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Although some people might prefer electric vehicles because they’re quieter and don’t require expensive stops at the gas pump, many EV drivers prioritize environmental issues. But are EVs really better for the environment than their gas-powered counterparts?
To better understand whether EVs are better or worse for the environment than conventional vehicles, we’ll examine how each type of vehicle is made, what it produces during its lifecycle, and even how it’s treated at the end of its life.
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Production
Manufacturing is messy. Not only does the assembly process consume power and emit greenhouse gasses, but the materials themselves have their own environmental implications. How a material is made or obtained affects the end product’s overall impact. Case in point: Lithium, the most critical component of today’s EV batteries, must be mined through environmentally risky processes. Each metric ton of mined lithium is estimated to require 500,000 gallons of water. Toxins from lithium salt evaporation pools tend to leach into surrounding water or soil, wreaking their own special havoc on plants, people, and wildlife.
When a single battery’s lithium has been refined, transported, and integrated into a 75-kWh EV battery pack, it will have emitted approximately seven tons of carbon dioxide. While carbon capture, alternative heating, smaller batteries, and other factors could reduce this figure, it’s certainly a lot.
Conventional vehicles don’t contain lithium batteries, so they don’t come with the environmental costs inherent to an EV battery pack. Their manufacturing process is similar to an EV without the battery—a lot of plastic, metal, and some glass, all of which must be made into parts and assembled at a factory. This process emits anywhere from five to 10 tons of carbon depending on the vehicle’s size, but this figure roughly remains the same for an EV of the same size (without including the EV’s battery).
Looking at each vehicle type’s production process, EVs emit more carbon than gas vehicles before even hitting the road. But what about after they’ve left the sales lot?
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On the Road
This one seems like a doozy, but it’s not. EVs might not have tailpipe emissions, but they do require electricity, the production of which sometimes emits its own greenhouse gasses. Only 39% of the world’s energy is generated via “clean” means like wind farms, solar panels, and nuclear power plants. While that’s more than ever, 61% of our energy comes from carbon-emitting means (AKA burning fossil fuels).
All this considered, the average EV is estimated to emit roughly 100 grams of greenhouse gasses (mainly carbon dioxide) per mile driven. That means if an EV clocks 200,000 miles throughout its life, it’ll have emitted 22 tons. Meanwhile, a gas vehicle is estimated to produce roughly 330 grams of greenhouse gasses per mile driven, thanks to its tailpipe emissions and the refining processes that create gasoline. If a gas vehicle clocks the same 200,000 miles as the EV, it’ll have produced about 73 tons of carbon and other greenhouse gasses.
This gap serves a significant purpose. An environmental study published last year found that by the time an electric sedan is 1.5 years old, its emissions have evened out with a gas-powered sedan of the same age. This timeline bumps to 1.6 to 1.9 years for SUVs and 1.6 years for pickup trucks, but the principle remains the same: It doesn’t take long after production for EVs and conventional vehicles to break even, and after that, EVs are ahead.
By the time an EV and its gas counterpart have reached the end of their lives, the EV will have emitted 52% less carbon, according to another environmental study. That includes all the emissions resulting from battery production at the outset. (The study also points out that transitioning the battery manufacturing process to 100% renewable energy sources would reduce production-related emissions by 27%, but that’s a long-term hope, not our current reality.)
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Disposal
This is more for the sake of inclusion than for any calculatory purpose. The disposal processes for EVs and gas vehicles look the same, except for the EV’s battery. The battery’s disposal doesn’t have the same harmful environmental impact as its creation; it can often be recycled and used in future EVs or other products. At that point, the most greenhouse gas emissions you’ll see from recycling are from transporting the battery to the recycling facility and shredding it into smaller pieces.
Because recycling old batteries is often more challenging than making new ones, most EV manufacturers do the latter. This means many EV batteries end up in landfills, even when they’re not supposed to. Unfortunately, the same goes for many other vehicle components, EV or otherwise; the concern with lithium-ion batteries is that they increase a disposal facility’s fire risk.
So which is better for the environment: EVs or conventional gas vehicles? If you base your answer on carbon emissions alone, EVs win by a landslide. If you’re taking a more holistic approach, though, the answer is a little tougher to land on. Drought and water and soil contamination— seen during the lithium mining process—are serious concerns, and it isn’t easy to forgive them just because they pave the way for lower carbon emissions. Urgency might help individual drivers make their own decisions: Greenhouse gas emissions are directly responsible for an increasingly dire climate crisis, while other environmental issues might not have the same immediacy.