Who are these so called experts? What is there expertise in, and do other experts agree? Their expertise does not appear to have much backing it.
This engine weighs just under 11kg, and they believe that, as it delivers better efficiency and emission control, all within a sleek design. In the literature, so much is made of the efficiency of this engine, but that misses the point. They suggest that this efficiency closes the gap between combustion engines and electric ones.
This misses the point: electric cars are zero carbon at use. Therefore, the cleaner the grid gets, the lower the carbon will be. As such, it is all very well to compare electric cars now, to an experimental engine that will be in cars in a generation or two. However, in 2 generations, it is thought that most countries will have further greened their grid, leaving the electric car still ahead.
We drive an electric car, and as we pay our electricity company for 100% clean electricity, our carbon emissions are essentially zero (particularly, as we bought the car second hand). One could, quite rightly, argue that not all the electricity that we use comes from zero carbon electricity – instead, we use whatever electricity is being created at the time. But that is the point- our supplier buys enough zero carbon electricity to cover all our use, therefore, if they were supplying everyone in the country a 100% zero carbon electricity, they would have to buy enough green electricity for everyone. That could only be done by all the electricity in the country being green.
So, in short – suggesting an uber efficient small ICE engine used 10-20 years in the future is more efficient than an electric car driven on the grid now, is not a fair comparison. It is like comparing the price of apples now, to the price of futures in oranges next year. Do not buy into it. If every person in the UK drove an electric car, carbon emissions would be far lower, than if everyone drove the most efficient ICE car that has, or ever will be made (this seems pretty obvious, do not get hoodwinked).
A listing of cleanliness of EV carmakers were created again how did they do
One might think that you could work this out, simply based on who creates the cleanest running cars – Tesla only makes 100% electric cars, so should be the cleanest, right? well according to this chart, not exactly. It analyses 18 car companies against 80 different measures.
As such, this cleanliness, includes steel, aluminium, tires, batteries, and the people affected by the extraction of each of these things.
According to this list, Ford and Mercedes lead the world in cleaning up their supply chains. Tesla ranks 3rd this year, up from 9th. While I would argue that the first requirement is 100% electric cars, which means that tesla can only be compared to companies like Rivian, it is encouraging to see Tesla concentrate on these kinds of things (it should be noted, that they removed Cobalt from their most up to date batteries, because of the impact on people within the supply chain, and the environment. Firms form East Asia, fell in the rankings, as they are making less progress in cleaning up their supply chain.
One area of concern in the report, is getting clear and informed consent for extraction from locals.
Perhaps unsurprisingly (see recent articles) companies Toyota and Honda as climate laggards – both for failing to release information, and their continued campaigning against necessary legislation to clean up the world.
Only Mercedes responded to a request for comment on the subject, and they suggested that the result is important (whether it would have said this if it hadn’t been so high is questionable, but being so high cannot be a mistake) among other things.
Conclusion
One of the things that frustrate me on this, is that generally these calculations are done on cars as they leave the factory. With Tesla, a car leaving the factory might have emitted over 90% of the emissions it will ever emit, while the average for ICE is just 9% (and the gap between these factory carbon debts, is rapidly shrinking, as battery manufacture improves).
This is a problem, as, if the average ICE car emits so much more carbon dioxide after leaving the factory, this should rate against the car company – as all the issues that the oil industry creates, are caused by these products made by these car companies. Indeed, while this assessment is great, its conclusions are (I would argue) irrelevant without including the petrol/diesel emissions – indeed, it seems to me, that this makes the whole thing pretty useless without further work.
