions and their ability to keep the driver engaged and aware. There really is no time to text and drive, or a scenario where you can entirely check out while moving, as you will have to be aware of what your engine and transmission are doing. In an activity that breeds dissociation and distraction, while also demanding your full attention, a standard transmission is the fidget spinner that keeps you present. At least it does me.
> Manufacturing electric cars IS NOT GOING TO REDUCE OUR FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have never understood how anyone could think that.
I think you misspelled "eliminate". Some of the sources of total lifetime emissions from electric cars are different from sources of total lifetime emissions for ICE cars. It's reasonable to believe the sums won't be equal. Power plants don't have size/weight constraints of ICEs, so it's rather easy to get significantly higher efficiency out of them (plus economies of scale). It's not idiotic to think total lifetime emissions will be reduced by producing new EVs instead of new ICE vehicles. (Though, keeping an already manufactured ICE car on the road may likely be better than recycling the car and producing a new EV.)
A real transmission, whether manual or auto, would be useful for the same reason it is in an ice. (man it was hard not to say ice engine)
Lack of transmission is the main reason so many ev's have stupid 600+ hp ratings, it's required to brute force those times when what you really need is a low gear.
Especially hideous to think about is suv's and trucks crawling slowly up steep hills. That is just pouring unholy tonnes of current through the windings just to hold the vehicle almost still, and inch it forward against a totally inappropriate gearing.
And more every day, just every random acceleration like from a stop, with any load or tow load. Those are brief so I don't worry about cooking motors, but they are frequent and still need ridiculous overkill in the motor to emulate the normal functionality of any other vehicle when it comes to getting going from a stop.
That all is just to say that a transmission of any sort would be useful, and then the choice between manual and traditional hydralic auto and cvt is still the same choice as with an ice. The autos are more convenient and potentially more efficient through superior scavenging/shifting keeping the engine always in it's optimum, but the manual is more efficient through less loss in the train which robs overhead every second of operation, and fewer simpler parts cheaper to make and requiring less maintenance over time (even with needing a clutch once in a great while)
Except maybe not the same question as ice. An EV might actually be the one application where a cvt might not be terrible, because an ev can be programmed to strictly never exceed whatever threshhold will wear the band and pulleys too fast, and then you can actually get the value from the magic cvt infinite gears.
I too will miss manual transmissions, but I would prefer for manufacturers to lean into the strengths of the new tech, rather than make compromises to emulate the old. this kinda reminds me of how CVTs are often tuned to emulate a conventional automatic. it's always a poor imitation, and it undoes the entire point of a CVT: the ability to maintain optimal rom regardless of wheel speed. if I must drive a vehicle with a CVT, at least let me benefit from its strengths.
If this ABSURDITY will see the light I'll be finally convinced about Lebonian's stupidity of the masses...
Oh, BTW as an EV owner (seeing the crappiness level of modern connected crapware inside the vehicle perhaps user is a better term, since the OEM is the real owner) I found MANY issues in such vehicles, one I do not found is the pleasure of driving without "engine regime steps" with constant torque and so on.
Eye-rolling skeumorphism aside, the axial flux motor design has a power / torque / rpm profile closer to explosion-powered engine and could reasonably (?) be designed with an actual transmission. While axial flux motors are smaller than than induction motors, I doubt an axial flux motor + transmission can be more effective than an induction motor alone.
Combining it with an explosion engine is more interesting though. The 2023 McLaren Artura uses an axial flux motor fused with the engine to maximize total power production even through low acceleration parts of a track, by running the engine while decelerating to charge the battery then the electric motor kicks in to boost acceleration on the flip side. See Engineering Explained's video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICTi2Z_X5Kw
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 100 ms ] threadhttps://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-co2-emitted-manufac....
https://caniuse.com/url-scroll-to-text-fragment
Too bad it doesn't work on Firefox.
Estimates seem to vary, but this is claiming that there's about 12 kg of lithium in a 70 kwh Tesla battery: https://www.quora.com/How-much-lithium-in-kg-is-used-in-an-e...
So, that's 180 kg of CO2 for enough lithium to make a large car battery. If your first quote is actually referring to 15 tons of CO2 per ton of lithium carbonate mined, then there's 63 kg of that, the mining of which causes about 945 kg of CO2 emissions.
Burning a gallon of gas emits about 9 kg of CO2. A car that gets 30 miles to the gallon will burn about 6700 gallons of gas over a 200,000 mile lifetime, resulting in 60,000 kg of CO2 emissions.
There are other environmental issues with mining lithium and cobalt and other energy costs involved in making the batteries, but CO2 emissions from mining is way down there on the list of things to be worried about.
The efficiency of an IC car can be in the low 20%s. And cars burn a fuel with a higher C:H ratio than natural gas.
EVs are way more energy-efficient than ICE vehicles. Something like 80% of the energy from the gas you put in your car is wasted.
Why? And if not, why can't we apply your argument to other things, eg, coal power plants?
>Even if you could get rid of most cars, that wouldn't be enough, and it wouldn't be able to happen quickly enough to avoid electrification.
Estimates for the lifetime CO2 savings of EVs vary from 40% to 70%. Assuming the be best case (70%), the CO2 impact would only be the same as "getting rid of most cars", which you say isn't enough.
Comfort, convenience, speed, separation from other people, etc, etc. Changing the balance there requires significant investment in alternatives which doesn't seem to be forthcoming (at least in my country).
We can't apply the same arguments to power plants because we don't have to go to / see / interact with the power plant in order to use electricity. It just appears at the wall socket like magic. Where it comes from is functionally irrelevant to the consumer.
Didn't realise these were valid arguments in the face of the Climate Catastrophe!
>It just appears at the wall socket like magic.
It's by far the most convenient and quickest to burn coal.
If you are observing that electricity is currently being produced with some fossil fuels, I will respond that we should get rid of fossil generating capacity. This does not require getting rid of electric cars.
In the ultimate zero fossil fuel economy, we can still build and operate electric cars. This will not involve any release of CO2 whatsoever; do you imagine this would create carbon atoms out of nothing?
It just appears, fully-made and with no CO2 spent on its manufacture?
The anti-EV argument is deliberate confusion of the former with the latter.
There is no inherent CO2 emission required in construction and operation of an electric car. This is unlike gasoline powered cars, where petroleum has to be involved in their fueling.
From a policy point of view, an EV that replaces a gasoline car is a good thing, even if there is at the moment some CO2 emission in the construction and operation of the EV. It reduces CO2 emission in the near term, while also pushing EVs down their experience curves to enable total replacement (and abolition of CO2 emission) in the far term.
By your same argument, I could say that there's no inherent CO2 emission required to manufacture petrol (as in, there theoretically is a way to do it).
>The anti-EV argument is deliberate confusion of the former with the latter.
I'm not confused about the distinction between the two. The pro-EV crowd seem happy to ignore the former, as long as it's far away, or could be solved by some as yet unimplemented technology.
The pro-EV people are not ignoring the distinction here. Stop putting your lies in other peoples' mouths.
They're not even arguments.
I'm not saying that people should keep driving.
I'm answering the question "why aren't cars going away".
Unless you think that people just aren't aware that public transport / riding / walking is more environmentally friendly than driving, the only conclusion I can come up with is that people care more about the factors I mentioned than environmental impact (or at least, that time-discounting of delayed negative externalities is significant).
> It's by far the most convenient and quickest to burn coal.
For who? I'm talking about the factors that influence consumer choice, not producers.
The person I replied to said (paraphrasing) "Why aren't cars going away? If they aren't, why can't you make the same arguments about coal power plants".
I'm saying:
- Cars aren't going away because they are much better than any available alternative for a large number of people from a short term perspective
- The same can't be said of coal power because electricity is electricity is electricity, there is no immediate difference, so the longer term differences have a greater impact on decision making
My reading was that you were comparing physical presence of cars + coal plants and also the negative externalities of coal plants but not accounting for the negative externalities of cars.
But I may have misread and I apologize if I did :)
Figure out how to convince people to do it worldwide, figure out how to replace all auto transport with other modes, then build those alternate modes. I'll bet that will take longer and result in more CO2 emissions than electrifying cars.
We don't solve global warming by fantasizing about deleting cars, we solve it with good engineering and passable policy.
lol (sorry for not being funny to you)
jeeps Ev wrangler prototypes have been manual so far.
Electric motors are very inefficient at low revs. Most cars don't spend much time at low revs with a lot of torque output so this doesn't matter. But a car like a jeep that may haul a high load at low revs up a hill may be more efficient with a transmission.
Of course you have to account for the weight of the transmission and its inefficiency as well to see if it makes sense overall.
(It's not unusually for ICE vehicles converted to EV to retain a manual transmission, but conversions aren't being done in large numbers.)
The motor isn’t just connected to the drive train in 1:1 that won’t end up well for neither the drive train or the motor.
I don't know why journalists think it's okay to engage in such blatant dishonesty. It's not just evo.co.uk:
https://insideevs.com/news/625264/lexus-confirms-manual-tran...
Jalopnik at least puts 'manual transmission' in single quotes:
https://jalopnik.com/lexus-is-developing-a-manual-transmissi...
These are headlines are better:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/9/23501585/lexus-manual-tra...
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a42180807/lexus-built-an-e...
EDIT: Except, I guess in this case when it breaks the car will still function fine because it's not really connected to anything.
More power to you! EVs are great and I'm thrilled to see them catching on. But every time I have to drive an automatic I just want to slide into an early grave. No rev matching, no heel-toe downshifting, no holding on to a gear a little too long on an onramp, no deciding whether to downshift up a hill or coast down a hill in higher gear. Autos leave you with only the most mindless parts of driving. Zzzzz. No wonder they're building TVs into the dashboard now.
To be clear before I continue: I think all cars should go the way of the dodo and we can and should redesign our societies to not be dependent on them because we have the technology and resources to accomplish such a thing, we just waste them. Manufacturing electric cars IS NOT GOING TO REDUCE OUR FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have never understood how anyone could think that. You have to mine for the batteries, the metal, you have to smelt it, is all that green? What about the energy to smelt it? To charge it? What about the environmental impacts of Lithium refining? What about the oil needed for all the plastic pieces inside? We absolutely need to abandon cars and start thinking realistically about how to accomplish it _yesterday_.
But while we live on this highway to a mad max hell scape, there is an argument to be made for standard transmissions and their ability to keep the driver engaged and aware. There really is no time to text and drive, or a scenario where you can entirely check out while moving, as you will have to be aware of what your engine and transmission are doing. In an activity that breeds dissociation and distraction, while also demanding your full attention, a standard transmission is the fidget spinner that keeps you present. At least it does me.
I think you misspelled "eliminate". Some of the sources of total lifetime emissions from electric cars are different from sources of total lifetime emissions for ICE cars. It's reasonable to believe the sums won't be equal. Power plants don't have size/weight constraints of ICEs, so it's rather easy to get significantly higher efficiency out of them (plus economies of scale). It's not idiotic to think total lifetime emissions will be reduced by producing new EVs instead of new ICE vehicles. (Though, keeping an already manufactured ICE car on the road may likely be better than recycling the car and producing a new EV.)
Lack of transmission is the main reason so many ev's have stupid 600+ hp ratings, it's required to brute force those times when what you really need is a low gear.
Especially hideous to think about is suv's and trucks crawling slowly up steep hills. That is just pouring unholy tonnes of current through the windings just to hold the vehicle almost still, and inch it forward against a totally inappropriate gearing.
And more every day, just every random acceleration like from a stop, with any load or tow load. Those are brief so I don't worry about cooking motors, but they are frequent and still need ridiculous overkill in the motor to emulate the normal functionality of any other vehicle when it comes to getting going from a stop.
That all is just to say that a transmission of any sort would be useful, and then the choice between manual and traditional hydralic auto and cvt is still the same choice as with an ice. The autos are more convenient and potentially more efficient through superior scavenging/shifting keeping the engine always in it's optimum, but the manual is more efficient through less loss in the train which robs overhead every second of operation, and fewer simpler parts cheaper to make and requiring less maintenance over time (even with needing a clutch once in a great while)
Except maybe not the same question as ice. An EV might actually be the one application where a cvt might not be terrible, because an ev can be programmed to strictly never exceed whatever threshhold will wear the band and pulleys too fast, and then you can actually get the value from the magic cvt infinite gears.
Oh, BTW as an EV owner (seeing the crappiness level of modern connected crapware inside the vehicle perhaps user is a better term, since the OEM is the real owner) I found MANY issues in such vehicles, one I do not found is the pleasure of driving without "engine regime steps" with constant torque and so on.
Combining it with an explosion engine is more interesting though. The 2023 McLaren Artura uses an axial flux motor fused with the engine to maximize total power production even through low acceleration parts of a track, by running the engine while decelerating to charge the battery then the electric motor kicks in to boost acceleration on the flip side. See Engineering Explained's video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICTi2Z_X5Kw