Combating climate change is a common factor in people's decision to drive electric. But how much impact does it have?
Combating climate change is a common factor in people's decision to drive electric. But how much impact does it have? In this episode, host Tara Jean Stevens speaks with researcher Parth Vaishnav (The Centre for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan) about his study on carbon emissions, and talks to Mazda’s Andrew Bardwell and author and historian Tom Standage to hear about the exciting potential that electric vehicles have to transform not just the way we drive, but the way we live.
VARIOUS VOICES
How much will driving an EV reduce my carbon footprint? How long would I have to drive an EV to balance out the carbon load it takes to build? What kind of EV is the most sustainable to drive right now?
TARA JEAN STEVENS
I'm Tara Jean Stevens, and this is Road to Electric, an original podcast powered by Mazda. I'm on a journey to separate fact from fiction when it comes to hybrid and electric vehicles, and today we're talking about sustainability. You hear that, kids?
The Mobility Consumer Index released by the consulting firm EY last year reported that concern for the environment is a huge motivator for folks making the switch—or thinking about it—to driving an EV.
ANN RANEY
I think the thing that pushed us over was when the UN Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez asked the first world, and that includes Canada, “If you use a car and you can make it an electric car?”
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Ann Raney lives in King Township, Ontario, and environmental concerns always play a role in her decision to drive from A to B.
ANN RANEY
The priority should always be living within walking distance of work, school, groceries, and such.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
But where she lives, like most Canadians, she does have to rely on a car to get around.
ANN RANEY
It is the primary mode of transportation. Unfortunately, we do not have public transit and we have people racing through the countryside too fast for it to be safe for the rest of us to walk along the road. We drive, unfortunately, to most places; we try to share rides. We are a two-car family: my husband and I. When I got this electric secondhand, which is awesome, he went out of his way to drive it also. So we kind of seemed to be one car family for a while because when you have an electric, everyone wants to drive that one.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
In fact, Ann's husband liked driving her EV so much that...
ANN RANEY
He ended up trading in the old car for a brand new EV.
Ann Raney believes a larger shift is ultimately needed, but she feels good about her family's shift to driving EVs.
ANN RANEY
EV’s are definitely part of the solution, and because we are getting to this so late, anything we can do in the big polluting worlds that reduces emissions now has to be done.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
So we know that a lot of people are making the switch to hybrids or EVs out of concern for the environment, but what does the science actually say about how effective EVs are at reducing emissions?
You know that adage about the month of March? "In like a lion, out like a lamb”—that kind of applies to EVs and emissions because on the assembly line, when the EV is being built, that's when the car emits its heaviest carbon load. It takes a LOT of resources to put together the batteries that power hybrid or electric cars.
But once that car is complete and out on the road, its carbon load drops significantly. And it turns out that's not just true for a small compact sedan; it's also true for larger vehicles like SUVs and pickup trucks!
Parth Vaishnav is an assistant professor with the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan and he's the co-author of a study that looked into the real numbers around EVs and carbon emissions.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Before we get into your study, I want to geek out on your EV life. I know you're a family man. Tell me about your switch to EVs and why you made that change.
PARTH VAISHNAV
Well, we just found an EV that we liked. We knew that over the lifetime of the EV, it was going to have a lower environmental footprint. It's substantially cheaper to run than a gasoline car, and another aspect of it was that we do have power outages here in Michigan, and I wanted to use the EV battery to provide backup power to run the fridge.
I've got young kids, and so, you know, keeping the milk cold or the formula if you have a long-distance outage becomes a little bit of a challenge. And the EV has actually helped us do that a couple of times.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
So, Parth, let's get into your study on emissions and start with the manufacturing process. What is the difference between EVs and internal combustion vehicles at this initial stage? How do EVs actually stack up?
PARTH VAISHNAV
The manufacturing emissions associated with electric vehicles are roughly two times those of their corresponding internal combustion engines. If you compare a pickup to a pickup and an SUV to an SUV, yeah, that's the magnitude of the head start, but it has to be said that the vast majority of the emissions associated with a vehicle occurred during the use phase, especially since vehicles now last a really long time.
And because of that, what we found was that EVs across the different categories caught up with internal combustion engines in a couple of years. So we found that it was about 20,000–25,000 miles, which is what a typical family in the United States drives in two years.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
So EVs produce more emissions than ICE vehicles in the manufacturing phase, but ICE vehicles produce most of their emissions in their USE phase, whereas EVs produce very few.
But how much of a reduction do you think we can actually achieve? I’ve heard about this idea of a zero-emission car; do you think that’s ever going to be a possibility?
PARTH VAISHNAV
If you look at it from that perspective where eventually we need to get to a global net zero, then yes, of course the zero emissions car is not just possible, but necessary.
In the near term, it is kind of hard to say. Around 20 or 30 percent of the emissions associated with vehicle production come from electricity use, and this is the easiest sector to fully decarbonize. So you could potentially reduce the emissions from vehicle production by decarbonizing the electricity sector, and that would bring the upfront emissions down by 30% or so. And then, during the use phase, the vast majority of the emissions associated with electric vehicles stem from the emissions that you have from generating electricity to energize them. And if you got to a net-zero power sector, those emissions would very quickly go down to zero.
The short answer to your question is that if you add up the manufacturing and use phases, you could get to a vehicle that, over its lifetime, is not at zero but really very close to zero. Provided you rapidly decarbonize the electricity grid.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Parth, your study looked, as we know, at EV, production, and usage across the US. So is there any reason to assume that the picture is different here in Canada?
PARTH VAISHNAV
Yeah, I actually think the greenhouse gas reduction you would get from EV adoption in Canada is greater than in the United States because, at least in Ontario and British Columbia, you have really clean electricity grids that rely on hydroelectricity and nuclear power, so you would actually have a pretty sharp reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Another aspect of it, which we should all care about, is that vehicles are responsible for other pollutants like sulfur dioxide and oxides of nitrogen, which actually affect our health in the short term, and if you have a really clean electricity grid and you're using electric vehicles, you actually sharply reduce emissions of those pollutants, which also has health benefits.
So Canada would do really well on both of those counts if it adopted electric vehicles in a big way.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Parth Vaishnav is an assistant professor with the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan.
As we've been hearing, there are a lot of pieces that come into play when we talk about sustainability and EVs. And while researchers have confirmed—yes, they have!—that driving EVs can substantially lower emissions, there’s also the issue of sustainability when it comes to the making of the cars themselves. So we wanted to find out how automakers are thinking about and approaching this challenge.
Andrew Bardwell is a national manager with Mazda Canada. Welcome
ANDREW BARDWELL
Thank you very much for having me.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
So let's kick it off with how automakers are thinking about sustainability when it comes to building new EVs.
ANDREW BARDWELL
Oy. The harsh reality is that I think a lot of them aren't - I think it's sort of new technology, same old behaviors, and I'll tell you what I mean by that. I think historically, the industry has been fueled by enthusiasts and bragging rights, so pickup trucks have never been able to tow more or carry more cars; they have never had more power than they do currently.
And whatever we thought were the glory days of the muscle car in the sixties, you know, 500 horsepower used to sound like a lot. Now nobody gets out of bed unless it's over a thousand. And unfortunately that same “bigger is better” mentality has infected the whole EV conversation.
And so the IIHS just updated their facilities so that they could crash test vehicles that weighed more than 10,000 pounds. My first car weighed 1800 pounds.
The simple reality is that batteries have one pound per pound, or one 20th the energy of gasoline. And so to put that into perspective, I have driven a Mazda3 one thousand kilometers with roughly 50 liters of gasoline, or about 75 pounds. Gasoline weighs about a pound and a half. For me to do that with an electric vehicle, I'd need a battery that weighs over 1,000 pounds.
So where we are today in terms of battery energy density, we should be focusing on small urban vehicles. Our MX30 has a battery that's a third of the size of a lot of its competitors, and as a result, it has a third of the range.
If you're just doing short urban chores, you know, running around, picking up groceries, and shuttling kids to and from activities, you don't need extended range. With where we are today in terms of battery technology and energy density, my personal position is the right place for EVs is short-haul urban vehicles, but I think the entire industry has sort of hijacked the EV conversation, and very few of them are focused on small, light, simple vehicles that take advantage of where we are today in terms of battery technology.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
What is the biggest challenge that automakers are facing when it comes to building EVs in a sustainable way? What are they coming up against?
ANDREW BARDWELL
Consumer behavior. And so I'll give you an example. My wife is very focused on healthy eating, which means kale has a prominent place in our fridge. And you know, you go to a lot of restaurants, and they'll add kale because they want to attract the consumer who's more conscious of what they eat. And so you walk into a restaurant, and they're serving battered, deep-fried kale with nacho cheese sauce.
And you're thinking, "You kind of miss the point."
TARA JEAN STEVENS
I was going to say "Yum."
ANDREW BARDWELL
Oh, but that's the thing. Everybody wants yum, and cars are no different. People want faster cars that are bigger, more comfortable, and more luxurious, with more technology. And the simple reality is that with the technology we have available to us today, if you're really trying to serve the environment, what you need are small, simple, light electric vehicles with batteries that aren't huge.
And if you look at what we did with MX 30, that was our goal. We very intentionally said that we don't believe right now that batteries can replace gasoline, pound for pound. They can't. The energy density isn't there. So if you're going to have a vehicle, and it's going to be an EV, it's going to be the second or third vehicle in your driveway.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
So if I'm imagining a sustainable electric vehicle, there must be some elements in it that are still detracting from, you know, it being 100 percent sustainable. What are some of those things?
ANDREW BARDWELL
It's complicated. The first thing I would say is the cost of real estate. You might think, Well, what does that have to do with sustainability? If you look at the GTA, if you look at Toronto as an example, and the average cost of a home in the GTA, people who work in the city are frequently commuting from 60 kilometers away to have a home that's affordable.
So if they're going to be in traffic for 60 kilometers each day going to work, they want something that's comfortable, refined, powerful, large, and safe. And that flies in the face of an EV because range then becomes an issue, and large batteries also cost money. The reality is that today's EV market wouldn't exist without government intervention and government incentives.
The provinces that have the highest uptake for electric vehicles are also the ones that have the highest government spending on incentives. So the question is, how do you encourage manufacturers or companies to support work from home? Right. As an example, with Mazda, I don't go into the office anymore.
I was driving 65 kilometers each way. Just by changing that, I eliminated 130 kilometers a day of driving, and so before you even have the conversation about the role of the EV in the environment, you have to say, How do we change behaviors?
Number two: How do you get people to want to eat kale? Right. A small group of people will say, I'm going to give up french fries, I'm going to give up potato chips, and I'm going to eat kale, and I'm going to make my own salad dressing. But it's not the vast majority of consumers. And so how do you get people to want something small and simple?
People have forgotten the joy of a lightweight vehicle that's simple and responsive, doesn't require a lot of effort to drive, doesn't take up a lot of space, and can stop, turn, and maneuver in a way that a big car simply can't
So again, there are a lot of different factors, but they all play a role in what people want and what they're willing to compromise on.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
So I think you can really blow the roof off this next question for me. So how can, or how should I guess, auto manufacturers be building EVs to maximize sustainability? So,
ANDREW BARDWELL
Every car enthusiast, if you're somebody who's honestly a car enthusiast, wants faster, better, more entertaining cars to drive that are more reliable, and heck, more affordable, and with a lower cost of ownership. I'm no different than anybody else. I have kids, a mortgage, and I've got to make it all fit.
From a manufacturer's perspective, I think you have to ask yourself, “How do I get the most bang for the buck?” and I think electrification goes beyond pure EVs. There are mild hybrids, there are hybrids, and there are plug-in hybrids. So there's a lot of scale. And so, to give you an example, our mild hybrid CX 90 has a battery that's one third of a kilowatt hour. That might not mean anything to you, but the battery in some large EVs is more than a hundred kilowatt hours, more than 300 times the size of the battery in our mild hybrid. And so there's weight and cost associated with that; even our plug-in hybrid CX 90 has a battery that's less than 20 kilowatt hours, so less than a fifth of the size of the batteries in a pure EV. So I believe that many manufacturers, and we are not the only manufacturer, are having this conversation. As an example, I tip my hat to Toyota. They have been very vocal about the notion that a pure EV isn't necessarily the best pure play for the environment.
Look at the Prius, and you think with a battery that's maybe two kilowatt hours, right? As a hybrid in an urban environment, it does an extraordinary job, and for most consumers, you know, maybe 50% of the time it drives as an EV, but then if they have to drive further, it's a hybrid. So you have the benefit of an internal combustion engine.
If we're going to have a conversation about sustainability, we have to talk about blended technologies. I don't think it's going to be any one technology that solves the issue, especially when you look at it from a cost of ownership and cost of acquisition perspective.
If you look at the cost, it used to be that your mortgage was three times your annual salary. If you made $100,000, you would have bought a house worth $300,000. Where are you going to buy a house in Toronto for $300,000? And so when you have households that are barely making their mortgage payments, these hundred thousand-dollar EVs aren't the answer.
And so we have to look at it and say, "How do we meet the needs of an audience that wants EVs, but can't afford the current price tag associated with pure EVs?"
TARA JEAN STEVENS
One final question for you: So EVs are still pretty new, and we're just starting to enter this period where the life cycle of an EV is being reached. So I think that's kind of exciting, but what is happening in terms of battery recycling and other initiatives that can also impact sustainability.
ANDREW BARDWELL
This one is a bit of a red herring. If you want my honest opinion, I think again: when the Prius first came out 20 years ago, everybody talked about, "Oh my goodness, what are we going to do with the batteries when the vehicles, um, reach their end of life?"
The reality is that even 10 years later, a lot of these batteries have retained 70% of their charge capacity. They still do a great job, but there's a more interesting conversation to be had around sustainability, and that is that right now, if you want to make toast in the morning and you turn your toaster on, somebody at a power plant has to turn the volume up a bit. We don't store electricity. And so on a Monday morning in the summer, on a hot August day when all of the factories turn their lights on at six in the morning on Monday and everybody turns on the air conditioning, you might have a draw. And I'll make a number up of three terawatts. And so you have to capacitate the infrastructure to produce enough electricity to meet that demand on Monday morning, even though on a Sunday night, it'll be less than a 10th of that. And so all of a sudden, if you live in a world where everybody drives an EV and you have a dynamic grid, all of a sudden, at peak hours on Monday morning, the Ontario Hydro could pull electricity from my battery and meet that peak demand without building a new power plant and then put it back on Monday afternoon when the demand settles down, and all of a sudden you start to have a dynamic grid in a way that we don't right now, so that you can redistribute load on the infrastructure.
So I do think EVs don't exist in isolation. They're part of a larger conversation about how we can get more sophisticated in meeting the needs of these issues. Building a new power plant would be a billion-dollar, 10-year project, and we do it because we worry about peak demand on a Monday morning.
What if I could meet peak demand by having a dynamic grid that allowed me to pull from the vehicles that are plugged in and then put back in afterwards, and all of a sudden this becomes a more interesting conversation.
And then again, I think, you know, I'm looking at manufacturers buying shares in Tesla because they want access to Tesla's charging grid, and you think, "Why wouldn't you make the charging grid part of a national incentive rather than give everybody $14,000 to buy an electric car?" Why do you have a government? Have the government take the lead on ensuring you have a national infrastructure so that I can drive from coast to coast in any reasonable EV with a state-of-the-art infrastructure that supports and encourages people to embrace electrification.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Andrew Bardwell is a national manager with Mazda Canada.
Andrew is hinting at a massive shift in thinking around what EVs might mean for the future of our world. And he's not the only one.
Remember Tom Standage? I spoke to him a few episodes ago. He's a historian who has written a book on the history of the electric car. But he's also very interested in the FUTURE of the electric car, especially in its potential to transform how we power our world.
TOM STANDAGE
So road transport in total is only about 20% of global emissions for light vehicles. In other words, cars and light trucks are only about half of that. So even if I could wave a magic wand now and turn all the cars in the world into electric cars, you would only solve about a 10th of the climate change problem. But cars can help in another way, which is that they can help with decarbonizing the grid.
So if you think about this, you know, 15 years ago people started putting solar panels on their houses, and when you've got more sunshine coming in and producing more energy than you actually need in your house, you can send the excess energy into the grid and you can actually sell the excess energy into the grid. And this has been possible in many parts of the world for some time.
Then what people started to do was add batteries. So the excess power that your solar panels are producing goes into a battery, which means that you can run your house in the evening on solar power that you collected during the day.
So what if you could use your car as that battery? So you plug your car in, and yes, you can charge your car from the solar panels, but you could also dump energy into the battery.
And then at night, if you suddenly need to run an appliance, you could borrow some energy from your car, and then you top it up again the next day when the sun comes out. So you start to look at the battery in your car as part of the power infrastructure of your house, and we are starting to see people do this in parts of the world that are subject to hurricanes and things like that.
If you have this ability to essentially take energy out of the car battery and bring it back into the house, you can use your car as a backup battery because you're going to have a big battery in your car, probably bigger than you have in your house. And then the question becomes, “Well, can you do this back onto the grid?” So we are starting to see in some parts of the world, something called a virtual power station. Now, imagine you've got a neighborhood where you've got a lot of solar power, and all of those houses have solar panels and batteries. And imagine that there is then a surge in the middle of the day because it's really, really hot and lots of people have turned on their air conditioners, what then happens is that if you have all the software set up, you can use this smart grid technology where you take energy out of the batteries and those houses, and you basically borrow it and you bring it into the grid and you use it to power the air conditioners. And it allows you to essentially grab hold of that energy in batteries sprinkled across a particular neighborhood at times of peak demand.
And that means you don't need so many power stations to serve that neighborhood because, on those rare occasions when you need that peak power, you can just help yourself to that energy. And electric cars would take this to an even higher level where if you've got lots of electric cars plugged into the grid, and they're all charging and, you know, they're all at various states of charge, and then suddenly there's a big surge because there's a heat wave or something and everyone's turned on their air conditioners, then you can take energy out of those electric cars, which collectively are an enormous amount of storage.
What are the big challenges with decarbonizing the grid? Balancing the fact that renewable energy sources like wind and solar are intermittent, so you don't always get the energy when you need it. And the answer to that is storage. But storage is expensive. So what if you just use the electric cars that are plugged into the grid, most of which are just sitting there charging and not being used?
Some of them will be fully charged and just sitting there doing nothing. If you could use the energy in those batteries, if you could use those batteries as basically an extension of grid storage, then that suddenly means that you've got a much more resilient and flexible grid. But I think that's where we are headed—that we are going to start seeing electric vehicles as energy storage units as well as transport devices.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
Andrew Bardwell agrees that this conversation around how EVs might transform our world is just beginning.
ANDREW BARDWELL
I envy the generation that's coming into the industry today because I think we will see a profound transformation in how we think about the automobile and its role in society. And we've only begun to scratch the surface on how all the pieces fit together and how we change the idea of “What is transportation? What's the role of the automobile, and how do we power it? And how does that connect to everything else?” There are a lot of pieces that need to fit together.
TARA JEAN STEVENS
When I first began this journey of learning about hybrids and EVs, I really had no idea that it would lead to so many huge ideas about the way, ultimately, these things are going to transform the world. And honestly, it's pretty exciting to think about.
I was just thinking about how driving an EV was one tiny step I could take to help reduce my carbon footprint, but the potential for EVs beyond simple transportation is really astounding.
Plus, everyone I've spoken to keeps talking about how much FUN they have driving their EVs! It's just getting more and more tempting. Don’t tell my kids.
I'm Tara Jean Stevens. Thanks for listening to Road to Electric, an original podcast powered by Mazda. This is our last episode, and I've loved having you along for the ride. I hope we've answered some of your questions about MHEVs, PHEVs, BEVs, and everything in between. And whether you're about to make the switch or maybe sticking with your ICE vehicle for now, safe travels.
DISCLAIMER
The thoughts, opinions, and views expressed in this podcast are solely those of the guests and do not represent the thoughts, opinions, or views of Mazda Canada. The material and information presented in this podcast are for general information purposes only.