[aoeusnth1]

So... https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=150000+miles+%2F+%2825...

That shows about 57 tons of CO2 over a 150,000 mile lifespan of a conventional (non-hybrid) car - even more if you assume a larger lifespan.

Estimates I can find for the embodied CO2 of an EV car are around 10-30 CO2 tons. A smaller hybrid would be on the lower side, while an EV SUV would be on the higher side. Also, instead of looking at the entire cost of the CO2 from the car, we should really be using the additional CO2 over replacement, by subtracting how much C02 it takes to create the alternative, a conventional car. Let's just look at the battery. This thread shows Tesla batteries require about 5-14 tonnes of CO2 to create: https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/6sm6rs/the_rea.... Compared to the 57 tonnes of CO2 from a conventional car's lifetime, we're somewhere around a factor of 5-10x better for EVs.

[soperj]

Alternative w/o fossil fuels isn't another car though, that's the point.

[munk-a]

Oh to clarify - I don't think we should (or really even could) force all fossil fuel cars off the road tomorrow, the most extreme action that's even reasonable is placing a cut off for new car sales a year or two in the future[1] - then letting those age out.

We should be working on encouraging conversion to EV when older cars age out, eventually maybe there'd be a cutoff for on-road usage, but I'd be amazed if that were any closer than 15 years out, and that's super close already.

1. Re-configuring production lines is expensive, it'd likely be environmentally wasteful to force early conversions of production lines by manufacturers - giving them a window to convert allows them to cease any R&D investment into gas only vehicles and invest more in EVs.

[aoeusnth1]

I was responding to the false claim in your comment, "Depending on the car, you produce as much C02 making the car as running it for a lifetime."

I doubt there's a single ICE car on the market that creates as much CO2 to make as it does to run.

The additional CO2 for making an EV is on the order of 5-10x lower than the CO2 it can save (when running on renewable power). Even making a new EV on the order of operating an existing ICE car for ~50k-ish miles.