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Comment by thecleaner | Hacker News Reader

Why is this not a welcome change even considering the supply chain difficulties ? The thing is combustion engine fumes make up for a tiny fraction of carbon emissions. The major part is from industrial production (like cement factories, steel plants etc.) In fact, electric vehicles will only help if the electricity powering it was generated from renewable sources which is a significant fraction in certain countries but not most. Considering these facts I guess good combustion is still a welcome change.

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>In fact, electric vehicles will only help if the electricity powering it was generated from renewable sources which is a significant fraction in certain countries but not most.

That statement is false. If an EV is run on electricity generated from coal only, the overall emissions output is close to that of a comparable ICE car [0]. Introduce some friendlier methods into the mix and your beating ICE by quite a margin.

The main source of emissions from an EV come from the manufacturing process. Even those can be significantly reduced when proper methods are applied.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/05/20/are-el...

> combustion engines fumes make up for a tiny fraction of carbon emissions

Not true. Transport (road/sea/air) accounts for 29% of US emissions. That’s hardly “tiny”. Of that, 59% is from light duty road transport. Burning fossil fuels for transport is a major contributor to global warming.

https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-...

ICEs are very inefficient. Even when powered by electricity from a coal plant, an electric car has less emissions than an ICE, simply because the coal plant burns coal more efficiently than an ICE. A more efficient ICE certainly helps, but coal to more efficient fossil fuels, like gas, helps even more. And many countries are rapidly moving to cleaner electricity.

But you're right that there are many other sources of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses. Those also definitely need to be addressed, but that does not mean car emissions don't need to be addressed as well.

Hmm. https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/ has transport at 15% and manufacturing at 12%.

Cement and steel are serious problems as the chemical processes inherently emit CO2, but they are also centralised and therefore possible spots for carbon capture and storage.

(There is some work done on reducing iron with hydrogen, but you do need a bit of carbon for carbon steel)

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