…My philosophical issue is that if we sell our rarely used sporty little Audi S1 and buy a new electric car … the net effect on the environment will be negative.
Perhaps, since your Audi is rarely used. However, your comment is similar to others I often see. People often make the mistake of thinking only of the swap of an EV for their particular current ICE vehicle.
Usually, when someone buys a new EV, their probably still good, probably quite recent model ICE vehicle is bought by someone who might have bought a new ICE vehicle. This is good – both parties not adding another new ICE vehicle to the fleet. That person sells their older but still quite efficient and inexpensive car. It will be good value for someone who sells their yet older car to someone who keeps it running for a few more years. That person’s old car is badly polluting, running poorly, needs expensive repairs and gets scrapped and its materials largely recycled.
The car that gets displaced out of the fleet when someone buys a new EV is generally the least good, most polluting vehicle. All along the chain outlined above, each person generally gets a newer, better, more efficient vehicle than their previous one.
JT, your Audi, even if driven every day by a boy racer, would probably be replacing some other car that had been driven every day by that boy racer. The car that your EV ultimately displaces would be something completely clapped out. Your purchase of an EV would give everyone in the chain of used car purchases a better used car than they had previously and probably a net reduction in emissions from the vehicles in that chain.
Most people, most of the time buy used cars. However, we need the people who do buy new cars to get vehicles with the lowest emissions possible because they will be the used cars being bought 3, 5, 10 and 20 years from now by everyone else as they work their way through a chain of owners.
We can’t afford to have new ICE vehicles continuing to enter the fleet. If someone needs a new car and they can’t yet find an EV that suits them (for whatever reason), I recommend that they instead purchase a newer/better/more suitable used vehicle rather than adding another ICE vehicle to the overall fleet.
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