[SlowRobotAhead]

I wish these people understood that the aluminum in the Tesla is mined in Australia, sent to China, sent to Iceland, sent back to China, sent to the USA. Almost the same with the new process lithium they use.

These cars will NEVER outpace their own footprint. But try explaining truth to people who just “want to believe”.

[osteele]

“The Union of Concerned Scientists did the best and most rigorous assessment[1] of the carbon footprint of Tesla's and other electric vehicles vs internal combustion vehicles including hybrids. They found that the manufacturing of a full-sized Tesla Model S rear-wheel drive car with an 85 KWH battery was equivalent to a full-sized internal combustion car except for the battery, which added 15% or one metric ton of CO2 emissions to the total manufacturing.

“However, they found that this was trivial compared to the emissions avoided due to not burning fossil fuels to move the car. Before anyone says ‘But electricity is generated from coal!’, they took that into account too, and it's included in the 53% overall reduction.” — Michael Barnard, Quora. <https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-carbon-foot-print-of-manuf...

[1] Rachael Nealer, David Reichmuth, and Don Anair, _Cleaner Cars from Cradle to Grave_, The Union of Concerned Scientists, November 2015. <https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cl... (PDF)

[landryraccoon]

> These cars will NEVER outpace their own footprint

Can you provide citations and numbers for this claim? This seems extremely unlikely to me. A gas powered car that runs for 150,000 miles in it's lifetime could burn 6000 gallons of gasoline. Are you arguing that it takes more than 6000 gallons of gasoline worth of energy to manufacture a car? I would need to see hard data to believe this, as that seems like an incredible claim to me.

[skybrian]

That sounds bad but transport by ship is very cheap, even for long distances. I'd want to see the numbers.

[eigenvector]

Ships use heavy fuel oil, which is the dirtiest transportation fuel in use today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_oil#Bunker_fuel

[SlowRobotAhead]

Cheap, yea. But also extremely dirty. What is the mpg ona tanker using crude diesel again? Cool, now swing that tanker three or four times through Singapore.

[skybrian]

Okay, but you have to divide by the entire cargo of the ship, which is quite enormous. So I still don't think it's something easy to estimate without doing the math.

[Spooky23]

Cargo ships are flagged in countries of convenience and don’t meet many standards.

The top 15 biggest polluting ships produce more pollutants like sulfur oxide than all cars

[froindt]

The bunker fuel used by cargo ships is a byproduct of the refining process after they extract the higher quality fuels.

The fuel has to go somewhere. We could bury it back in the ground because we don't want to burn it, but we need some fuel to power international trade.

In terms of energy per ton mile, you can't really beat a cargo ship.

Horribly long link from Google, pdf warning.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://...

[spectrum1234]

It's way better than anything else. Seriously.

[sowbug]

You appear to be concerned about the environment. Do you have a better plan for accelerating the transition to sustainable transportation?

[SlowRobotAhead]

Fooling gullible people into what is (steel) and what isn’t sustainable (aluminum, lithium, composites) is a good first start.

Not to crap on composites because I work with them, but carbon fiver for example is extremely bad for environment.

At least aluminum recycles well. Lithium does to but not cost effective so “environmental” companies like Tesla don’t do it.

[sowbug]

I don't think Tesla's goal is to use more lithium or aluminum. It's to switch the world's main energy source for transportation from fossil fuels to electricity (yes, I know electricity isn't an energy source, and that fossil fuels are stored solar energy).

Tesla can't solve all the world's environmental problems. But the one they are helping solve seems important. Do you think they should stop because they aren't also solving how to use lithium sustainably?

[SlowRobotAhead]

Most of what Tesla is doing right, is using very light and strong materials to get an advantage over typical vehicle designs. This only happens with aluminum and composites.

Tesla also does the marketing game extremely well. Including marketing to the government for tax breaks.

I will admit their engineering on the power delivery is good, but that’s such a tiny thing compared to the marketing.

Short version... Tesla doesn’t exist if they made actually environmentally friendly vehicles (I like to explain most Teslas are coal powered cars), and doesn’t exist without their amazing marketing.

[sowbug]

Thank you for a reasonable response on a polarizing topic. Maybe you're right, and in fact maybe today an environmentally friendly car can't be made profitability, at least not without impurities in the process.

I do think Tesla is closer than anyone else, though, and while I personally think they'll make it, even if they don't, they'll certainly inspire or goad someone else into doing it, and that's a form of progress.