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When do electric vehicles become cleaner than gasoline? By Reuters

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© Reuters. PHOTO OF THE FILE: The 2018 Tesla Model 3 electric vehicle is shown in this photo illustration taken in Cardiff (California, USA, June 1, 2018). REUTERS / Mike Blake / File Photo

By Paul Lienert

DETROIT (Reuters) – Tesla (NASDAQ 🙂 is slipping silently out of the window into your stylish new 3rd electric model, happy that you’re happy and that you’re doing a little side of the planet.

But keep going – you’ll have to drive another 13,500 miles (21,725 ​​km) before you do less damage than the saloon that emits less gas to the environment.

That’s the result of a study by Reuters of a model that calculates lifetime emissions from vehicles. The debate is intense as governments around the world push for greener transport to meet climate goals.

The model was developed by the Chicago Argonne National Laboratory (NYSE 🙂 and includes thousands of parameters ranging from electric vehicle (EV) type metal batteries to the amount of aluminum or plastic in a car.

Argonne’s Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions and Energy Use (GREET) model is being used in conjunction with other tools to help shape policy with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California Air Resources Commission, the two main regulators of vehicle emissions. United States of America.

Jarod Cory Kelly, chief analyst at Argonne Energy Systems, said making EVs produces more carbon than combustion engine cars, mainly due to the extraction and processing of minerals in EV batteries and the production of power cells.

But the extent of this carbon gap is calculated when the car is first sold and at the “parity” point depending on what current vehicles may have in life at the time, according to assumptions.

According to Kelly, the payback period depends on factors such as the size of the EV battery, the economical fuel of a gasoline car, and how the energy used to charge an EV is generated.

NORWAY IS A WINNER

Reuters included some variables in the Argonne model, which has more than 43,000 users by 2021, to provide some answers.

The top Tesla 3 stage was for driving in the United States, where 23% of electricity comes from coal-fired power plants with a 54 kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery and a cathode made of nickel, cobalt and aluminum, among other variables.

The 2,955-pound Toyota Corolla was up against gasoline fuel, with a fuel efficiency of 33 miles per liter. The two vehicles were expected to travel 173,151 miles in their lifetime.

But if Tesla itself were to be driven in Norway, which generates almost all of its electricity from renewable energy sources, the point of equality would come after just 8,400 kilometers.

The electricity to charge EV electric comes entirely from coal, which generates most of the power in countries like China and Poland, you would have to travel 78,700 kilometers to achieve carbon parity with Corolla, according to data analysis generated by Reuters. According to Argonne’s model.

Reuters analysis has shown that the production of a medium-sized EV saloon generates 47 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2) per extraction and production process per kilometer, or more than 8.1 million grams before it reaches the customer first.

By comparison, a gasoline-like vehicle produces 32 grams per kilometer, or more than 5.5 million grams.

Michael Wang, chief scientist and director of Argonne’s Energy Systems Division Systems Evaluation Center, said EVs then emit much less carbon in their 12-year life.

Studies on the road have shown that even in the worst case if an EV is charged only from a coal network, it would generate an additional 4.1 million grams of carbon per year.

When are vehicles cleaner than gasoline? https://graphics.reuters.com/ELECTRIC-VEHICLES/EMISSIONS/rlgpdrmjmpo/chart.png

“ON-TO-WHEEL”

The EPA told Reuters that it uses GREET to help assess renewable fuel and vehicle greenhouse gas standards, while the California Air Resources Commission uses the model to help assess compliance with the state’s low-carbon standard.

The EPA said it also used Argonne’s GREET to develop an online program that allows U.S. consumers to calculate EV emissions based on the fuels used to generate electricity around them. https: //

The results of the Reuters analysis are similar to life cycle assessments of electric vehicles and combustion engine vehicles conducted by the IHS Markit research team in Europe.

A “good wheel” study showed that the typical carbon emission match point for EVs was between 15,000 and 20,000 miles, depending on the country, according to Vijay Subramanian, IHS Markit’s director general of carbon dioxide (CO2) compliance.

He said the shift from long-term benefits to electric vehicles using this approach has shown advantages.

Some are less positive with EVs.

Damien Ernst, a researcher at the University of Liège, said in 2019 that a typical EV would have to cover almost 700,000 km before emitting less CO2 than a petrol-like vehicle. He later revised his figures.

Now, he believes the pairing point could be between 67,000 km and 151,000 km. Ernst told Reuters that he had no intention of changing these findings based on different sets of data and hypotheses than Argonne’s model.

Other groups also continue to argue that EVs are not necessarily cleaner or greener than fossil cars.

The American Petroleum Institute, which represents more than 600 companies in the oil industry, says on its website: “Multiple studies show that, based on the life cycle, different automobile power trains have similar greenhouse gas emissions.”

Argonne National Laboratory is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and is run by the University of Chicago.



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