A dozen U.S. states, from California to New York, have joined dozens of countries, from Ireland to Spain, with plans to ban the sale of new cars with an internal combustion engine (ICE), many prohibitions taking effect within a decade. Meanwhile, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in a feat of regulatory legerdemain, has proposed tailpipe emissions rules that would effectively force automakers to shift to producing mainly electric vehicles (EVs) by 2032.

This is all to ensure that so-called zero-emission EVs play a central role in radically cutting carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. To ensure compliance with ICE prohibitions and soften the economic impacts, policymakers are deploying lavish subsidies for manufacturers and consumers. Enthusiasts claim that EVs already have achieved economic and operational parity, if not superiority, with automobiles and trucks fueled by petroleum, so the bans and subsidies merely accelerate what they believe is an inevitable transition.

It is certainly true that EVs are practical and appealing for many drivers. Even without subsidies or mandates, millions more will be purchased by consumers, if mainly by wealthy ones. But the facts reveal a fatal flaw in the core motives for the prohibitions and mandates. As this report illustrates:

• No one knows how much, if at all, CO₂ emissions will decline as EV use rises. Every claim for EVs reducing emissions is a rough estimate or an outright guess based on averages, approximations, or aspirations. The variables and uncertainties in emissions from energy-intensive mining and processing of minerals used to make EV batteries are a big wild card in the emissions calculus. Those emissions substantially offset reductions from avoiding gasoline and, as the demand for battery minerals explodes, the net reductions will shrink, may vanish, and could even lead to a net increase in emissions. Similar emissions uncertainties are associated with producing the power for EV charging stations.

• No one knows when or whether EVs will reach economic parity with the cars that most people drive. An EV’s higher price is dominated by the costs of the critical materials that are needed to build it and is thus dependent on guesses about the future of mining and minerals industries, which are mainly in foreign countries. The facts also show that, for the majority of drivers, there’s no visibility for when, if ever, EVs will reach parity in cost and fueling convenience, regardless of subsidies.

Ultimately, if implemented, bans on conventionally powered vehicles will lead to draconian impediments to affordable and convenient driving and a massive misallocation of capital in the world’s $4 trillion automotive industry.

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This report does not focus on whether EVs are a practical and appealing new category for many drivers. They are. The world will see tens of millions more EVs on roads even without government mandates. But in banning ICE cars and mandating the use of EVs, policymakers are explicitly betting on the truth of three crucial claims:

• EVs will lead to “profound” reductions in CO₂ emissions
• EVs are now, or will soon be, cheaper than, and operationally equal to, ICE cars
• There is a diminishing role for the automobile in modern times; in effect, there is a generational realignment in how citizens seek personal mobility.ever purchase.[29] Banning ICE vehicles would constitute a takeover of one of the top three economic sectors of the nation, bigger than commercial banking or pharmaceuticals.[30]

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In contrast to cars with internal combustion engines, it’s impossible to measure an EV’s CO₂ emissions. While, self-evidently, there are no emissions while driving an EV, emissions occur elsewhere—before the first mile is ever driven and when the vehicle is parked to refuel.

The CO₂ emissions directly associated with EVs begin with all the upstream industrial processes needed to acquire materials and fabricate the battery. The received wisdom that EVs will have a “huge impact” on reducing emissions is, whether the claimants know it or not, anchored in assumptions about the quantities and varieties of materials mined, processed, and refined to make the battery.

The scale of those upstream emissions emerges from the fact that a typical EV battery weighs about 1,000 pounds and replaces a fuel tank holding about 80 pounds of gasoline.[31] That half-ton battery is made from a wide range of minerals, including copper, nickel, aluminum, graphite, cobalt, manganese, and, of course, lithium. Critically, the combined quantity of these specialty and so-called energy minerals is 10-fold greater in building an EV, compared with an ICE car.[32]

As researchers at the U.S. Argonne National Labs have pointed out, the relevant emissions data on such materials “remain meager to nonexistent, forcing researchers to resort to engineering calculations or approximations.”[33] And, per IEA, data on the emissions intensity of specific minerals can “vary considerably across companies and regions.”[34] That is a consequential understatement. The fundamental fact to keep in mind: every claim for EVs reducing emissions is a rough estimate or an outright guess based on averages, approximations, or aspirations. The estimates entail myriad known unknowns about what happens upstream to obtain and process materials to fabricate the giant battery. Those factors not only vary wildly but can be big enough, alone, to wipe out from one-half to all the emissions saved by not burning gasoline.

These features of EV emissions constitute a complete inversion of the locus and, critically, the transparency and certainty compared with combustion vehicles. For a conventional car, you know the emissions if you know the fuel mileage. The quantity of gasoline burned is directly measurable and forecastable with precision. Those CO₂ emissions are the same regardless of when or where a car is refueled, or when it is driven.[35] And while conventional cars also have “hidden” upstream emissions—the energy used to build the vehicle and create gasoline—these constitute only 10%–20% of these vehicles’ total life-cycle emissions.

The critical factor for estimating upstream EV emissions starts with knowing the energy used to access and fabricate battery materials, all of which are more energy-intensive (and more expensive) than the iron and steel that make up 85% of the weight of a conventional vehicle.[36] The energy used to produce a pound of copper, nickel, and aluminum, for example, is two to three times greater than steel.[37] Estimates of the aggregate energy cost to fabricate an EV battery vary threefold but, for context, on average, the energy equivalent of about 300 gallons of oil is used to fabricate a quantity of batteries capable of storing the energy contained in a single gallon of gasoline.[38]

That so much upstream energy is necessarily used is understandable if one knows that hundreds of thousands of pounds of rock and materials are mined, moved, and processed to create the intermediate and final refined minerals to fabricate a single thousand-pound battery (see sidebar, “Sources of ‘Hidden’ Energy to Mine and Process 500,000 Pounds per EV Battery”).

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However, the IEA analysis not only uses debatable assumptions but also buries the variables and uncertainties. While IEA does illustrate variables (as black vertical “error bars” in Figure 3, or as a range of outcomes in another analysis)[41] the agency actively promotes the claim—indeed, essentially a guarantee of “profound” emissions reductions—even though its own estimates show that an EV could yield no reductions at all, or even an increase. As a practical matter, there is no way to know where on that range any vehicle, or even most vehicles, would perform. The appearance of certainty or precision—an average 50% reduction—is illusory.

One dubious factor in the IEA estimate is the assumption about the battery size; its calculation is based on a 40 kWh (kilowatt-hour) battery pack, which is half the size of the batteries in most popular EVs.[42] In fact, IEA itself notes elsewhere that SUVs with big batteries account for 60% of all EV options (excluding China, where it’s 40%).[43] Bigger batteries for more range mean that more materials are used and thus entail greater upstream emissions. The IEA calculation also ignores the greater use of aluminum for an EV body and frame (done to minimize the overall weight penalty imposed by the battery), which also adds to the upstream emissions because manufacturing that metal is so energy-intensive.

Consider, instead, estimates offered by Volvo and an EU-funded analysis of Volkswagen’s e-Golf, the latter a small sedan using a small battery.[44] The e-Golf’s upstream emissions, combined with emissions from the power plants that supply EU electricity, yield cumulative CO₂ emissions greater than the diesel version of that car for

Upstream Emissions: Known Unknowns

A technical review of 50 different analyses reveals that the bottom lines for embodied EV emissions vary by a factor of five.[52] It’s meaningless to use an average number for such a wide range.

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Via https://manhattan.institute/article/electric-vehicles-for-everyone-the-impossible-dream