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by Tade0 3155 days ago
> 5, 10, 15 years, you save all the carbon of producing the car (which is where the majority of the carbon cost comes from).

False [0].

[0] https://group.renault.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/fluence...

Page 91, Figure 49: "Comparing carbon footprint of EV and ICE vehicles".

Up to 85% of the carbon footprint of a car comes from driving it. Heck, even a typical hybrid during its lifetime saves roughly 150% worth of its weight in CO2 emissions. Taxis easily double that figure.

1 comments

Yep. Completely false. The in-use phase of ICE cars belches so much carbon that the car's construction phase carbon can safely be ignored in a first approximation of impact. The reason construction phase carbon is important in an EV is that it can be the only carbon that matters. When an EV is recharged exclusively from renewable sources, as many are, the use phase carbon is effectively zero. Which makes the construction phase important to measure, but the total lifecycle carbon impact of an EV can still be orders of magnitude less than that of an ICEV.