Hello from Andrew Moore
 

Greetings! I'm most interested in reducing fuel consumption with a rarely-driven car that serves very useful purposes now and then for its load and people-carrying capacity: Volvo 245, 1979. I'm a chemist/biochemist from a research background originally, and I have a book in production with Oxford University Press all about energy and material economies of carbon compounds. From 3 years' worth of literature reading and calculations/modeling, I'm now sure that, at average yearly mileages, it's environmentally friendlier to keep a worthy existing car, work hard on reducing its consumption, and use it ever more sparingly, than to try to do something "environmentally-friendly" by buying a brand new car (of **any** type, ICEV, PHEV or BEV).
I look forward to some interesting advice and exchanges. I've just made a post on A-pillar fairings to reduce gutter turbulence. I'm also planning fuel injection retro-fit, and an extra gear for my transmission. Hypermiling via intelligent driving style also interests me a lot! Best wishes, Andrew

Welcome to Ecomodder.

Agreed about keeping older cars active. For decades I drove cars that had been put together from junkyard parts (1957 Beetle on a 1966 pan and 1964 Notchback on a 1971 floorpan) or out of a farmer's field (1959 Rambler American and 1971 Superbeetle).

Where is the post on A-pillar fairings? According to Gerrelt's Garage it's popular on Porsche 911s as a raingutter filler.

Without having done any calculations, the notion of purchasing (consuming) your way to efficiency seems absurd. That's not to say efficiency doesn't pay dividends, only the realization that wealth and consumption are the same thing. A wealthy society will consume more.

Re my post on A-pillar fairing mod: I posted it yesterday 5th February. Perhaps it didn't "stick". I saved the text and pictures on my laptop, so I can re-post. Pls let me know. Many thanks!

You have a Profile Page with a Statistics tab. There you can see every post that 'stuck'.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/search.php?searchid=4820716

Oh I know what he means. The way they advertise new cars is insane. I saw one on an EV that said it was greener with less emissions from its expected 120,000 mile life cycle. I was thinking in my head hmmm 120k miles seems low so this is already sus lol

Spot on re life cycle... and here are some numbers
 

From the calculations I did for my book, the situation is the following:

If you "needlessly" swap your "worthy" internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) for a new battery electric vehicle (BEV) of comparable **size** - i.e. comparable **utility** (important qualification!!!); and assuming current average mileages and current electricity mixes (i.e. proportions from fossil / non-fossil electricity generation),

-- If you were a “global average person”, you’d need to drive well over 700,000 km / 435,000 miles before the cumulative CO2 burden of the BEV broke even with that of the ICEV.
-- If you were in the US, the figure is near 330,000 km / 205,000 miles.
-- If you were in Europe it would be near 190,000 km / 118,000 miles.

In terms of number of years that it would take you, on average yearly mileages (averages for location), to "break even", we're talking about ranges that are way beyond the usual buying-selling cycles, and way beyond the battery warranty periods... What does one do with a second-hand BEV, even at a mere 10 years? New battery, at massive environmental cost? Will anyone even want to buy it from you without a new battery?

And, yes, there is often a "use" for the car that you unnecessarily swapped, but the second-hand car market is currently way beyond saturation in many, if not most, places where the EV market is taking off. Good used diesels are hard to shift from second-hand dealer forecourts, and used cars in general are simply piling up... I see it regularly here in Europe. What's the situation in the US?

The biggest "deception" in all of this is the energy, CO2 (and environmental burden in general) that battery manufacture, and the manufacture of ancillary technology for EVs has in comparison with the much less "burdensome" ICEV. The real figures - hard to find, but I scoured the peer-reviewed published literature - reveal five- to six-times the ordinarily-reported figure for energy consumption in making most of the things that differentiate a BEV from an ICEV. Then you can also imagine what the other climate- environment-related impacts truthfully are...

Even if/when all electricity/energy is green, the environmental impact of the current battery economy is enormous. The break-evens that I calculate from that perspective are so large that they're "ridiculous".

Basically, if we continue to dig up more and more of the Earth, thereby producing the typical environmental impacts of mining, to get at all the metals and minerals that we need for making batteries and electronic/electric ancillaries, we're off to a very bad start in terms of sustainability... Yes, fossil oil mining is also terrible... so what about E-fuels? Well, many people are doing their best to "rubbish" them, but I've done calculations, and I come to some very different and sobering results. I can't reveal that bit yet...

My book will be out around July this year.

Yeah I don't see it working for now. The hybrid is the next obvious step. Can't beat a tiny battery that is easily replaced with almost the same running cost. I have really enjoyed the Prius.

Right. Hybrids with a small battery are, in my opinion, a good solution in many scenarios. Often it's the mixture of technologies that makes the best progress. This relates to openness to technology diversity, which, unfortunately is not really on the agenda of politics or industry. They're trying to find single-technology solutions in too many areas, because that is the economically-efficient way to go. However, in my opnion, it will not serve environmental aims. Using less of everything would be a great start... :-) So, ecomodding of any kind of car gets a big thumbs-up from me :-)

https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-f...headlights.jpg

I went back to tne McMinnville, OR, dealer to buy a floorpan they had in the showroom to make a fiberglass sports car, but they had plopped the oval-window body on it so I got the whole thing and never got the fiberglass body. Baja'd when I pocketed an insurance settlement.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-f...4-11-26-01.png

The 1956 oval-window was sitting in a farmer's field with the angle iron bumper[ettes], minus the stance, wheels and ragtop.