Volvo: Emissions in Making EVs 70% Higher Than Gas Vehicles
Volvo has said that emissions from the production of electric cars are far higher than a petrol equivalent, as it called on world leaders and energy providers to significantly boost investments in green energy to reduce the carbon footprint of plug-in models.
The Swedish carmaker said that over a car’s lifetime the electric version will become greener overall, though this will only be achieved after covering between 30,000 and 68,400 miles – taking between four and nine years for the average UK motorist.
The claims were made to coincide with the COP26 climate summit taking place in Glasgow and as part of a revolutionary new transparency approach adopted by the brand, which includes publishing its latest ‘Life Cycle Assessment’ report for the pure-electric (and massively expensive at £57,400) C40 Recharge.
It shows that emissions during the production of the electric vehicle are nearly 70 percent higher than a petrol model, which is mainly due to the carbon intensity of battery and steel production, as well as from the increased share of aluminum in the plug-in car.
But Volvo said as an EV the C40 Recharge has a far lower carbon footprint than its comparable petrol version during the ‘use phase’, though suggests it would take a prolonged period of ownership before it offsets its higher emissions from production.
When charged with ‘clean energy’, such as wind power, the lifecycle CO2 footprint of the new electric SUV comes down to approximately 27 tonnes of CO2, compared with 59 tonnes for an XC40 compact SUV powered by a combustion engine.
However, when drivers charge their C40 Recharge using an average global energy mix (which is generated for around 60 percent from fossil fuels), the car’s lifecycle CO2 tonnage can increase to as much as 50 tonnes, significantly reducing the environmental gains versus a traditionally powered car.
Volvo estimated that an electric Volvo C40 needs to be driven around 68,400 miles to have a lower total carbon footprint than its petrol equivalent if the former is powered by the current global electricity mix.
Based on the latest UK driving statistics, the average annual mileage is 7,400 miles. That means it could take nine years of ownership before the EV is greener than a car with an internal combustion engine, Volvo suggests.
However, it could offset its higher production emissions in only 30,000 miles (four years of driving) if charged with greener wind-generated electricity.
Experts have disputed – and criticized – the Swedish maker’s estimations, claiming it will take just 16,000 miles – just over two years of driving – for the electric C40 to overtake a petrol equivalent in terms of emissions – then pull well ahead beyond that point.
For a car manufacturer to make such bold statements that somewhat undermine the green credentials of its new – and expensive – vehicle is brave or foolish, depending on which side of the EV-debate fence you sit.
Volvo says the aim of its new reveal-all reports is to encourage decision-makers to make improvements so that it and other electric cars can ‘deliver on their true potential in terms of climate benefit’.
See more here: climatechangedispatch.com
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Header image: Green Car Reports
Editor’s note: What makes the ‘experts’ who disputed Volvo more authorative than Volvo’s own experts? The answer is simple: anyone who promotes climate alarmism is automatically regarded as more ‘expert’ than those who speak out against it being real.
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very old white guy
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Now there was article that had me laughing from the get go. Not a rational thought exposed.
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Charles Higley
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“When charged with ‘clean energy’, such as wind power, the lifecycle CO2 footprint of the new electric SUV comes down to approximately 27 tonnes of CO2,”
They missed the point that they also need to include the huge emissions from the production, maintenance, and lack of adequate recycling from wind and solar structures.
This completely changes the equation. The lifetimes of wind and solar are really only 12 to 15 years before maintenance and environmental pollution start to make these devices true negatives in every way.
Wind and solar are the least green energy sources on the planet.
YOU CANNOT BUILD A RELIABLE ENERGY SUPPLY FROM UNRELIABLE ENERGY SOURCES.
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very old white guy
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That GREENER wind energy does not exist and never will. The fools are beyond instruction. That GREENER energy cannot be achieved without massive fossil fuel inputs, in fact more than a turbine will ever generate in it’s life.
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Mario M
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That’s strange. EV have far less mechanical components, the electric motor can last for a lifetime, is almost industrictible. The overall energy transformation to run the car is also more efficient
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Howdy
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It’s just a motor Mario. The bearings will be one failure point, lasting more, or less time, dependent on the driving style. Plus the motor has a transmission line to the wheel, that’s another. Basically all the examples of driving these vehicles that I see are related to outright power delivery. It doesn’t bode well for longevity, just like any other component:
Drive assembly, model X: https://youtu.be/aLQFZkc0KiM?t=349
Even a motor at each corner will suffer since there must be a reduction gearing and flexible drive setup, just like any car.
A tesla that was in a flooded area. State of the motor: https://youtu.be/aLQFZkc0KiM?t=131
Not even that deep.The motor was destroyed, as well as the battery. Worth bearing in mind.
“The Swedish carmaker said that over a car’s lifetime the electric version will become greener overall”
Battery degradation suggests otherwise.
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Barry
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No surprise , there is nothing green about lithium and rare earth mining. And then it will be even greener when you use wind power for electricity. Sorry the laughing has overtaken me now.
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Upchuck.Liberals
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#1 Volvo is no longer Swedish, they are owned by the ChiComs, Greely I believe. #2 The ChiComs have a vested interest in lithium batteries, they have the lithium. #3 There is nothing green about electric cars and never will be until they get the battery issue sorted out. #4 until they get away from the garbage of wind and solar we will never cut our way to having enough energy, we need real 24/7/365 energy not something relying on mother nature. And massive battery storage won’t work, there isn’t enough lithium on this rock to pull that one off. I’d believe in using Sparkly Rainbow Unicorn farts way before ‘green energy’.
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Richard Noakes
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China’s Electric Car Boom Went Bust
Published on September 25, 2021
Written by Climate Change Dispatch
Visitors to Byton Ltd.’s website are greeted with color-saturated images of shiny electric cars gliding along manicured streets. Those paying a visit to the automaker’s factory in Nanjing, eastern China may be less impressed. (Pictured: deserted EV factories in Nanjing)
The plant is modern and huge, gleaming under the hot summer sun. But there’s total silence. Production has been suspended since the pandemic began and there’s no one around except for a lone security guard.
It’s a similar situation across town at Bordrin Motors. Weeds dot the factory’s perimeter and there’s a court notice pasted to the main gate announcing the electric carmaker’s bankruptcy.
Bordrin and Byton represent the flip side of China’s EV success. While home-grown stars like Nio Inc. and Xpeng Inc. have gone on to raise billions of dollars and are now selling cars in numbers that rival Tesla Inc., scores more have fallen by the wayside, unable to raise the crazy amounts of capital needed to make automobiles at scale.
In many cases, they were lured into existence by provincial governments dangling cash and other incentives to make Beijing’s dream of turning China into an EV powerhouse a reality.
Local authorities helped manufacturers set up factories that promised jobs and development — if they succeeded. But the tide began to turn in November when regulators asked regional governments to review and report back on the scale of their support for the auto industry.
Alarmed by unbridled investment in the sector — and the bankruptcies and zombified factories that came with it — Beijing is applying the brakes.
“We have too many EV firms,” Xiao Yaqing, China’s minister for industry and information technology, told reporters on Sept. 13. Mergers and acquisitions will be encouraged as the market needs to be further concentrated, he said.
The government is also looking at setting production limits for the EV sector, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News this month, with provinces unable to green-light new projects until surplus capacity comes online. Resources will also be channeled into a few select EV hubs.
The moves are a potential warning sign for investors who have poured money into electric carmakers and the technologies that support them over the past year.
There are some 846 registered automobile manufacturers in China, and more than 300 of them churn out new-energy cars, loosely defined as electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids.
The vast majority are names unrecognizable elsewhere. In 2020 alone, the country added new production capacity of around 5 million units, about four times the actual number of EVs sold in China that year. According to regulators, almost half that capacity wasn’t in use.
Bordrin, founded by former Ford executive Huang Ximing in 2016, was targeting annual output of 700,000 cars across three factories. But it ran out of money and folded before making even one. Huang didn’t reply to messages seeking comment sent via WeChat.
China doesn’t have a public dossier of bankruptcies, but since last year, at least a dozen EV makers are known to have gone under or have had to be restructured to avoid insolvency.
“This is kind of the classic capitalist competitive shakeout,” said Gary Dvorchak, a Beijing-based managing director at investment advisory Blueshirt Group LLC. “You get a zillion companies and then you have an oversupply situation. The process of failing is typically a lot slower in China because companies get government support. But eventually, some have to die and the pain inflicted to get those deaths to happen can be high.”
Byton at least still exists. The carmaker, co-founded by former BMW AG and Nissan Motor Co. executives, suspended all domestic operations and furloughed staff in July last year as the pandemic made it tougher to get its business off the ground.
Even before COVID, the company had encountered difficulties meeting announced deadlines on producing and delivering its first model, although its website still accepts reservations for cars.
‘Idle capacity’
Things started to look up this year, when Byton signed a strategic cooperation deal with iPhone maker Foxconn Technology Group in January (aided by the Nanjing Economic and Technological Development Zone) to start mass production of the Byton M-Byte SUV by the first quarter of 2022.
But Foxconn has been withdrawing staff from the Nanjing plant after one of the carmaker’s biggest creditors started taking management control, Bloomberg reported in July, and last week, the Nikkei newspaper said the collaboration had been put on hold due to Byton’s worsening financial situation.
A representative for Byton declined to comment on this story.
Jiangsu province, where Nanjing is located, strove to become an EV hub, luring $32 billion of auto-industry investment in the six years through 2020. Now, it’s home to more than 30 car manufacturers.
But it became the focus of a Beijing-ordered probe earlier this year, which found some local authorities had been doling out tax breaks and land incentives to attract carmakers that were beyond the scope of government guidelines.
This resulted in “salient problems of low production capacity utilization rates and idle capacity,” Jiangsu provincial officials said in a statement in February, without elaborating.
“Local governments had high expectations for the development of new-energy vehicle companies, hoping to tap the opportunities of the sector and drive local economic expansion,” Cui Dongshu, secretary-general of China Passenger Car Association, said in an interview. “Investors also saw huge profit potential. This has resulted in surplus capacity.”
Yinlong New Energy Co.’s Nanjing factory broke ground in 2017 with a total planned investment of 10 billion yuan (US$1.6 billion). Output was set at 30,000 new-energy commercial vehicles, mainly electric buses, and there were EV battery-making plans too.
Production was due to start in 2018 but today the plant is all but abandoned. Trash has piled up along its walls and roads connecting buildings inside are deserted, its entrances barricaded.
The company’s biggest shareholder, Gree Electric Appliances Inc., said there’s still scope for collaboration, either in bolstering the carmaker’s capacity utilization and competitiveness or in pushing its battery technology.
Some of China’s established automakers are watching all of this with a sense of inevitability. Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., one of the nation’s biggest privately owned carmakers with a range of brands spanning mass-market vehicles to ultra-luxury racing cars made by Lotus — which it controls — sees a natural cycle playing out, and one that will involve some casualties.
“Some people rush to build one, two, three, five factories, even though their first car isn’t yet on the market,” Group Lotus Plc Chief Executive Officer Feng Qingfeng said.
“When everybody thinks it’s easy to make cars, people dive into car making. When they realize the car business isn’t that easy, they stop investing,” he said. “It’s the invisible hand of the market economy commanding order.”
See more here: climatechangedispatch.com
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Bill
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Well… Duh!
It’s not about the environment- never was. lol… it’s about pushing people into mega cities and controlling what we eat and buy etc…. Go read any modern take on the future plans by the WEF or similar NWO organization. They’re not hiding the end goals people. It’s right there. No one needs to travel. Just live and die in a commie block mega city and eat ze bugs! You’ll be happier! /s
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