Tesla battery day - technical highlights

sinbaadi

I wish there was an industry standard "grams of CO2" per car for a 10year/100k miles lifespan, including the cost of production of that vehicle.
People who are swapping cars every 2 years and at the same time celebrating the environmental impact of a car that does 10mpg more than their previous car, must surely be kidding themselves.

crunchman

sinbaadi said:

I wish there was an industry standard "grams of CO2" per car for a 10year/100k miles lifespan, including the cost of production of that vehicle.
People who are swapping cars every 2 years and at the same time celebrating the environmental impact of a car that does 10mpg more than their previous car, must surely be kidding themselves.

It does depend on what happens to their old car. If it gets bought second hand by someone upgrading, and it does 5mpgh more than the car they were previously using, and their previous car replaces some stinking old banger, which then gets scrapped, it's not so bad.

In an ideal world though, we should be aiming to make cars last 20 years plus.

sinbaadi

crunchman said:

sinbaadi said:

I wish there was an industry standard "grams of CO2" per car for a 10year/100k miles lifespan, including the cost of production of that vehicle.
People who are swapping cars every 2 years and at the same time celebrating the environmental impact of a car that does 10mpg more than their previous car, must surely be kidding themselves.

It does depend on what happens to their old car. If it gets bought second hand by someone upgrading, and it does 5mpgh more than the car they were previously using, and their previous car replaces some stinking old banger, which then gets scrapped, it's not so bad.

In an ideal world though, we should be aiming to make cars last 20 years plus.

Agreed that cars should be built to last that sort of time but I don't think that is exactly a priority for any manufacturer, and electric car manufacturers possibly even less so.

I wonder what the net CO2 difference would be had we never scrapped a single car built after 1990.

By the way, I'm not looking at this from any position of moral superiority, but having dipped my toe back in to the world of leasing again last year, where a car feels as disposable as it gets, I'm certainly questioning the sustainability of that, and wondering whether it's a particularly responsible thing to be doing.