An electric car is bad for the environment (described generally, not in the laser-focused "CO2 emissions are the only thing that matters!" modern sense) in almost all the same ways an ICE vehicle is, just with a reduction in runtime carbon emissions, and with quite a bit more mining going into the raw materials.
Hydrogen, meanwhile, is nonsensical in every way you care to look at the problem, unless you look at it through the lens of "petrochemical suppliers who want to ensure that a future vehicle fleet needs to fill up at stations they supply with fuel that can be rapidly delivered in a 5 minute window." And maybe shipping, but even there, I think metal-air batteries that are smelted for recharging are likely to work better. And that's before you get into what a devious little pain in the ass hydrogen is to deal with at a chemical/technical level.
> An electric car is bad for the environment (described generally, not in the laser-focused "CO2 emissions are the only thing that matters!" modern sense) in almost all the same ways an ICE vehicle is, just with a reduction in runtime carbon emissions
No it isn't. You can charge them entirely with renewable sources (or nuclear), reducing traditional air pollutants in addition to CO2. This is even true when still using fossil fuel power plants, which emit fewer pollutants per unit energy than small engines.
Electric cars use regenerative braking, reducing the use of friction braking that releases brake dust into the environment.
> and with quite a bit more mining going into the raw materials.
Electric cars are only marginally heavier than gasoline cars because electric motors are light and the batteries take the place of not only the fuel tank but the entire powertrain and emissions equipment. It's not obvious how mining two tons of raw materials is dramatically different than mining 1.9 tons of raw materials, and in any event the raw materials can be recycled from older electric cars once there are older electric cars to recycle.
You're looking at the problem from a purely "atmospheric emissions" perspective. Think about things like "wildlife disruption from a car-centric culture with lots of roads," "microplastics from tires," etc. All of those can very reasonably be considered "environmental effects of cars," if you want to take a broader view of the problems.
Renewable energy sources also have their own impacts on the environment - the mining for raw materials, the cement production used for wind turbines (look up the amount of concrete per MW nameplate - it's quite staggering), etc. One may reasonably argue that these are less important impacts than CO2 emissions, and make one's arguments (I think quite reasonably so), but to round all these to zero for renewables is dishonest, at best. The same goes for the amount of mining required for the raw uranium to be refined into nuclear fuel - quite a bit of earth has to be extracted and processed to get the fuel quantity. Again, I think it's lower impact than fossil fuels, but it's certainly not zero - by quite a large amount. Is "Filling a mountain valley with acidic mine tailings" an "environmental impact"? I'd argue yes, though plenty of people seem to not care, as long as it puts less CO2 on the air. Hence my observation that a lot of people are laser-focused on "CO2 emissions only."
As far as mining goes, EVs require a rather substantially different mix of raw materials than ICEs - so "pounds of earth removed per pound of car" are going to be substantially different. Again, you can argue (and people have, fairly reasonably) that this is a tradeoff worth making, but you can't pretend that "Because the cars weigh about the same, they have the same production impact," when one has a thousand pounds of lithium ion battery pack.
My opinion is that LiFePO4 based PHEVs are the current optimum, but I'm aware I'm in a minority there.
> Think about things like "wildlife disruption from a car-centric culture with lots of roads,"
But now you're making a context-specific argument. It's not about the car, it's about where you put the roads. And then you have to weigh that against alternatives. If you replace cars with buses, you still need roads. Trains need tracks etc.
> "microplastics from tires," etc.
But this isn't any worse than ICE cars. Making some things better and some things the same is a net improvement.
And you could conceivably address this by making tires out of something else regardless of what kind of powertrain you're using.
> One may reasonably argue that these are less important impacts than CO2 emissions, and make one's arguments (I think quite reasonably so), but to round all these to zero for renewables is dishonest, at best.
It doesn't have to be zero if it's less than the cost of oil exploration, production, refining and distribution, which is the status quo.
> The same goes for the amount of mining required for the raw uranium to be refined into nuclear fuel - quite a bit of earth has to be extracted and processed to get the fuel quantity. Again, I think it's lower impact than fossil fuels, but it's certainly not zero - by quite a large amount.
The difference between the energy content per kg of burning oil and fissioning uranium is literally more than a factor of a million. The amount of uranium you need by comparison is basically zero.
> "Because the cars weigh about the same, they have the same production impact," when one has a thousand pounds of lithium ion battery pack.
Lithium battery packs are only a single digit percentage lithium by weight. The lithium isn't a large proportion of the mass of the vehicle. The largest component of the mass of the battery is typically graphite, followed by aluminum.
Hydrogen, meanwhile, is nonsensical in every way you care to look at the problem, unless you look at it through the lens of "petrochemical suppliers who want to ensure that a future vehicle fleet needs to fill up at stations they supply with fuel that can be rapidly delivered in a 5 minute window." And maybe shipping, but even there, I think metal-air batteries that are smelted for recharging are likely to work better. And that's before you get into what a devious little pain in the ass hydrogen is to deal with at a chemical/technical level.