Much as I hate to say this, it doesn’t matter how long the initial purchaser keeps a new EV as long as it continues to be used by someone until the CO2 break even point is reached.
Does importing carbon fuels actually reduce our CO2 footprint? I don’t think so, in fact the CO2 produced by transporting those fuels to the UK will add to it which is why it seems madness to block new sources until the replacements are proven and well in their way.(Someoen will be along shortly to tell me the global oil market doesn’t work like that),
Having everything made in China reduces UK footprint by exporting our carbon emissions. Having unprecedented population growth will have increased our CO2 emissions.
That’s assuming the EV’s batteries last up to that. A friend of mine who’s a keen environmentalist pointed out that a newly released JLR EV needed something like 210k miles on one battery to ‘break even’ and the batteries will not last that long, especially as the range on EVs wanes pretty rapidly from what I’ve been told.
That is one example, but paints a picture that car manufacturers are greenwashing their products.
In a practical sense, if there was an event where the power grid is impacted, EVs quickly become useless.
EVs are potentially part of the solution to decarbonising car transportation, my instinct is that we need some sort of breakthrough with biofuels to be able to move away from fossil fuels.