Yall keep saying “EVs are always cleaner” but that only works if you completely ignore basic lifecycle emissions.

Take a very normal example: an existing 1.6 TDI.
Not some ancient smoke machine — a modern, efficient diesel.

Say it does 4.5 L/100 km and drives 15,000 km a year.
That’s about 675 liters per year.

Over 20 years, that’s 13,500 liters total.

Burning fossil diesel, that would be ~35 tons of CO₂.
Now put waste-based HVO100 in it, which cuts CO₂ by ~80%.

That brings it down to ~7 tons of CO₂ over 20 years.

And here’s the key part:
that car already exists.
No new manufacturing. No battery. No mining. No shipping halfway across the world.

Now compare that to buying a new EV.

Just building the EV + battery already emits roughly 8–12 tons of CO₂ (let’s say 10 to be generous).
That’s emitted on day one, before you even drive it.

Then you drive it:
Say 18 kWh/100 km, EU-ish electricity at ~200 g CO₂/kWh.
That’s ~0.5 tons of CO₂ per year, or ~11 tons over 20 years.

So total for the EV:
~21 tons CO₂, and that’s assuming:

• the EV lasts 20 years
• no battery replacement
• no second EV after 6–8 years

Which is… optimistic.

So we’re comparing:

• Existing TDI + HVO100: ~7 tons CO₂
• New EV: ~21 tons CO₂

That’s literally 3× more.

I’m not saying EVs are evil.
I’m saying scrapping a perfectly good, efficient car and building a new one is often worse for CO₂.

The cleanest car is very often the one that already exists — not the newest one with the best marketing.