[Dormant] Electric Vehicles

That’s a rather old hypothesis that hasn’t been found to be true. The discussion on climate impact hadn’t been so easily measured, but recent studies have caught up.

It depends on the new EV you’re speaking about and how old and dirty your present diesel is. Some cars are produced as “carbon-neutral”, like the VWs ID.3 & ID.4 (and I think Kia maybe?).

Whereas recent diesels have been found out to be up to ~~3x more polluting~~ 4-times more polluting than originally thought, and older ICE cars have been found to increase their pollution output as they age.

Remember the Daily Mail’s repeated rage articles about EVs being dirtier if charged with coal-fired electric sources? That’s been disproven again and again.

If you’re looking at climate impact beyond production, especially over the long term, EVs quickly surpass ICE vehicles in clean operation (production and usage) in less than 2 years (some cars, just months).

Many EV also use battery packs that are recyclable and can be repaired; Ford, VW, NIssan, Kia/Hyundai and others use a pack in a pack approach, where a bad groups of cells can be swapped out while keeping the main battery. Some like Tesla tends to glue them together, which means the whole pack needs to be replaced, but it’s still rare to have cells fail unless there’s a manufacturing problem like GM had with Hyundai cells (again, old manufacturing methods - modern EVs do it differently now).

From cradle to grave, modern EVs are overall far less polluting than gas or diesel cars.

Edit: Updated with links.