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Old 11-28-2013, 09:21 PM   #293 (permalink)
niky
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The costs of shipping*, lighting and heating are spread out over a very large number of units that leave the factory.

Building one car has a huge environmental impact per unit. that's why prototypes cost in the hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. (That's cost. Not sale price)

Building thousands of cars on a line lessens the impact per unit. Which is why it costs a lot less to build a gasoline car than it costs to fuel one up over the next decade of service.

Money is not an exact way to measure environmental impact, but it's a good guide. And note... you can run a factory on renewable resources. Hydropower, solar, geothermal, etcetera (and the cost of power that goes to producing one car is very, very little).

You can only run a gasoline car on gasoline. To the tune of around $10k per 100k miles. Over a lifespan of 200-300k miles (not unreasonable considering today's engines), you spend more on gasoline than on the car. Gasoline which is 90% non-renewable and causes direct waste.

Let's not forget, due to lower profit margins and taxes due to bulk sales and the like, this is not a 1:1 comparison. If you break it down to impact alone, it's likely that a car's environmental impact from use (including waste oil and coolant, etcetera) will exceed that from production at under 100k miles.

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*Shipping just one car or its parts on its own boat is a ridiculous waste of resources. Thankfully, cars share cargo ships. Even if you were to ship it yourself, the cost of shipping itself, exclusive of taxes, is just a few hundred dollars. It costs much more for the dealership to drive the car cross state to deliver it.
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