What produces more greenhouse gasses making a vehichle or the vehichle itself.?

Question

all componies are allowed,totel emmisions not needed,mostly just want an opinion

Answer 1

Sorry I too do not have a link but I believe it is two to three years motoring at average mileage or for a ten year life driving perhaps four times.

Answer 2

The assembly of a car does not create that much, but the materials and parts manufacture do.

The answer to the question however would require that we know what mix of energy sources is being used to manufacture it. For instance, Japan uses far more nuclear-sourced electricity than North America does. Also the range of emissions within vehicles powered by fossil fuels ranges from low single digits  miles per gallon to high 2 digit numbers.

It is possible to produce vehicles with far less emissions, it is possible to drive vehicles that emit far less. It is also possible to build vehicles that will last far longer, so require far less frequent replacement.

Answer 3

About 70% of the life-cycle emissions from the typical car are from the fuel.  The actual building of the car is about 10%.

Answer 4

I estimate the manufacture emits more. My Honda Civic gets about 30 MPG. So it would use 3,333 gallons for 100,000 miles of driving. At $3 per gallon that would be $10,000 worth of fuel. The car cost $17,000. Assuming the energy used to build it costs the same as the energy used to drive it, more would be used to build it unless you drove it 170,000 miles or more before scrapping it. But that is just a REALLY rough ballpark figure.

To know for sure exactly how much energy was used to make it would be nearly impossible. You could quibble about all kinds of things, like should you count the gas used driving to work of the workers who built the car? Do those workers drive a SUV or a Civic or take the bus? What if the CEO of Honda has a private jet, how much do you count that against one car? Do you count the fuel used by the Jet or the energy used to manufacture the Jet too? And then you have to start a whole new calculation to find the energy used to make a jet. Do you count the energy used by all the people who trade Honda stock? The energy used by the employees driving to the bank that the Honda employees deposit their pay checks in. And on and on and on. Environmental extremists are REALLY fond of saying we are not FULLY accounting for the cost of things and they are always trotting out more things like these to add to the calculation to make the environmental impact as high as possible, while the business people say no fair, that is not part of the car manufacturing process. Oh, and they will also want to count the energy used to make a gallon of gasoline in the impact of the gasoline. So that you are really "guilty" of using 2 gallons of gasoline for every gallon you buy because another gallon is used by the delivery truck and oil refinery and drilling rig to produce it. It is just an impossible task to precisely calculate the energy used for anything in such a way that all people agree you did it right.

Answer 5

i can't find a link but i would guess driving the thing releases far more ghgs - pulling around several thousands lbs for a hundred thousand miles or so is sure to use far more energy than manufacturing it.

Answer 6

The car itself, not to mention all the wars its gunna make when the eearth runs out of oil

Answer 7

Studies from MIT, Argonne National Laboratory, and Carnegie Mellon's Life cycle Assessment Group put the percentage of energy the car uses in it's life between 75% - 85%. It takes about 10% - 15% of the energy to produce it.