You decided to zero in and fixate on weight alone? The conversation is weight along with range/efficiency, emissions and lifetime maintenance. Yes, some cars weigh less… which also means they have less electric range. You also think an American lobbying group is your shining example of integrity in their endorsement?
No. I use ACEEE’s numbers because they factor into:
Many factors determine the environmental impact of a car or light truck. Tailpipe emissions and fuel efficiency are clearly important, but impacts also depend on the type of fuel used and the materials that go into manufacturing the vehicle. A scientific approach for estimating the environmental impacts of a product is known as lifecycle assessment, since it traces the impacts of a product from “cradle to grave”: materials production and product manufacturing; emissions and other effects when the product is in use; through end-of-life effects of disposal and recycling. We developed the green scores and class rankings according to the principles of lifecycle assessment, using available data that are sufficiently standardized to be applicable to all makes and models.
Four types of vehicle-specific data form the basis of the ACEEE’s ratings: tailpipe emissions, given by the emissions standard to which a vehicle is certified; fuel economy, based on EPA test cycles; vehicle mass (curb weight); and battery mass and composition (for hybrids and plug-in vehicles).
And #1 vehicle after their analysis is the Prius Prime and Prius respectively. Weight is one factor, but there’s other factors (such as Tesla’s use of NCA chemistry for their Li-ion) that drops Tesla down severely compared to cleaner chemistries from other companies. But even when we look at the best EVs on the market for environmentalism (such as Nissan Leaf or Ioniq 5 or whatever…), the Prius reigns supreme from above.
You focus in on tesla as your main example of EV maintenance - they are a known bad actor generally, in a walled garden that gouges cost for every single thing and lives near exclusively to cater to out-of-touch tech bro class and their families on corporate expense accounts.
Prius beats even well recognized brands and environmental cars like Nissan Leaf on ACEEE’s study.
There are also cheap economy-cars / hybrids, such as the Toyota Corolla Hybrid and Accord Hybrid (not in the top 10, but still a score of >60) that are popular and green choices despite using gasoline as their primary transportation, because tailpipe emissions aren’t the only environmental effect at play here. When Hybrid / ICE cars reach 50mpg (or high 40s, like the Accord Hybrid), tailpipe emissions start to matter less-and-less, and yes… weight of the car starts to matter more and more (particulates from tires wear becomes the #1 pollution factor on EVs). There’s also significant issues with how dirty the mining industries are to make EVs (Lithium, Nickle, Cobalt, etc. etc.) And a lack of recycling today. Meanwhile, Steel is 90%+ recycled in the auto-industry, making for some of the most environmentally friendly manufacturing in practice.
There’s a lot of little things that add up. EVs are not the silver-bullet that EV fans think they are, but I’m glad that EVs have brought efficiency to the forefront of the minds of people. But we need to think holistically: what is the best path forward that overall reduces pollution (including CO2) from our system?
The answer may surprise you, especially if you’re one of the people tricked into the EV-only mindset. There’s many other technologies that are competitive.
Those ACEEE numbers are predicated on placing an economic cost on pollution. If you assign a larger price to the pollution, even the PHEV’s fall right off the chart. The E in their name stands for “Economy”. They’re focus is framing clean as a function of the economy. In their model, you can kill a bunch more people and the price of pollution only goes up a little. They even say they’ve left that number constant since 1998. If you value pollution in a logarithmic scale that gets way worse as time goes on, it becomes obvious that the only acceptable vehicles are the ones that have negative pollution costs. Since we dont have vehicles that can remove pollution from the air, getting one that gets as close to zero is the best bet. Right now, EV’s get the closest to zero.
Say we proceed with the premise that the lobbying group you link is valid, you still share it there, black and white on your cited chart - 4 of the top 5 vehicles on their list, the vast majority, are EVs. You just have tunnel vision for the one outlier PHEV. I’m sure the Prius is fine AND I’d need to pay for maintenance on BOTH an ICE engine, related non-EV components and a full electric infrastructure for the life of that vehicle if I purchased it over an EV.
Electrical engineer degree but I’m doing software now.
I’m not against EVs. I’m against y’all bad-mouthing PHEVs and Hybrids when they still constitute the top of the green lists with our current level of technology.
I recognize that better batteries are coming next year and soon Silicon or Sodium batteries will be even better after that. But tomorrow is not today. People making decisions need to make decisions based on today’s level of technology.
If all the cars available today, the Prius Prime does the best job. And anyone who doesn’t have enough money for Prius or a Leaf or other EV can go buy a Honda Accord Hybrid or Corolla Hybrid and feel good that they still got a top15 vehicle on the green lists.
No. I use ACEEE’s numbers because they factor into:
https://greenercars.org/greenercars-ratings/how-we-determine-ratings/
https://www.aceee.org/greener-cars
And #1 vehicle after their analysis is the Prius Prime and Prius respectively. Weight is one factor, but there’s other factors (such as Tesla’s use of NCA chemistry for their Li-ion) that drops Tesla down severely compared to cleaner chemistries from other companies. But even when we look at the best EVs on the market for environmentalism (such as Nissan Leaf or Ioniq 5 or whatever…), the Prius reigns supreme from above.
Prius beats even well recognized brands and environmental cars like Nissan Leaf on ACEEE’s study.
There are also cheap economy-cars / hybrids, such as the Toyota Corolla Hybrid and Accord Hybrid (not in the top 10, but still a score of >60) that are popular and green choices despite using gasoline as their primary transportation, because tailpipe emissions aren’t the only environmental effect at play here. When Hybrid / ICE cars reach 50mpg (or high 40s, like the Accord Hybrid), tailpipe emissions start to matter less-and-less, and yes… weight of the car starts to matter more and more (particulates from tires wear becomes the #1 pollution factor on EVs). There’s also significant issues with how dirty the mining industries are to make EVs (Lithium, Nickle, Cobalt, etc. etc.) And a lack of recycling today. Meanwhile, Steel is 90%+ recycled in the auto-industry, making for some of the most environmentally friendly manufacturing in practice.
There’s a lot of little things that add up. EVs are not the silver-bullet that EV fans think they are, but I’m glad that EVs have brought efficiency to the forefront of the minds of people. But we need to think holistically: what is the best path forward that overall reduces pollution (including CO2) from our system?
The answer may surprise you, especially if you’re one of the people tricked into the EV-only mindset. There’s many other technologies that are competitive.
Those ACEEE numbers are predicated on placing an economic cost on pollution. If you assign a larger price to the pollution, even the PHEV’s fall right off the chart. The E in their name stands for “Economy”. They’re focus is framing clean as a function of the economy. In their model, you can kill a bunch more people and the price of pollution only goes up a little. They even say they’ve left that number constant since 1998. If you value pollution in a logarithmic scale that gets way worse as time goes on, it becomes obvious that the only acceptable vehicles are the ones that have negative pollution costs. Since we dont have vehicles that can remove pollution from the air, getting one that gets as close to zero is the best bet. Right now, EV’s get the closest to zero.
Say we proceed with the premise that the lobbying group you link is valid, you still share it there, black and white on your cited chart - 4 of the top 5 vehicles on their list, the vast majority, are EVs. You just have tunnel vision for the one outlier PHEV. I’m sure the Prius is fine AND I’d need to pay for maintenance on BOTH an ICE engine, related non-EV components and a full electric infrastructure for the life of that vehicle if I purchased it over an EV.
What’s your line of work if I may ask?
Electrical engineer degree but I’m doing software now.
I’m not against EVs. I’m against y’all bad-mouthing PHEVs and Hybrids when they still constitute the top of the green lists with our current level of technology.
I recognize that better batteries are coming next year and soon Silicon or Sodium batteries will be even better after that. But tomorrow is not today. People making decisions need to make decisions based on today’s level of technology.
If all the cars available today, the Prius Prime does the best job. And anyone who doesn’t have enough money for Prius or a Leaf or other EV can go buy a Honda Accord Hybrid or Corolla Hybrid and feel good that they still got a top15 vehicle on the green lists.