But most people wouldn’t send their old car to the scrap heap, they would sell it on the secondary market to someone else (or a dealer, who would auction it into the secondary market). The old car would then continue to burn gas for likely many more years, until it “falls apart” anyway.
Stepping back, your old car may be the first in a chain of older (or more falling-apart) vehicles getting traded out, all the way down to one that really does get fully retired, or replacing one that was totaled in a collision. So choosing to keep it deprives someone else of its availability and thereby drives up used prices slightly.
For any study of this type of net effect, the authors need to pick a boundary for what gets considered. How many secondary market transactions do you study in that replacement chain, and what do those buyers substitute when the original ICE vehicle is not replaced with an EV? How far do you go in the pollution and other supply chain effects of manufacturing a new vehicle? I didn’t read a machine translation of your Swiss link, so I don’t know where the study authors drew the bounds, but I suspect it’s easy to choose and defend framing that supports either conclusion.
In my personal calculation, I can only see one step down the used chain, wherein my old vehicle would continue to be driven by someone else, so replacing it with an EV wouldn’t make a substantial difference. I love my old car with no surveillance, so I’m in no hurry to switch even though I’ll presumably buy an EV eventually.
Ultimately this is just one more example that that’s no ethical consumption within capitalism.
But most people wouldn’t send their old car to the scrap heap, they would sell it on the secondary market to someone else (or a dealer, who would auction it into the secondary market). The old car would then continue to burn gas for likely many more years, until it “falls apart” anyway.
Stepping back, your old car may be the first in a chain of older (or more falling-apart) vehicles getting traded out, all the way down to one that really does get fully retired, or replacing one that was totaled in a collision. So choosing to keep it deprives someone else of its availability and thereby drives up used prices slightly.
For any study of this type of net effect, the authors need to pick a boundary for what gets considered. How many secondary market transactions do you study in that replacement chain, and what do those buyers substitute when the original ICE vehicle is not replaced with an EV? How far do you go in the pollution and other supply chain effects of manufacturing a new vehicle? I didn’t read a machine translation of your Swiss link, so I don’t know where the study authors drew the bounds, but I suspect it’s easy to choose and defend framing that supports either conclusion.
In my personal calculation, I can only see one step down the used chain, wherein my old vehicle would continue to be driven by someone else, so replacing it with an EV wouldn’t make a substantial difference. I love my old car with no surveillance, so I’m in no hurry to switch even though I’ll presumably buy an EV eventually.
Ultimately this is just one more example that that’s no ethical consumption within capitalism.