Whats making EVs dirtier than Diesel
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for the first time we are seeing
repercussions of climate change all
around us with increasing heat during
our summer months with increasing
instances of floods and tsunamis
and the unignorable smog across our
cities
no wonder
these vehicles on the road have become
that thorn in our eyes
and while many of us are rushing towards
electric vehicles
a simple analysis of facts will make us
realize that electric quakers are
contributing more to carbon emissions
than their diesel counterparts or as i
like to call it they have a higher cost
to climate i happened to travel to
bangalore for the first time in 2016 and
it was love at first sight the people
the culture or the weather trump at all
so much so that i moved to the city
within the next few months
as i started to live there i realized
that what i’m liking in terms of
bangalore’s weather is a far degraded
version of it from just a decade ago
this made me really conscious about
climate change
and in order to reduce my carbon
footprint i wanted to go electric for my
first car
being a material scientist i couldn’t
resist myself from going through a few
research articles
to earn some bragging rights in front of
my friends by telling them that i’d be
making so much savings in terms of
carbon emissions
as i went deep into it
i was shocked to say the least
let me show you what i found
let me use these jars of coins and jars
of coal to explain to you what i found
let’s say you and your friend both
decide to buy new cars
you being a climate conscious person
like me decide to go for an electric one
but your friend is still buying a diesel
car
one fine day you both turn up at a car
dealership
and realize the electric car costs
significantly higher than the diesel
variant
but a sales person comes to your rescue
and explains to you that while your
friend will be burning a hole in his
refueling the car every time with diesel
you will only add up marginal cost every
time you recharge it
as you both drive your vehicles for 50
000 kilometers
your friend is adding significant cost
and 100 000
and 150 000 kilometers
but in all of that while you only add a
marginal cost to your electric car
so you’re happy
that while i’m incurring less cost i’m
also saving the environment but are you
really let’s look at the climate cost of
the ev as well
similar to the financial cost an
electric vehicle costs to the climate
far higher than the diesel variant
and this is because as you manufacture
cars there are lot of carbon emissions
related to the manufacturing process
both cars lead to significant carbon
emissions when they are manufactured but
more so in the case of an electric
vehicle because they require batteries
to be manufactured as well and these
batteries need rare earth minerals to be
mined and then processed into them
hence the cost to climate of an electric
vehicle is much higher than its diesel
counterpart
but you would be like that’s okay i can
make up for this higher cost as i run my
electric vehicle
but what we miss out over here is the
electricity that is being used to charge
the electric vehicles is still coming
from burning coal and gas in our thermal
power plants
so as you and your friend both run your
cars
you will definitely be emitting lesser
as compared to your friend
but the emissions are not insignificant
as compared to the diesel car and when
you both drive for 50 000 kilometers you
would realize that the upfront cost to
climate as well as the running cost of
climate or both the vehicles
you lose
because you are emitting much more and
it’s only when you both drive 100 000
kilometers
that both of your costs to climate match
up
and this is what we call as the green
threshold
it takes 100 000 kilometers for an
electric vehicle to become greener as
compared to the diesel variant
we realize that log 9 the reason
electric vehicles are not able to
fulfill their promise of solving for the
climate change is because of the
batteries
the current batteries are dirty to
manufacture they have a short life span
and they are very inefficient
with this realization in 2017 we
ventured out onto the journey of making
better and better batteries by
leveraging log9 competency of graphene
nanotechnology and material science
because with better batteries you can
reduce the upfront cost to climate of
manufacturing an electric vehicle
at the same time better batteries enable
us to increase the mix of renewable
energy on our grids and hence we can cut
down on the running cost to climate of
an ev
further
more efficient batteries enable us to
reduce the energy required of running
the vehicle for every one kilometer
so finally when you stack up the new
running cost to climate of an ev with
the upfront cost to climate you would
realize that you’re finally able to make
a green impact as compared to a diesel
car
here i would like to bring out another
important aspect
there is a mad rush around the world to
increase the range on our electric
vehicles
but as we go from a 200 kilometer range
ev to a 300 kilometer range electric
vehicle and then to a 400 kilometer
range one
we are back to square one
the benefit that we have been able to
achieve with more efficient batteries
better batteries is all gone
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