Some people might have overestimated, others might have underestimated, others pushed misinformation, some changed their minds, others never bothered to make a numerical prediction. Saying “than first thought” without saying who “thought” is very meaningless.
Seems the article implies that no one really thought about it:
And, surprisingly, there wasn’t existing research-based guidance.
Which is just not true. Here are a few that I looked up quickly: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012.00532.x
Right. We never needed a genius making numerical predictions to KNOW that EVs would be beneficial emission-wise. This became real to me when I first saw a Honda Insight in year 2000 and started taking EVs seriously. We didn’t just “think”, we KNEW.
They couldn’t provide a graph showing CO2 emissions over time, including the embedded energy in making the car and the point at which a new EV starts to have a lower impact than keeping a combustion engine car running? I swear I’ve seen that kind of graph before in studies/aricles on this topic and it’s a great at-a-glance way to visualise it.
I have seen that as well in a norwegian car magazine. Iirc it was a little under a year. 8 ish months? But ofcourse the graph would vary wildly baded on monthly km driven. And i do not remeber what km/month they used.
A longer commute would recoup the difference much faster then a short one.
