Do you have some data to back this up? It seems very unlikely that you’d save an entire vehicle’s worth of ecological destruction by moving from ICE to power plant.
The real answer is walkways, bike paths, public transportation, trains, remote work and to turn all of our freeways into green spaces.
Why would that seem very unlikely? What is the daily carbon output of a solar panel, wind turbine, hydro electric dam, or nuclear power plant?
> The real answer is walkways, bike paths, public transportation, trains, remote work and to turn all of our freeways into green spaces.
There are entire industries that can’t function without in person work. Talking about turning all freeways into green spaces makes you sound incredibly out of touch with the average American.
Walkways, bike paths, and public transit are great things. I wish they did more of that where I live. I’d rather not use cars when I have the option. But they will never be the solution. They should be a part of the solution.
Funny fact: here in france, in 2019 (so pre-covid), automobile were responsible for 10% of the petroleum consumption on the main land
10%, yes, just 10% (source: https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2119673)
The project to replace all cars by EV cars is a fraud. I'm sure not everybody will lose in that project. But don't worry : in the best case (which we know will never be anything but theory and dream), we will resolve 10% of the initial problem. Awesome!
"Carburants pour automobile¹" mean unleaded, and yes, 8.5/72.7 is .11 of the total petroleum consumption.
"Gazole" however mean diesel, and is 32.8/72.7 so .45 of the total petroleum consumption. Including buses, tractors and trucks btw.
>10%, yes, just 10%
As for your "scam," it doesn't exist. Nobody's claiming EVs can solve the entire sustainability problem all by themselves. That would be oversimplified, "Silver Bullet" thinking.
EVs are great, but they're just one part of a complete sustainable economy. "Necessary but not sufficient."
[edit: removed a faulty statistic in a tangent]
In the first paragraph of your link :
> In 2020, nuclear power made up the largest portion of electricity generation, at around 78%.[2] Renewables accounted for 19.1% of energy consumption.
There are certainly some other moral questions here, involving treatment of labour in places where, e.g., we mine for lithium, but those are a bit harder to quantify. The quantifiable aspects are pretty clear, and electric cars are the clear winner.
Even a compact vehicle goes through ~20 tonnes of fuel throughout its lifetime - that's an order of magnitude more than it weighs.
Fuel production in and of itself is an energy-intensive process, with crude being cracked into shorter chains of hydrocarbons at a minimum temperature of 450°C and, depending on the process, pressure of up to 70 atmospheres.
What's more polluting? Producing an appropriate number of solar panels and 350kg worth of battery, or cooking 20 tonnes of crude, which isn't even the whole process?
The graphs in this very article back this assertion up!
https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/El...
https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/El...
Here’s one study (of many), using only the then-current electric grid, which will become cleaner over time: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/comparative-l...
And live and die within 20mi of where you’re born?
In Europe university students travel hundereds if not thousands of kilometers to do exchange which can be done by train and many actually do. This is usually the most suitable and most likely time for someone to travel really long distances.
There are also those things called planes which many trains have an express line to.
Even medium speed rail enable people to commute distances like 80 km (50 mi) under 40 minutes, ~30 times each day. There are people who are doing that in my company.
As everywhere - there's a tradeoff between efficiency and latency. Sometimes it's not worth going all in with efficiency.
(Anyway, if we cave to this demand, getting rid of trains will be next on the docket. Remember when the green folks were all about EVs, until they started happening? And now it’s “no personal transportation”?)