Long lasting EVs
Electric vehicles (EVs) take more resources to make than an internal combustion engine (ICE) car but then due to being 3-4x more efficient and generally not running on 100% fossil fuel derived energy, their in use emissions are drastically lower.
There are plenty of car enthusiasts who are keen on keeping old cars running. It makes complete sense, the materials are there, in a car shape, ready to be used!
A few years ago during one of my various eco conflicts I started to look down this path of finding a small, light and cheap car to keep on the road and avoid creating demand for the new car industry. My problem was, such a car still only achieves 30-40 miles per UK gallon (MPG from now on, sorry) which at least in the UK is over 10x the CO2 emissions of an EV (typically).
If a new EV has an embedded impact of say 15,000KG of CO2, you can equal that with your old ICE in around 50,000 miles. At least with todays level of mobility (insert link about reducing mobility!) that is only a few years, during which time you have polluted your local environment and given many of your £$€s to oil companies and/or bad state actors.
So, the ideal situation now is to keep every EV made, on the road for as long as possible. Cars are typically scrapped at around 14 years old in the UK having completed 140,000 miles or so on average. With the earliest EVs (Nissan LEAFs and Renault Zoes) reaching 10 years old, these milestones are coming up soon.
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