Don't really know who the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) is but found an interesting article on the prime over at their website (https://www.aceee.org/press/2020/01/2020-hybrids-surge-greenest-car-list) Supposedly they look at the entire impact including lithium mining and other mfg impacts on environment and have ranked this little gem the least impactful vehicle in model year 2020 - over all pure battery vehicles - kind of makes sense to me once you factor in the mining impact as part of the equation - your mileage may vary I suppose. Reminds me of that Alex on Auto guys statement a while back that the best way to reduce fuel dependency would be to convert most vehicle to plug in or hybrid as you could put in 10 cars the battery pack it takes for one pure ev - interesting though for sure
yeah, i guess it depends on how you assess the impact of mining oil, and if they include renewables to power batteries vs gasoline requirement. i see they look at electrical generation, but is there a way to measure home solar production used to power bevs?
There's no free lunch, there will continue to a cost to the environment as long a humans want transportation. Humans just have to figure out how to minimize that cost.
I just run the numbers on gas consumption changes if I am to replace my current 2021 PP with a BEV. To my surprise, I will be using MORE gasoline if I switch my PP to a BEV. This happens because currently our PP is being used for a trip further than 100 miles. Those trips account for only ~5% of the total number of trips I have made on PP during the past 4+ years. However, the total distance of those over 100 miles trips is almost 30% of the total mileage put on the PP. The problem with switching to a BEV is that for those longer trips, we currently have no way to charge on the road. This means 30% of mileage that was driven by the PP will have to be driven by our second car, Pathfinder Hybrid. This second car, even though it is a hybrid, is nowhere as efficient as the PP. When I plugged in the mpg of the PathHy for 30% of the annual mileage driven by the PP, the total annual gasoline consumption increased by ~5%.
To me, this 15 min did a good job of explaining the balance we'll need in the out years to go full EV. Video compares Prius Prime, regular Prius, Model 3, Kia Soul EV, Volt, and Honda CRV.
