From Bill McKibben’s newsletter:
44% That’s how much you’d save in carbon emissions by retiring your internal combustion car and replacing it with an EV—even if it was only two years old, and taking into account the amount of energy used to build both vehicles. A new study in Science from G. Elliott Campbell attempts to answer a question that’s puzzled many good-faith people: does it really make sense to get rid of my ICE car if I’m worried about the climate. It does, beginning the day you drive it off the lot. It’s somewhat more complicated if you sell your used gas-guzzler to someone else, but as Science editor Jesse Smith notes:
“The energy impact benefits from swapping an EV for an ICEV begin to accrue as early as the first day of the life of the ICEV, and that replacement early in the life cycle consistently provides reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Financial considerations will also affect when people choose to make the replacement, of course, but from the perspective of emissions, it is almost never too soon to switch.
As Campbell explained to Tik Root:
“We’re trying to show that there’s not an environmental motivation for extending the lifetime of a gas vehicle,” he said. “Electric vehicles are a very clear winner.”
This has been a question I’ve been having in my own life. I drive a 2004 (!) Lexus that is still amazingly reliable. I’ve been wondering whether I should replace it with an EV, or whether the ecological impact of manufacturing an EV was larger than the carbon saved by driving an EV. As noted, this is also a financial decision–I currently have no car payment, which is great for my retiree budget. But at least I now can narrow the decision to that.