Climate Activists Tell the EV Industry to Fix Its Filthy Supply Chain

Lee Duna@lemmy.nz to News@lemmy.world – 99 points –
Climate Activists Tell the EV Industry to Fix Its Filthy Supply Chain
wired.com
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Yeah, um, they're not wrong, but it feels like a waste of resources, considering we have MUCH bigger fish to fry. Go protest the oil companies. Protest the coal factories. Protest public infrastructure. Protest consumerism in general.

Feeding anti-EV rhetoric is simply going to damage their cause. This looks like a front-page story for Fox News and conservatives will add it to their misinformation arsenal.

Look, I'm all for green energy, but there really isn't a way to make steel without coal, or at least carbon. These protestors are idiots.

Green hydrogen into the mix helps reduce the amount needed but you’re right at the end of the day

Let’s also not forget about “artisinal” mining. The conditions it’s practitioners work in are horrendous. Environmental justice can and always should vindicate the rights and welfare of the workers.

Are they just against cars in general then? Lol what's the alternative they are suggesting?

BEVs aren't the future. They are heavily dependent on mined metals and are basically unsustainable. Society has no choice but to move on beyond them.

I have an idea. What if we attached a power line directly to the car, so we didn't need a battery? Of course, it'd only be able to run on specialized lines. To get the most out of those lines, we could chain cars together. And since the specialized hardware doesn't make sense to own, we could have municipalities own them and charge a fare (or better yet, just make it part of taxes).

Great. I got another idea. Let's take this train and put it in a station that isn't near anything. Then we charge for parking. Then we make rideshare pickup far away from the platform so everyone has to walk in the dark rain passed the line of unmoving taxes. Oh the train station itself should double as a homeless shelter. If there is any food sold there it should be at 8000% above a grocery store (a small part t of me dies everytime I see Hudson sign). We shouldn't use any new tech at all so it is a totally mystery when trains arrive and leave. Basic problems such as things broken should stay broken for months. Every single part of the experience should be as miserable as we can fucking make it.

I prefer the future using efuel because EV manufacturing is very easy to cheat. I don't even believe that the EV lobbying is done in good faith.

Edit: I don't know why but efuel is the only subject whatever counterargument I receive is always not to the point. If people instead say it has a flaw in the manufacturing process, citing a scholarly article, I'd take it seriously. But nobody has done that so far.

Edit 2: yeah, the replies I got for this comment confirms my first Edit.

Efuel is oil and auto industry propaganda. 80% of electricity used to make efuels is simply wasted in inefficiencies.

That same electricity could be used to power an EV instead at much higher efficiencies.

Have you read what I wrote?

Edit: efuel is net-zero.

My understanding was you meant we should keep petrol cars but replace gasoline with a synthetic efuel. If that is correct then my rebuff is still my response. If my understanding is incorrect please elaborate.

Seems you don't understand that efuel is net zero. When it comes to efuel, it doesn't make sense to argue with someone who doesn't understand that part. So, I stop engaging with you here.

Anyway, I meant that EV manufacturing process has too many ways to cheat, while in case of efuel the regulations only have to happen at the factory to achieve net zero.

That's all I have to say. And that's a fact, whatever you say.

Let's say you have 1kw of electricity. And you have two choices for that electricity.

One, you take that electricity, use it to crack hydrogen from water, then use more of that electricity to synthesize the fuel with atmospheric carbon, then transport that efuel to a station, then burn that efuel in an engine that wastes upwards of 75% of the energy in that efuel as heat loss.

OR, you take that electricity, and you charge a car, and the car uses that electricity to move via motor that only wastes 15-20% of the energy.

The solution is obvious yes? You're basically wasting grid capacity to keep gasoline cars alive.

Bonus, instead of just being carbon "net zero", you can use the carbon capture to sequester it and be carbon negative instead, since with efuels you're just releasing that captured carbon back into the air. Isn't it better to be carbon negative than carbon neutral?

Extra bonus? How about not giving everyone near a major road increased amounts of asthma and lung cancer due to tailpipe emissions, since carbon dioxide isn't the only thing coming out of cars.

Extra Extra Bonus? How about not polluting the water table of every city in the world with oil leaks.

Efuels make zero sense. It actually makes MORE sense to just fucking burn good old fashioned gasoline and do carbon capture than to waste grid capacity.

The only purpose Efuels exist is to brainwash people like you into fighting electric vehicles so fossil fuel companies and auto makers can try to run out the clock.

I don't understand your main part, which is the energy efficiency (edit: I mean, that's bot the point). I'm talking about the regulatory problem with the EV manufacturing that makes is very hard to actually achieve net zero with EVs.

The rest is fine.

I don’t understand your main part

Yes, people who like to pump efuels share that problem. If you can't understand it you will be stuck believing in oil-industry claptrap.

I’m talking about the regulatory problem with the EV manufacturing that makes is very hard to actually achieve net zero with EVs.

The main issue with gas cars is the gas, what you're saying is a red herring that doesn't even make sense.

Answer me this: Is manufacturing gasoline cars carbon free?

Of course not!

EVs and Gasoline cars both currently involve carbon output. So you're trying to imply that somehow making a battery pack (the big differentiator) is a process that produces such a huge amount of carbon, that it outweighs the 10k+ gallons of gasoline an ICE car burns throughout its lifetime.

That's an extraordinary claim. Where is the extraordinary evidence?

Answer me this: Is manufacturing gasoline cars carbon free?

I stop here. Manufacturing EVs aren't carbon free either. Actually, manufacturing the battery emits far more carbon than manufacturing an engine.

So, all I see from you is move the goal post repeatedly while not countering my main point: difficulty of regulation in manufacturing EVs.

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Even under ideal conditions, efuels are still very energy intensive. It's also interesting that the biggest advocates for efuel adoption are oil companies.

Critics highlight that manufacturing e-fuels is very expensive and energy-intensive. Using e-fuels in an ICE car requires about five times more renewable electricity than running a battery-electric vehicle, according to a 2021 paper in the Nature Climate Change journal.

Some policymakers also argue that e-fuels should be reserved for hard-to-decarbonise sectors such as shipping and aviation - which, unlike passenger cars, cannot easily run on electric batteries.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/what-are-e-fuels-can-they-help-make-cars-co2-free-2023-03-07/

You also should try to elaborate on what it means to "cheat" because it sounds like you are just making up a Boogeyman after listening to too much Fox News.

As I reiterate again and again, I don't care about energy efficiency. I'm talking about the difficulty with regulating EV manufacturing to actually achieve net zero. You say I made it up, but can you say so at least after reading the very OP post that you're commenting in? Because it's written there, if I'm not mistaken.

And I'm no FOX listener or whatever. You should realize how much assumptions you made about me, and how that annoys me.

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