Following is in video description by @MoneyShift
The most common argument against electric cars is that once you factor in battery manufacturing and lithium mining, they aren’t actually cleaner. MIT tested that directly, and the answer is no longer ambiguous.
Researchers Marco Miotti and Jessika Trancik built a lifecycle model covering thousands of US zip codes, drilling down to individual driver behavior rather than comparing broad regions. They accounted for battery and vehicle manufacturing, fuel extraction and refining, regional electricity mix, local meteorological data, traffic density, trip length and duration, acceleration patterns, gas and electricity prices, and state fees. The study appears in Environmental Research Letters.
The concession first: building a battery is dirtier than building a comparable gas car, and an EV starts life with a larger manufacturing footprint. MIT states that plainly rather than working around it.
The findings: in most US locations, a battery electric vehicle reduces lifetime greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 60 percent compared to a similar gas vehicle, with larger reductions in urban areas. On cold weather, MIT found that in a climate like North Dakota, efficiency can drop as much as 50 percent on a particularly frigid night, but the effect on annual emissions benefits is minimal. Miotti’s own conclusion was that even in the most unfavorable conditions, EVs still reduce emissions substantially.
On cost, EVs are competitive with comparable combustion vehicles in lifetime ownership cost across most of the country, even without clean vehicle tax credits. Where electricity is relatively affordable, battery electrics tend to cost less outright. The study also found that individual driving behavior matters roughly as much as regional electricity mix, with the biggest reductions going to people who drive more, drive larger vehicles, and spend more time in traffic.
MIT also updated their public tool at carboncounter.com, where you can compare lifecycle emissions and ownership costs for nearly any car on the market.
None of this means you have to like electric cars. Dislike the steering feel. Dislike the brake feel. Want a manual. Those are real objections. The emissions one is finished.
Car news the way Doug DeMuro, Jason Cammisa and Chris Harris cover cars, every day
How long do modern EV batteries last? I’m not sure we have any definitive answer yet but I can tell you as someone who recently purchased a used EV with 60k miles on it, I am amazed at how well the battery still performs. From what I can tell, I’ve lost maybe 10% of total battery capacity from brand new. I’m now at just over 70k and haven’t noticed any material impact of battery degradation. I won’t be surprised if I get to 120k or more miles before I need to think about a battery swap or rebuild.
And battery tech is only getting better.
My wife’s car has over 200,000 km on it and the battery is still at around 93% capacity.
While anecdotal I do have some real world data on this: My family owns a 2016 Tesla Model S and we just did a professional battery test last month.
The battery still has 88% of its original capacity left, at currently 305,000 km (~190,000 mi) on the odometer and 10 years of use.
The only maintenance done on the battery was one cooling fluid change & reseal.
Keep in mind that this car is running on at least 10 year old tech and I’m sure that we have learned a lot since then.
It can last 20 years with no problems other than the expected gradual degradation, or it can fail suddenly at any point because a single cell going bad ruins the whole thing until you either get that cell replaced (do NOT attempt at home) or the battery replaced.
To be comparable to an actually maintained ICE not made by Americans, Koreans or the Fr*nch, it should be more like 300k miles. Which, to be fair, your EV may reach too and if it does you will have saved a ton of money in maintenance costs compared to having to do a ton of fluid changes over that span. But we have poor information on how 20+ year old EV batteries hold up because they don’t exist yet. Currently we know the earliest Teslas have had a worryingly high battery failure rate at ~13-14 years of age which is why most EVs still get sold for cheap after 5-6 years, before the battery warranty expires.
We have projected lifespans which shows new EV batteries lasting essentially forever, but how do we know it’s true?
But my personal issue is the cost more than anything. Mercedes wanted over 40k EUR for an battery, EVClinic repaired it for 4800€ so battery didn’t need to be replaced, but even for 4800€ I could buy 3-4 used engines for my car and get them installed by a decent mechanic, or even more engines and install them myself, meaning I essentially could run this car without oil changes for several years by just replacing the engines. Now why did Mercedes ask 41k EUR for a battery that’s clearly still in warranty since the model isn’t even as old as the battery warranty yet? Nobody knows, but in a forum thread someone said that Mercedes told them the battery warranty only covers up to the vehicle’s value, whereas the cars themselves cost much less now than the batteries do. This is probably just Mercedes being shady as fuck because they’ve realized they’d go bankrupt if they had to honor battery warranties on these.
Modern batteries last 200,000-400,000 miles, depending of how people use and abuse them. Fast charging and 100% charge reduces lifespan.
Good luck getting 100,000 miles out of modern ICE engines.
Most of my fairly modern ICE cars have had 300k km or more on them and all of them were sold as still running and driving, all with annual safety and emissions inspection still valid. Only reason I kept replacing them like socks in 2024-2025 was that my ex would randomly drive into shit, meaning bent wheels, holes in oil pans, etc. One had almost 600k km and another (before said ex) had been rewound in Lithuania so real mileage was about 700k km but it showed 400k km, no engine trouble on any of those. Mostly Audi, a few Mercedes, one BMW, two Volkswagens, etc. The reality is, tons of Mercedes diesel taxis get over a million kilometers at some point, usually on the original engine and transmission. My current Audi has a notoriously bad transmission that everyone says you should avoid. I pulled out the original filter and fluid at 400k km and after the change it shifts like brand new. Why does everyone say they’re bad? Because nobody maintains them and they all have their mileage rewound before being imported from some Western European countries with poor official records availability (like Germany, pretty much impossible to verify real mileage). Same with BMWs with the same transmission (6HP). People buy a 20+ year old car that has “250k km” on the odometer then get surprised that things fail when the real mileage is 500k+ and nobody has given two fucks about changing fluids and filters at a sane interval for years and minor issues get ignored until they snowball.
The only car I actually did have real engine trouble on was a Chrysler with only 250k km. So maybe don’t buy American cars.
An ICE engine I can also still fix at home if something happens, which is usually like a plastic coolant pipe or something (EVs also have coolant pipes). There’s nothing stopping me from replacing parts on an engine or even IN an engine, but I don’t want to touch a high voltage battery, ever. They’re just not repairable at home.
Early Teslas have had a 15% failure rate to date (perhaps more now, this was from a year ago). Regardless of mileage, you can’t trust them anymore. Newer EVs have a lower failure rate but then those are still too new to tell. We’ll know in 15 years.
But, ICE engines can be built to last a million miles. And, could be made more efficient, and we could stop people from buying wasteful vehicles they don’t need, etc.
All I’m saying is, had we been much more responsible, ICE engines would not currently be such a huge problem. But, we weren’t, and they are. I’ll blame capitalism, and the forced ignorance that brings.
But they don’t. See GM, Hyundai, Kia, Ford recalls.
You can only do that if we removed emissions and fuel economy requirements.