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Comment by danans | Hacker News Reader

The more correct question is:

Liftime EV-Van Footprint = Production-Footprint(EV-Van) + Operational-Footprint(EV-Van, lifetime-miles-driven)

Lifetime ICE-Van Footprint = Production-Footprint(ICE-Van) + Operational-Footprint(ICE-Van, lifetime-miles-driven)

This calculation overwhelmingly favors the EV van, increasingly so as the carbon footprint of the operational electricity source itself reduces in footprint (i.e. increasing use of solar, window, nuclear, etc). Delivery vans in particular have a charging profile (late evening through morning) that matches the peak production of wind.

Note that the carbon footprint of petroleum use is strictly higher than even the highest carbon sources of electricity, and it has a high extraction cost also.

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I think it's clear the lifecycle calculation favors the EV, but I don't think it's night and day[1]. Likely the emissions associated with the manufacture of the ICE and EV vans are similar (the batteries in the EV may even make it a little worse). But there's no doubt that the EV is a huge improvement in use, and switching a large portion of the trucks in our cities to EV would be giant win for air quality. As you say, electricity generation can continue to get greener as well, unlike gas production...

1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20...

As I write this I'm on the 521 bus in central London. This bus is battery electric powered. I didn't even realise it was possible until I got on one.

The difference in noise alone is unbelievable. The elimitation of tailpipe emissions is a huge bonus in a dence city centre. Even if the lifecycle emissions are the same it would still be worth it.

The only thing I don't like about them is the torque and instant reaction of the motor make it easy for inconsiderate bus drivers to make the ride quite unpleasant.

It's one of these if you are interested:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Dennis_Enviro200_M...

>The only thing I don't like about them is the torque and instant reaction of the motor make it easy for inconsiderate bus drivers to make the ride quite unpleasant.

Seems easy enough to solve this with a fly-by-wire "throttle" and some software to limit max acceleration from a stop.

> 1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20....

That article compares the footprint of building a new car vs keeping and existing already built car, not ICE vs EV lifetime carbon footprint. The actual reduction in lifetime carbon footprint for an EV is around 50% vs and ICE, as described here:

https://blog.ucsusa.org/rachael-nealer/gasoline-vs-electric-...

Not sure if you'd call that night and day, but it's pretty huge.

> . But there's no doubt that the EV is a huge improvement in use, and switching a large portion of the trucks in our cities to EV would be giant win for air quality.

Indeed, and by consequence, it should reduce the rate of respiratory illnesses in cities caused by particular air pollution today.

That’s also at American grid levels, and most of the remaining emissions are down to fossil fuels on the grid. Eliminate fossil fuels from grid generation (France for instance is mostly non-fossil already) and the reduction from gasoline to electric is closer to 80%.

> (the batteries in the EV may even make it a little worse)

I'm not sure it makes it worse. Lithium is a common, non-toxic element that is easily recycle-able. Pound-for-pound batteries are "just" mostly replacing steel and lead (and oil-based lubricating fluids) ICE engine components, which can be toxic, sometimes nearly impossible to recycle, and produced in very unclean smelting, machining, (and refining) operations.

It's easy to forget that the electromagnet motors in an EV are not just a lot fewer moving parts than an internal combustion engine, but are a lot fewer parts entirely. The emissions savings in all those ICE parts is presumably pretty big given how huge the relevant supply chains themselves are. (Ever glanced at a Bosch parts catalog? And that's just one supplier of dozens.)

I've never seen a good breakdown of the emissions costs of a contemporary internal combustion engine and exhaust system, but that's a much better comparison versus the emissions associated with batteries than a lot of the current battery emissions breakdowns assume as if batteries were in addition to a traditional engine, rather than almost a full replacement for one.

> I'm not sure it makes it worse. Lithium is a common, non-toxic element that is easily recycle-able.

I think one of main constraints on battery cost is the price of cobalt, which is a conflict mineral. Some chemistries (like lithium iron phosphate) don't need cobalt, but a lot of the high-performing batteries do.

Cobalt is an off-product/"waste-product" of Nickel mines. Certainly, most of the world's Nickel mines are in questionably regulated locales such as Columbia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but Nickel is likely to continue to be mined whether or not the Cobalt those mines produce also gets sold to battery companies.

Cobalt is also presumed to be entirely recycle-able from most battery compositions, but is in such small quantities that it isn't today economically feasible (and so long as people are mining Nickel, unlikely to be).

If you used a programming language where you could only create (prod-footprint) and modify the state of (op-footprint) objects but you could never garbage collect them … what would you think of that language?

Don't you need + Disposal-Footprint(EV-Van) and + Disposal-Footprint(ICE-Van) tacked on to the end of both of your equations?

EV and ICE vans don't magically poof! into thin air once you're done with them.

Lifetime footprint seems like the wrong thing to measure, you want something more along the lines of lifetime footprint divided by distance travelled.

If X vans last 3x longer than Y vans, driving the same number of miles per day, they're an improvement over Y even if there lifetime footprint is twice as big.

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