• houseofleft@slrpnk.net
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    8 days ago

    on average, Canadian EVs have up to 77% lower emissions than conventional models

    That’s quite a bit less. The headline sounds like “Do ICE vehicles pollite less than EVs ?” is a valid question, is there any argument that’s the case? I’d have guessed EVs were obviously better, and you’d be hard pushed to argue otherwise?

    (obviously I’m thinking ‘new ev’ vs ‘new ICE’ - putting second hard vehicles introducrs all sorts of caveats)

    • niemcycle@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      It might be due to a larger proportion of green energy sources powering these EVs, not sure how they calculate the emissions figures.

      • Voyajer@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        These kinds of studies usually go by the average emissions of the relevant country’s power generation.

        Heres the relevant bit for this study though, it has both national and by province:

        In addition, electric vehicles also benefit from the low-emissions intensity of electricity generation relative to gasoline in most parts of Canada. Comparing the lifecycle emissions of the two fuels on an equivalent energy basis, grid electricity emissions are 61% lower than those of gasoline at the national level and 20%-93% lower in the 8 provinces/territories whose grid electricity is cleaner than gasoline.6 A handful of provinces and territories have grids that are more emissions intensive than gasoline based on the 2023 domestic electricity generation profile (chart 2). That said, even in this latter group, most electric vehicles still have lower fuel-related emissions and lifetime emissions than comparable gasoline vehicles because they use less energy during operation. (See appendix for a breakdown of electricity generation by fuel type).

      • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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        7 days ago

        They go into detail. Most FF electricity will be 40%-60% effiency, though peaker plants can be as low as 25%. ICE to wheel efficiency is 18%, and natural gas is cleaner than oil to boot. Canada has a lot of hydro and nuclear.

      • houseofleft@slrpnk.net
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        7 days ago

        That might be the case, although this study is explicitly comparing new EV to new ICE right? (which seems like the relevant comparison)

        • endeavor@sopuli.xyz
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          7 days ago

          It may study that indeed but the people picking between new ice or ev are the in overwhelming majority ones who already have a completely fine, new ish car that is good to go for decades. Most new planet saving EVs are produced without there being any real pressing need for them. Finishing up using all the existing cars would be hell lot better than replacing everything with Ev’s.

          • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            But that’s not how the car industry works. That “newish” car isn’t scrapped, it is sold to someone whose car died or wanted a newer used car. And then sold to someone with a worse or dead car. Very few “good” cars are being scrapped for EVs. Most cars being taken out of circulation are extremely old or totaled in an accident…

            • endeavor@sopuli.xyz
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              7 days ago

              It is how it works but it shouldn’t if we want to be green, instead of appearing green.