2023-07-09 08:30:03
News JVTech Electric VS thermal: which car pollutes the most during its life cycle? This study answers it and gives a winner
Published on 07/09/2023 at 10:30
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Combustion cars release CO2 while driving, and electric cars create it especially during their production process. Finally, who is the worst student? A study gives its verdict.
Pollution: always take into account the total life cycle of the car
I’m not telling you anything, to try to reverse the critical situation that we are subjecting our dear planet to, it is regarding changing our habits. What if it meant going electric? These cars produce no greenhouse gases while driving which causes holes in the ozone layer, warming the planet. In 2035, it will be forbidden to buy a new thermal car, the transition is therefore underway.
While at first glance electric cars may seem like a no-brainer, it is important to note that the impact of a product on the planet does not reside only in the use that we make of it. To assess whether a good or service pollutes, it is necessary to take into account its entire life cycle. For a product to appear in our hands, it is necessary to recover the raw materials, transport them, transform them, assemble the parts, transport the finished products back to the points of sale, and maintain stores to attract customers.
After complete use by the consumer, the product will continue to pollute, whether by being recycled or discarded. As you can imagine, there are big differences in the life cycle between thermal cars and electric cars. Here is a study illustrated in a graph that gives us a clear answer.
The verdict is in: electric cars are less polluting
The study we are going to talk regarding was carried out by two companies selling electric cars : Rivian and Polestar. Obviously, the latter have the interest of seeing the EVs win this battle, even if the elements taken into account seem objective. The data for the year 2021 retrieved comes from the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Our friends at Visual Capitalist have made an infographic to summarize the results of the study. Three life cycles are presented: the electric car, the hybrid car, and the thermal car. To determine a winner, the unit tCO2e is used, it is a CO2 equivalent. Certain activities related to the life cycle of cars produce other harmful substances, this unit brings them together to simplify everything.
Each vehicle calculates its greenhouse gas emissions for an average size model over 16 years of use and 240,000 km travelled. Figures may not add up perfectly due to rounding.
Here are the scores for each portion of the lifecycle as well as the final scores:
From the start, we can see that the production of electric cars is more harmful for the planet than that of thermal ones. This is the major argument of the pro-thermal: to manufacture a battery, it is necessary to look for materials such as lithium or cobalt, subjected to very greedy processes in CO2.
It is during the use phase of the vehicle that the gap really widens. Taking into account the creation of greenhouse gases for the production of electricity, electric cars seem to be shrinking, but by taking into account the emissions from the exhaust pipes of combustion-powered cars, everything changes.
With now and end of life taken into account, we end up with the following final scores:
Electric: 39 tCO2eHybrid: 47 tCO2eThermal: 55 tCO2e
The study does not forget to mention the efforts and improvements that still need to be made to sustain the electricity sector, starting with the production of batteries and the production of electricity.
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