Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzz
Zero emmission passenger vehicles are one of the least financially efficient ways to reduce emissions. It's a feel good thing, but pretty low impact. Personal vehicles sit idle 95% of the time. Buy a small efficient gas vehicle or hybrid if it means that much. Subsidizing these for the wealthy is even dumber. It would make way more sense to subsidize businesses who's dirty diesels drive all day long in urban environments, if governments cared about reductions and not feels.
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“Zero emission” is also quite misleading, it’s zero
tailpipe emissions because the manufacturing process of the vehicle is considerably more carbon intensive than ICE vehicles. That’s not to mention that much of the power generation required for the electricity to power the cars also comes from fossil fuels, or even the manufacturing process of the renewables used to generate the electricity (solar panels, wind turbines, etc.)
It generally takes a couple years of driving the EV to offset the additional carbon emissions generated by the initial manufacturing process. That also doesn’t consider the environmental and social issues with the mining process required for the construction of batteries, solar panels, etc.
Like you say, overall it’s more of a feel good thing, and while it does make a difference and I do think EVs are great vehicles for the daily driver, the impact is lower than what people generally think.