[BostonCard]

I'm reluctant to get into this because here Musk was being used as a metaphor for our own fearless leader (Shaw) [other mods, feel free to shut this thread down].

Musk is a complicated person, and we can acknowledge that he's done some great things and some not so great things.  I think it really stretches the imagination to think that bringing a new car company into being the first to really mass produce electric cars isn't a major accomplishment.

Saying that electric batteries are flammable (they are) is true but not relevant.  You know what else is flammable?  Gasoline (https://www.autoinsuranceez.com/gas-vs-e...car-fires/).  It is kind of inherent to the system that any stored source of energy, whether it is in a battery or a hydrocarbon or some other mechanism, has the potential to release that energy in an uncontrolled way.  It turns out that ICE cars are more likely to catch fire but that battery electric cars that do catch fire are harder to put out.

You are correct that manufacturing electric cars takes more energy than manufacturing ICE cars.  However, over the course of the car's lifecycle, battery electrics release fewer greenhouse gases than ICE cars: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/...ce-vehicle

You can see that the actual emissions building the vehicle itself are comparable, but there are additional emissions from mining and assembling the batteries that are incurred by battery electric vehicles and not ICE vehicles.  But the emissions generated from electricity generation, which vary greatly, generally fall enough below the GHG generated by burning fossil fuels so that over the entire lifecycle, BEV's emit fewer greenhouse gases.  That difference depends a lot on how dirty the electricity generated is, but even in the worst case (top of the bar, where the emissions from generating electricity are 800 gCO2-eq/kWh) it is less than burning gasoline over the life of the car (200,000 km, 125,000 mi).

BC

[BostonCard]

I'm reluctant to get into this because here Musk was being used as a metaphor for our own fearless leader (Shaw) [other mods, feel free to shut this thread down].

Musk is a complicated person, and we can acknowledge that he's done some great things and some not so great things.  I think it really stretches the imagination to think that bringing a new car company into being the first to really mass produce electric cars isn't a major accomplishment.

Saying that electric batteries are flammable (they are) is true but not relevant.  You know what else is flammable?  Gasoline (https://www.autoinsuranceez.com/gas-vs-e...car-fires/).  It is kind of inherent to the system that any stored source of energy, whether it is in a battery or a hydrocarbon or some other mechanism, has the potential to release that energy in an uncontrolled way.  It turns out that ICE cars are more likely to catch fire but that battery electric cars that do catch fire are harder to put out.

You are correct that manufacturing electric cars takes more energy than manufacturing ICE cars.  However, over the course of the car's lifecycle, battery electrics release fewer greenhouse gases than ICE cars: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/...ce-vehicle

You can see that the actual emissions building the vehicle itself are comparable, but there are additional emissions from mining and assembling the batteries that are incurred by battery electric vehicles and not ICE vehicles.  But the emissions generated from electricity generation, which vary greatly, generally fall enough below the GHG generated by burning fossil fuels so that over the entire lifecycle, BEV's emit fewer greenhouse gases.  That difference depends a lot on how dirty the electricity generated is, but even in the worst case (top of the bar, where the emissions from generating electricity are 800 gCO2-eq/kWh) it is less than burning gasoline over the life of the car (200,000 km, 125,000 mi).

BC