MIT Study Finds Gas Cars Aren't Secretly Better For The Planet Than EVs, Despite What Everyone On Facebook Says
https://www.jalopnik.com/2195847/mit-study-finds-evs-better-for-planet-than-gas-cars/Open linkView original on lemmy.today668
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MIT Study VS Facebook posts. Hard choice.
Well the Misinformation Institute of Technology just cannot be trusted. It's in the name!!
Everyone who was around during the pandemic knows that facebook is gonna win
Look at everything the MIT has done for us!
Well the headline alone is misleading disinformation.
People shouldn't blindly trust that MIT is somehow immune from the failures of capitalist science. It's literally the heart of the MIC. Endless bullshit coming out of there.
The batteries do contain rare minerals like lithium but these can be recovered and recycled. EVs can be charged with solar, wind and other renewables even tho many places in the USA still burn coal or natural gas.
Once you burn gasoline in your ICE vehicle then it’s gone, it turns into gasses that go into the atmosphere and can’t easily be recovered into anything of much use.
EVs are the future and we all know it. Gasoline will continue to become more expensive and more difficult to extract.
I’d argue with the level of shit were in with the climate, the no cars lifestyle should be the future.
It might be in a few nations with strong public transit already like Japan and a number or European nations but honestly idk if it will ever happen in the USA at least not in my life time.
We went from zero cars to everything covered in cars in a lifetime, we can go back in a lifetime.
Attitudes around public transport have to change. It's seen as a thing poor people use in some cities so the affluent kill expansion efforts. And even where it doesn't have that stigma, nobody wants to pay for infrastructure.
It's so neat to have a problem that combines poor numeracy with not being able to see two steps ahead. Yeah, if could somehow grow the Venn diagram of people with those two skills that would be great.
OK but that's about as realistic in the next 40+ years as genetically engineered flying pigs.
Incremental progress is good.
Then I guess surviving the climate collapse will be just as realistic.
Incrementalism is what has killed us. Incrementalism plus crony capitalism equals absolute zero.
Speaking as someone who has worked on plenty of gasoline powered cars.... Duh. The most obvious waste product an internal combustion car makes other than the exhaust is the used oil. Have to do something with it. Have to make sure the engine isn't leaking out into the environment when it's running.
Even if you are charging your car from a coal plant, it's more efficient. A coal power plant runs at one speed/output all the time. Gas cars have to throttle up and down. Each gas car has to be maintained by the person owning it, while the power plant has a maintenance team and inspections.
Also to the throttling up and down, the power plant, or even a gasoline generator sitting in the car itself, will always run at peak efficiency. Even a gasoline car sitting on the highway for 4hrs isn’t running at peak efficiency and a lot of that energy is lost in heat through the transmission.
I can tell you that keeping an existing decent ICE is better than buying a new EV. But once you have to buy a new car anyway, and an EV fits your usage pattern and operational environment there are no reasons not to buy one.
Yeah, it's a bullshit clickbait headline to ignore this fact.
So that's not what the article was saying
worst part of getting old is watching everyone around you gradually get dumber
Science back then: after long work we were able to create a vaccine, and we managed to eradicate small pox completely.
Science now: we did a study to prove something on Facebook isn't true.
To be fair the scientists only invented the vaccine, and modern scientists are inventing plenty of vaccines and medical technologies today, including vaccines for infamously difficult to stop diseases like HIV.
Eradicating smallpox was a feat of international cooperation and administration. If we put in the effort in those areas today we could eliminate measles or polio. Or in the near future we could begin the process of eliminating HIV (it would take a long time because it's not a death sentence anymore). Now I'm mad we aren't engaged in a global fight to eliminate HIV the way we did for smallpox.
Hey, I did my own research!!!!1!1!!
How do you discover new things or form opinions?
How do I wat?
What are opinions?
Yeah, I have only facts, non of those opinions.
Theys easy to find. Opinions make you cry when you cut them.
No, you're thinking of onions. Opinions are American marsupials known for confusing predators by pretending to be dead.
No, you're thinking of opossums. Opinions are a class of pain medications that are now tightly controlled due to the high likelihood of addiction.
I'm pretty sure you're thinking of opioids. Opinions are animals that regularly consume both plant and animal matter.
The only “everyone” are trolls, paid or otherwise, the ignorant, and right wingnuts parroting the trolls and ignorant.
And there are a shitload of them who all seem to want to show off that opinion.
Half my family believes this it’s one of the major reason they don’t switch to EVs despite being believers of climate change.
Pretty insane how well that disinformation works. If you are worried about nickel, mangan and cobalt, just get a car with an LFP battery, which doesn't need those heavy metals (it is based on lithium and iron phosphate). The only other critical resource in appreciable amounts is neodynium for permanent magnets. We are talking about 1-3 kg per car.
If you think that makes EVs worse for climate or environment than ICE vehicles, think again.
That does sound like everyone on Facebook
Don't underestimate the ignorant.
Especially their numbers
I think the ignorant still fall into trolls category (paid or not). They’re just an extension of them being effective.
You reduced it to about 70% of the population.
And idiots who spend lots of money on overpriced ice cars to impress their mates
That's why they are so concerned about the resell value in a years time, because they're not buying the car they want, only one that is fashionable
I didn't realise anyone still uses facebook. Like in developed countries I mean.
I live in Atlanta and when I turned 21 (a couple years ago, but post 2020) I was kinda irritated because literally everything in the entire city was planned on Facebook Events, and I hated using Facebook.
It's overwhelmingly popular, especially in the 30+ crowd, not even restricted to your 55+. Genuinely everyone would create Facebook events (before Partiful got popular) to invite people over on a Saturday
Edit: spelling
Hey you keep us 30 somethings out of this. I don't know anyone my age still on Facebook. We're leaving Instagram too. Fuck social media and fuck platforms owned and controlled by billionaires.
I'm still on there, primarily because a band I'm in uses it for events invites and uses Messenger for coordination group texts
Amazing how an entire age group doesn't think and act the same tho - it's almost like they're made up of individuals. Who would have guessed?
Gas cars are better! (says the gas station owner)
Gold.
I genuinely thought i misread the title... Wtf
People platform-independently use social media echo chambers to reinforce their own biases and suppress contrary thinking. I think it's an attempt to find comfort zones and avoid self-questioning, which is inherently uncomfortable and involves effort.
Is lemmy the same kind of comfortable echo chamber?
yes
Article leaves out tires and tire wear pollution which is significant and bad stuff. It's also worse in heavier vehicles. Yes, EVs, especially if CATL can get their sodium battery line off the ground, are better overall, but let's not oversimplify. Also, the most environmental car is still a car...
What do you propose we do to solve tyres?
I guess more trams would be cool
This is the way
Light rail would be great alright, but I'm curious about a car tyre replacement
Of course fossil fuels are worse, but that doesn't mean EVs are a magically green utopia machine either.
Literally no-one has said that
Really? The manufacturers certainly seem to push such allusions in their advertising.
A second hand ICE car is still better than a new EV though.
We kinda solved cars 15 years ago as an ICE car from 2010 is almost indistinguishable from a new one. I'm waiting for my 2008 toyota to retire but it just keeps on going to the point where I think it'll last me 10 more years. I don't drive much but it takes e20 as fuel (heavily dilutated gasoline) and with CVT gearbox it's super cheap to maintain so I really don't feel like me upgrading to an EV would make any difference other than promote EV infrastructure.
My next car will definitely be an EV though primary because I expect battery tech to be much better by then.
A second hand EV is better than a second hand gas car though, so... What's your point? What's with this entirely outdated talking point at all? There are EVs old enough to vote.
Sadly the second hand ev market doesn't exist everywhere.
Yeah I guess India where they're still working on adopting anything that isn't either a moped or 2 ton diesel, but pretty much everywhere else you can get a second hand EV. Even in the rural US.
Source? Cause the world is bigger than USA and India. You are just an ignorant biggot.
Sure, Chinese EVs have been popular in Africa, South America, Russia, and South East Asia for the last five years, which covers 75% of humanity.
The Racist Anglosphere and the underdeveloped slave capital of the world India are the ones far behind the curve, but Europe seems to be coming to their senses so that really just leaves India and the other developing country of the US.
Everywhere there's a strong primary sales market, there's a strong secondary sales market.
Also it's not bigoted to point out India's massive internal failing to develop even close to the same pace as China despite having a twenty year head start and much more western investment. The country in taking after its western masters decided against communism (for the most part) and has obviously suffered greatly for it. But hey, they get to be the underpaid call center workers of the western world, hurting western countries and bringing in so much... oh... oh no... what happened to all the money.
5 years enough to develop a second hand market? I double dare you to go on any 2nd hand market website of these countries and prove it to me. Lmao what an utter bafoon you are.
I feel you. My 20 year old Honda that I bought for $3k cash 3 years ago is reliable and easy to work on.
I do like the idea of not ever buying gasoline again, but I also like the idea of a $32 a month insurance payment and no car note, too...
It's amazing how this article ignores this obvious fact and even more amazing that people downvote it.
Don't forget the shitty electronics and spyware in newer cars.
You can buy EVs secondhand. You'd be hard pressed to find a sub 10k EV "beater" but there are plenty of used EVs in the 15-25k price range in my area, and are equivalent in features to used cars in the same bracket.
You can't really. The world is a bit bigger than you think and mass adoption global cars like byd dolphin etc. Only started appear 4 years ago. So how can a second hand ev market develop?
Huh, I didn't realize you can't buy second hand EVs. Gonna have a tough time explaining the my wife why the Mustang is gone.
You know other countries have had EVs for just as long as the US?
Nope, prove it then. Show me the numbers I'll wait. 2nd hand ev market is basically non existent still.
Maybe just try googling it? Nah, you'd probably whine about being told to do that...
https://www.theparking.eu/used-cars/#%21%2F%3Fid_energie=2&id_pays=23
Took less than 2 minutes, and there you go, looks like you can view used EV listings in ~60 different countries on that site alone.
What a small world view you must have, to think that used electric cars only exist in the USA....
Sheesh
I don't think I understand the argument against EV's for their electricity source very well. Isn't the electricity for the car being generated anyways? It'd be like saying your television is polluting worse than an ICE car or your hot tub/clothes dryer for a more power hungry example.
It takes some guy gasoline to truck gasoline to the electric pump and the powered gas station to fill your car with gasoline. Like am I missing something or are people arguing just to argue?
Unless this whole article was satire and it whooshed right over me.
The general idea is that the production of the electronics is far more destructive than making an ICE drive system. I am not well read on recent changes, but there was a point where that statement was true, but even then the electronics weren't worse from greenhouse gas standpoint, just from other toxins.
I'm less worried about heavy metals in dumps than I am about Earth becoming too hot for mammalian life. I don't wanna go back to dinosaur times.
It's an elaborate plot, if u were paying any attention you would know that the world is run by a race of reptilians that live inside the core of the flat earth. They desperately want to superheat our planet so they can shed their human disguises and bask naked in the heat of our polluted world.
That's the plot of Inside Job!
That's a great show lol
That's the general idea of this article. But many people have the correct general idea that it's better to drive an old ICE car then to build a new EV. This is not debunked or even mentioned by this article.
Fixed that disinfo for ya.
No, no you didn't. But that's okay little buddy. Someday your fantasy will be true.
Strange that the post didn't go into the mining/manufacturing side.
This may come as a shocker to some people, but ICE cars are mined and manufactured in almost the exact same way as an EV. The main difference is EVs tend to weigh a bit more.
Also, once you mine the materials for an EV, you're done. My car runs on sunlight and wind. Once you mine and manufacture an ICE, you are locked into mining, manufacturing, and transporting resources for it for the rest of it's existence.
Maybe cause its a separate issue? Look, yes it is costly to extract the resources for a battery, but once we have it, we have it for good. Batteries are incredibly recyclable at this point (90%+ recoverable, conservatively), and a new battery can be almost entirely created using previous batteries.
This is in comparison to fossil fuels, which you get to burn exactly once, after which point you have to go extract more. The environmental costs of extracting oil (not even burning it) are well documented.
Where a ICE car requires ongoing environmental devastation, an electric one does not inherently require it. As more of the materials for batteries enters circulation, there's less need to go extract more, and as grids transition from fossil fuels to renewables the climate impact of charging can be lessened as well.
Of course this isn't to say that an electric car is the climate endgame. More walkable places, better public transit, better regulation of corporate polluters, etc. are the real meat and potatoes. But saying that EVs are just as bad as ICE cars is just not true.
It's what those Facebook actually people fall back on so it isn't a separate issue. It's the issue being addressed.
I'm aware of everything you said, I just find the article of low value for not being able to use as a retort to the people it claims to refute.
Because the existence of oil rigs destroys that separate, and even dumber, talking point entirely by itself?
Ok, but can you show me even one time those oil rigs have caused an environmental disaster? OK, but that was only once. OK, those 15 other times you linked. OK, but clearly they can't be that bad, the hippies cleaned up the the birds and BP said they were sorry.
Efficiency of processes is different in every situation, including long-standing ones, like one area having plenty of seawater and some other area having just lots of sand, some places being moderate-temperatured and some like central Siberia with hot summers and cold winters, things like that.
Meaning that one can't say that gas cars are "better for the planet" or "worse for the planet" than EVs. Period.
This study is true for some set of conditions, but it's pretty clear that people referring to it will use it outside of the scope.
There are better arguments than unprovable claims. Say, EVs use "universalized" energy, that is, can be charged from the grid, while gas cars require different kinds of gas depending on the specific engine and regulatory requirements. EVs have electric machines in them, pretty similar to those in electric trains or whatever else, but that's not as important as less wear and more universality. EVs in theory should require less maintenance, but since these are usually new fancy cool things, their electronic components might have the common downsides of all new cars. Fire hazards are different between them. On the other side, gasoline can be stored more easily.
I mean, one would think civilization can exist without choosing just one.
That's a lot of words for "I want to sound clever"
If you listen carefully, you can hear them moving the goal posts from "countering Facebook knowledge" to "must be universally better in every scenario"
Sounds like fingers on a chalkboard
Is this a shitty bot or just a fucking stuned goat. Babling over nothing with no point to it.
Burning petroleum is one of the most destructive things you can do and it is absolutely common to do it. Everyday a single vehicles emits enough pollution to kill countless people. It gives them cancer and when combined with lead has resulted in hundreds of millions of deaths. It is absolutely insane people continue supporting this technology.
Considering that since there are over 1.6 billion cars in use worldwide, I think if each one killed more than one person per day there would soon be none of us left.
Collectively they do cause some 246,000 deaths each year, from pollution alone, with several times that figure being attributable to motor vehicle collisions. So I do think the regular use of fossil fuel vehicles needs to be phased out, along with a drastic reduction in personal vehicle use in general in urban areas and the implementation of systematic safety principles in road design.
Try seeing how long you can suck on a car exhaust and live? My point stands.
Lead in gas in cars wasn't even phased out until 1996 and only in 2021 was is declared officially over. Meanwhile the entire planet has been blanket by lead leading to startling facts like burning wood releases a ton of lead.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/may/15/wood-burning-for-heat-reintroducing-lead-pollution-into-the-air-us-scientists-find
Our entire ecosystem needs a EPA style Superfund cleanup. Hundred of millions of people have already died just from lead. The lead left over in our environment, mostly from gas burning, kills anywhere from one to five million people every year to this day.
That means thirty years since leaded gasoline was first banned we have lost anywhere between 30-150 million people. This lead is not going away as demonstrated by the trees.
I swear we have lost close to a billion people from pollution in the last 50 years or so. Lead is only an additive, we haven't even gotten into all the problems with the rest of it. Petroleum is a huge part of this loss of life. This is the true cost, a future of environmental degredation.
But your stats are from your ass.
Are you acting obtuse on purpose?
https://healthpolicy-watch.news/96476-2/
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/11/20/1213841798/a-new-study-says-the-global-toll-of-lead-exposure-is-even-worse-than-we-thought
As I said the range is anywhere from 1-5 million a year.
You can take your petroleum apologist nonsense somewhere else. Imagine someone bootlicking when then know millions of people have died and will continue to die.
If you want to argue scientifically, you have to be precise.
You're doing the facebook boomer thing btw.
Which is what?
Note, I'm not disagreeing with the guy. I'm helping them make better arguments.
Oh god you act really dumb.
Try seeing how long you can stay underwater and live?
Every water kills billions per water!!!
Please try to stay on topic.
Please try to use your brain.
Don't be jealous that I have one.
I admit that I am. That makes it even more embarrassing for you though.
And you'd sink and down pretty quickly if the world were made of pudding.
Are you okay?
They probably were at a time when a disproportionate amount of R&D was put into them but I doubt Facebook understands this
Hey look! Someone who's never made a grammatical error!
Where!
Or mistaken grammar for spelling
Let me ask Facebook how credible this study is...
@Grok, is this legit?
::: spoiler Tap for spoiler /s :::
*grok speaks against the favor of petroleum industry and is taken offline to be lobotomized yet another time*
Absolute gold! (The hosts of Car Talk were both MIT grads)
Yeah but I heard this one scientist said one time that EVs actually cause more cancers and make trees grow less leaves
Trans trees! And bushes! Trans nature!
Is that what you want!?
The solar panels on my roof that I use to charge my car suck up all the sun and stop my grass growing
Was that a scientist, or scientologist?
Maybe someone with a political science degree?
EVs beat me up and killed my dog.
EVs stole my wife and shot my kids.
EVs turned me into a newt!
A newt?
I got better?
You got cybercucked
No, that was a cop.
If only there was a YouTuber that covered this months ago…
Oh wait
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM
Don't worry, they'll find something on YouTube that'll confirm their bias. They won't watch a 1.5h video though.
I love Alex, literally just watched his fan video, but you can't act like that one video is all we need on the subject. "There's already a video on that" doesn't really help anyone trying to bring awareness to a massive issue
You can’t rationally argue someone out of a position that they didn’t rationally enter in the first place.
When somebody says "You're wrong, watch this hour long video by a youtuber to find out why", have you ever watched the videos they linked?
Yes! But I'm definitely an oddball. I also read the terms of serving refuse to use services that have terms I disagree with.
I happen to have seen that one before. It's very layered … like an onion.
Of course you can. It just takes patience.
It's literally what psychologists do for a living
I like technology connections but no way in hell should you be advocating for people on Facebook to get their facts from youtubers.
More like gaylord_factmaster