e-bike production is better environmentally than gas or even electric cars
It should be. But, my point is that you never know. Because consumers have no visibility into the supply chains of the companies they buy from, it could be that the company that makes the batteries uses the dirtiest, oldest coal generator at some stage in the process, and that the highly optimized supply chains for cars are actually better. I doubt it, but as a consumer we don’t really have any way to know, which is a problem.
As an example, it would seem crazy that a leaf blower is worse environmentally than a car. Leaf blowers are tiny, portable things, whereas cars have to move tons of steel, plastic and meat around. And, it’s true that leaf blowers burn less fuel per hour. OTOH, they use really primitive two-stroke engines that mix oil and fuel together in the combustion chamber and spit up to 1/3 of it out as unburned waste. A car, by contrast, has a catalytic converter, and has to pass rigorous emissions tests before it’s allowed out on the road. So, leaf blowers and similar two-stroke engine powered devices are a bigger contributor to smog in California than cars.
https://www.sustainable-ships.org/stories/2021/worlds-first-electric-cargo
It should be. But, my point is that you never know. Because consumers have no visibility into the supply chains of the companies they buy from, it could be that the company that makes the batteries uses the dirtiest, oldest coal generator at some stage in the process, and that the highly optimized supply chains for cars are actually better. I doubt it, but as a consumer we don’t really have any way to know, which is a problem.
As an example, it would seem crazy that a leaf blower is worse environmentally than a car. Leaf blowers are tiny, portable things, whereas cars have to move tons of steel, plastic and meat around. And, it’s true that leaf blowers burn less fuel per hour. OTOH, they use really primitive two-stroke engines that mix oil and fuel together in the combustion chamber and spit up to 1/3 of it out as unburned waste. A car, by contrast, has a catalytic converter, and has to pass rigorous emissions tests before it’s allowed out on the road. So, leaf blowers and similar two-stroke engine powered devices are a bigger contributor to smog in California than cars.