The Carbon Footprint Of Tesla Manufacturing
What is the carbon foot print of manufacturing a Tesla? originally appeared on Quora: the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights.
A salesrep (L) helps a customer pre-order the as yet unseen Tesla Model 3, in the Tesla store on the... [+] Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California, on March 31, 2016. / AFP / ROBYN BECK
Answer by Mike Barnard, Executive Consultant, Energy and Cloud at IBM, on Quora:
The Union of Concerned Scientists did the best and most rigorous assessment of the carbon footprint of Tesla's and other electric vehicles vs internal combustion vehicles including hybrids. They found that the manufacturing of a full-sized Tesla Model S rear-wheel drive car with an 85 KWH battery was equivalent to a full-sized internal combustion car except for the battery, which added 15% or one metric ton of CO2 emissions to the total manufacturing.
However, they found that this was trivial compared to the emissions avoided due to not burning fossil fuels to move the car. Before anyone says "But electricity is generated from coal!", they took that into account too, and it's included in the 53% overall reduction.
And it's probably worth asking what happens to the battery at end of lifecycle. Answer: Tesla recycles it, recovering 70% of the carbon.
Umicore's factory plants are able to recycle our batteries into completely reusable materials and substantially reduce the carbon footprint of manufacturing Lithium-ion batteries.
The Umicore battery recycling technology is able to save at least 70 percent on CO2 emissions at the recovery and refining of these valuable metals. It does this by creating "products" and "byproducts," rather than following a mechanical separation process.
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Before anyone gets really excited about smaller cars, basically the report says you have to be driving a tiny hybrid in a serious coal generation area before the Tesla is equivalent full lifecycle to any internal combustion vehicle.
So as long as people are buying and driving cars, Teslas are excellent choices regarding carbon emissions. Along with NOx and particulate emissions. And sheer, unbridled fun.
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