The new research finds that in order to repay the carbon debt of making a new EV, it must be driven 4,400 miles if it’s a car and 6,700 miles each year if it’s a truck. That’s already well below the 12,500 miles the average driver travels in a year, and the benefits to making the switch are likely to grow.
As the United States increasingly relies on renewables, for example, charging an EV becomes even more environmentally appealing. Campbell and his co-author also point to improvements in battery recycling as a way of reducing the emissions involved with making an electric car.
One hole in this latest study is that it doesn’t consider the cost of going electric. While previous research has shown that EVs come with higher upfront costs but lower operating expenses, it’s a thread that Campbell hopes economists pull on. He would also like to see someone better account for the emissions generated while extracting oil and getting gasoline to the pump, rather than simply the burning. But, for now, he believes the study sends a clear message.
Retrofitting ICE cars to EV would be the obvious best option but unfortunately it’s still really expensive to do. Plus, most of the kits target classic cars, which are not the priority imo
Edit: read the responses and you’re right, it doesn’t scale well. I would love to see OEMs organize some kind of mass retrofitting for their most sold models though.
I don’t think that actually would be more efficient than mass producing new cars. Much of the resources consumed prototyping and testing and tooling and actually assembling the vehicle are made much more efficient when you have a full assembly line putting together many identical vehicles from interchangeable parts.
With smaller production runs for some kind of retrofit, the labor will need to be much higher skill, there will need to be a lot more labor per vehicle, the parts will not be as efficiently produced, etc.
It’s expensive and labor intensive because it’s so inefficient, which is fun as a hobby but can’t scale the same way that just lining up an assembly line of all new vehicles would.
Two things here I think we should hold seperate.
- Combustion cars are everywhere on earth, the amount of creative uses people will find to repurpose them in a more electric transporation context will be bewildering, I am sure whole cottage industries will prop up around specific models of used cars that just have decent platforms and interiors to throw an electric motor into… but yeah none of it is going to be simple which leads me to 2.
- At the end of the day if what you want is a simple, small hatchback sized EV to do daily driving type tasks (i.e. long distance travel isn’t prioritized necessarily in the design) while the resources needed to produce such a vehicle are non-trivial… the end result isn’t something that is waste and an EV hooked up to the grid sitting in your garage is still very much doing something if we design grids intelligently. At some later point someone can use that frame to put new batteries in, replace the controls on the dashboard that broke, get a new breaking system and tires on… whatever and when you look at EVs from that perspective it just gets harder and harder to justify retrofitting combustion used cars at mass scale as a “mass transit” solution that can be applied generally.
no. new cars are built in bulk. old cars are retrofitted individually. customs are always more expensive per unit. to retrofit cars in bulk, you’d have to sort used cars per model nationwide and deliver them to matching retrofit stations. that would be quite an operation.
The best part about this is that cars with combustion engines are worse for the environment in every way, just like adding lead to gasoline was.
No one cared about lead gasoline until corporations were forced to remove the it because of changing environmental standards in the 1970s.
Literally no one cared that it made a generation or two stupid. Or caused a bunch of other issues.
Because, after all, it saved them money! It helped their engines run great.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
This must be understood as something different than Romans lining their aquaducts with lead, the science was absolutely there to suggest extreme danger from lead poisoning, and no amount of efficiency gained in gas cars was worth it if it kills the people moving or makes them more likely to be violent…
Efficiency is about conducting a task with as little resources as possible while not incurring existential costs that make the investment of resources self defeating.
We usually don’t need to say that last part out loud, but here I think we have to understand the 20th century’s obsession with cars as spiritual, and I mean that with a straight face because through this framing leaded gasoline was arguably always an insane choice, from the get-go.
Historians looking back will not be able to understand our choices unless they rationalize them as a belief system about cars that goes beyond the rational realm.
I think historians will understand greed and profit and capitalism and work that into their extrapolations.
Yes but even still that is simply and absurdly not enough, which is my point!
Midgley… this guy was on a roll. Leaded gas AND cfcs? oof.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.
kept right on inventing shit harmful to humans until it killed him lol.
I read about Roman use of lead in aqueducts being mostly a non-issue because of it oxidizing and that oxide layer keeping it in place…
We have a BEV we charge from our solar panels. It feels almost like cheating. 😋
I’ve done the math, and home solar panels for my small house (and our modest electricity consumption at local prices) still can’t compete with the cost of buying solar power from the grid. A $15,000 system might recoup $1000/year in reduced electricity costs, so that’s not going to break even any time soon. A $1000 off-grid solar “generator” system might net me 2 kWh/day, assuming I actually manually cycle through and physically charge my car with a little bit of charge every day, and basically would likely save me something like $125/year in electricity costs, for an 8 year breakeven.
I’m hopeful that the price of panels and batteries continue to drop, though, to where an investment in that home infrastructure could pay off within a reasonable amount of time from purchase, maybe 3 years from now.
I’m looking at $20k CAD to install solar, to offset less than half of my needs with one EV (will add another). Or I can spend like, $25 a month to offset the non-renewable proportion of my electric bill. I miss out on the cool factor, but it’s the practical decision given my current home’s limitations.
Fucking can’t afford EV give us affordable Fucking options I love an EV!
Yeah the US EV market is stupid. I could just about get by with a four season golf cart for getting around town. I still need a gasser for long drives I have to do pretty often, but we have four drivers so we need more than one vehicle. Give me a $15k EV!
I live US sure Trump will outlaw it like he did Chinese EVs.
Same
In Australia the least expensive car to buy new is a $21,000 fossil fuel car but the least expensive EV is AU$24,000. Only costs 14% more to get an EV.
PS: Also, the average petrol car driver in Australia spends $124 per week on fuel, so the price difference will be made up in about 24 weeks.
PPS: Also we have 3 hours of free electricity around midday because there is so much solar energy we don’t have capacity to store it all.
Good ol case of financing making everything needlessly expensive. EVs should be coming out at 5k, not 5 times that
PPPS: AU $24,000 is about US $17,000 at current exchange rate.
I think my point still stands. You’re paying and being paid in the same currency so I assume gathering 24k of each takes the same effort
While previous research has shown that EVs come with higher upfront costs but lower operating expenses
Not in states that tax them to death :(
Done.
My gas car is paid for, spare parts are cheap and readily available, and I know how to fix anything that can go wrong with it. Plus, my 2001 car doesn’t spy on me.
A new car is tens of thousands of dollars, EV parts are extremely expensive IF you can manage to find them, EVs are designed not to be serviceable, and every car made after about 2010 is basically an iPad on wheels designed to spy on you.
Add to that, I’d have to upgrade my service entrance and main breaker panel, AND install an external 240-volt outlet just to charge the thing fast enough for me to use it daily, and it all adds up to one big “fuck no” for me. It would take decades of ownership for mine to pay itself off, and I don’t think EVs last that long without needing major maintenance, which would only push that back further.
Add to that, I’d have to upgrade my service entrance and main breaker panel, AND install an external 240-volt outlet just to charge the thing fast enough for me to use it daily,
For whatever it’s worth, I kinda regret installing a Level 2 charger for my EV. Turns out I didn’t really need it, charging overnight most nights with a normal Level 1 (120V, 10A receptacle driving a 1.1 kW charger) would easily be enough for me. I drive about 200 miles a week, and get about 3.3 miles/kWh, so I need to use about 60 kWh per week. Parking overnight for 12 hours is good for about 13 kWh, so I would just need to remember to plug in most nights when I get home.
But I got the Level 2 charger anyway and just charge once a week basically.
- If your car is in good condition, you don’t drive a ton, and you can keep it fixed up and running without going crazy fine, you aren’t really part of the problem.
- EV parts are only expensive because of artificial market conditions, EV vehicles have much simpler drivetrains than ICE cars do at a fundamental level and replacing batteries on a EV mechanically is a million times easier than pulling out an combustion engine and transmission to fix something fundamental with the drivetrain.
- It would not take years of ownership to pay for itself, especially if the car cost somewhere between $9k and $20k, the reason is your car constantly costs money to keep working, combustion engines inherently are wondrously complex explosions, I think they are cool as hell don’t get me wrong but an EV motor is hands down a lower cost engine to run for a daily driver, especially for shorter distances.
- If you purchased an EV there is a societal benefit to the grid potentially in that a local grid with numerous EV batteries hooked up to it can be far more resilient and cost effective for everyone, and that doesn’t even require your EV to be being actively used by you to accrue a benefit that is potentially quantifiable.
All that being said, sure keep your old combustion engine car, keep it in good condition and drive it as little as possible, you are fine this is about a broader economic misconception not about judging your particular life choices!
Regarding 3, depending on where you are it might not take any time for an EV to pay for itself. The average Australian petrol car driver spends $124 per week on fuel. The cheapest EV here costs $24,000, or $83 per week on a 7 year loan.
Recharging costs are only around $1 per day but even if it was $5 per day it’s still cheaper to drive a loaned EV than to put petrol in a combustion car.
EV parts are extremely expensive IF you can manage to find them, EVs are designed not to be serviceable
[citation needed]
install an external 240-volt outlet just to charge the thing fast enough for me to use it daily
Assuming you’re in the US,120V mains outlet charging adds about 5-8 km or 3-5 miles of range per hour. If you’re really driving so far every day that an overnight charge won’t cover it, an EV surely would be very appealing due to the immense savings on fuel costs.
It would take decades of ownership for mine to pay itself off
Using Australian figures because that’s where I am and what I know - the average petrol car driver here goes 30km per day and spends $124 per week [1] in fuel. To get a 7-year car loan to buy the cheapest EV ($24,000) costs $83 per week[2] (without any trade in considered, which would lower it further) and charging costs are practically negligible (charging off mains power for that 30km per day is only around $1 of electricity).
In other words, it’s literally cheaper to buy an EV on a loan and drive that than to fill up the tank in the petrol car you already have. People think it takes “decades” to break even without doing the maths, but when you actually work it out buying an EV will save money immediately.
Edit to add notes:
[1] According to the Automobile Association affordability dashboard, the average Australian driver paid $93.81 for fuel every week in Q4 2025, when prices were $1.82 per litre. Scaling up for the x1.32 price increase since then, that’s $123.71 per week on petrol for the average driver.
Gas prices will catch up to this line of thought eventually.
Hell, maybe gas availability.
you’re simply putting off the inevitable. I wish there were ways to easily convert conventional ICE to EV use but have yet to see anything practical for a wide range of setups.
Haha We bought the highest equipment model when we bought our ID.4 because it’s so cool.
1 headlight set cost about $1,500 because it has Matrix light. 😋But goddam it’s a nice car IMO, and I love all the extras. From what I know there are way fewer repairs in an electric. People used to be scared about the battery, but in reality it’s not a problem.
ICE cars have lots of things that wear down that are also expensive to repair, AFAIK more so than electric cars.
Regarding the surveillance I don’t think you can get a car in EU that doesn’t have it, because since 2018 the SOS emergency call function has been mandated by law in EU countries. Ans with that present, the necessary equipment for surveillance is already installed. So it makes no difference if it’s ICE or EV in that regard.In USA I don’t think it makes any difference either, there is so much camera surveillance in USA, a lot of it private, but it goes through cloud services, so I bet authorities can access most of it if they want. So it doesn’t help much that you don’t have it installed in your car.
It’s 1984 that has come true in that regard, the only questio0n is how much we can trust the authorities, and many places that is not so much.
Edit:
Edited the price for the headlight, because the first price I found when checking was for a complete set.
