Electric/hybrid cars for low mileage drivers

[Finishline42]

21. Finally had some time to browse your referenced scientific article...

I found it difficult to keep track of all the exclusions...

Evidence suggests that excluding certain life cycle stages or pollutants can alter results. Emission costs from the material supply chain, battery production, and automobile manufacturing stages are often substantively higher for PEVs, and excluding those stages from an analysis can underestimate the relative emission costs of PEVs or even change the direction of the result. Similarly, excluding certain CAPs may qualitatively change emission comparisons. For example, excluding SO2 (a large share of emission costs from coal plants without advanced abatement technologies and from battery manufacture) may underestimate the relative costs of PEVs. This may help explain why all studies in Table 2 that exclude CAPs are relatively favorable to PEVs, while all those including both CAPs and GHGs––echoing older studies including Weis et al. and Babaee et al. (2014)─find the answer is more pessimistic toward PEVs or lacks a consistent trend. (5,49)

It seems the main contention of the paper is how the electricity is generated but I'm not sure how they account for all the oil and gas an ICE vehicle consumes.

I wonder which has the higher environmental costs - battery manufacture or forging and casting ICE engine parts? How about all the rubber and plastic in an ICE vehicle? All the plumbing for heating and cooling (My Tesla uses a heat pump)?

I know the OP is asking about low mileage hybrids but I think my personal use case might be helpful.

I have been driving Uber/Lyft for over 8 yrs. 5 yrs ago I upgraded to a SUV that uses diesel. Gets relatively good MPG at around 22 (this isn't a figure taken from the car as I have found that to be incorrect on the high side (car says 24/25 when my spreadsheet is saying 22). Last year I drove just under 40k miles and paid $7500 for diesel. Oil changes every 12k or so. Replace an alternator for $2k. Also I rented cars for 2 weeks twice so a month of mileage isn't showing ( once to repair damage from being rear ended and once when the alternator went out).

I bought a 2021 Tesla Model Y long range in Dec w 39k on it. I'm driving about 5k miles a month. Charging at home for the vast majority of the time. Local utility is saying I'm using $5/day more this year than last which will come to about $2,000. Considering no oil changes, antifreeze, spark plugs, a considerable savings.

To date this year I have used 12,381 kWh to charge the Tesla with 91% from my home charger. BTW, my home charger adds approx 15% per hour from a 50 amp circuit. Local utility charges $.11 kWh. Local superchargers will do in 30 min or so what takes 5 hours at home but charge $38 kWh.

One thing to be aware of though - if your utility has demand pricing your cost to recharge could increase considerably. BTW, the Tesla has the ability to schedule charging during non-peak times.

I have a 4 kW solar system which I am looking to add to. Installed in Dec 2019 it has produced the following 2020 - 4708 kWh, 2021 - 4443 kWh, 2022 4450 kWh, 2023 4202 kWh. Didn't see in the paper how this would be considered.

There are those on this board that have EV's and enough solar to supply all their monthly needs, paying only a service charge for being connected to the grid.

BTW, I gave a ride to someone from a Volvo dealer that had the 90 class SUV plug-in hybrid. Told me he got 1200 miles on a tank of gas. That tells me that most of their daily driving is within the 30 mile range of the battery. The best part is if they go on a long trip its a gas car.