Transport is a third of emissions, most of that road transport, so if everyone bought an electric car it would certainly have an impact.
I think people have to bear in mind this is also about industrial scale. One person buying an electric car brings down the price for another, each new person brings down the price more and opens up the possibility to more people, and at some point you’ll get a mass transfer. Electric cars are only something like 0.3% of cars on the road but already have the scale to get quite close to competitive. They're already cheaper for high mileage cases.
Although I do agree we will need concerted effort, it’s likely this will be in conjunction with, not opposed to, these kind of individual decisions.
Why? Electrification of grid electricity is comparatively easy, and may even substantially happen (say, to 60-80%) without government action because of the relentlessness of the learning curves for wind and solar. But that’s only a third of emissions. The core challenge is to electrify transport and heating to tackle the other two thirds. Replacing combustion cars with electric cars might involve a lot of mining (as does all of industrial civilization), but it will almost certainly be a benefit for climate change. Just plateauing the number of cars would be an achievement, reducing them by 90%+ globally, as would be needed without electrification, is cloud cuckoo land.
EVs still have big co2 lifecycle footprints, more than is sustainable, so a dead end. Bonus: each new EV will put another low cost used gas vehicle on the market to guzzle gas for another 20 years.
Their lifecycle is almost all dependent on the grid, most of the rest is the battery, which are already being manufactured using renewable energy. Even mining is being electrified. In the UK I can already buy a car which will reduce emissions by 40%, and by the end of its lifetime probably 80% as the grid decarbonises. Or even more if I have solar panels. How many decades of campaigning would we need to halve car ownership? Your perfect outcome from this is not going to happen, not quickly enough to tackle the problem, don’t make the enemy the perfect of the good.
That's bad math. If you add EVs to a grid that's in the process of decarbonizing, the marginal impact is all that extra power comes from whatever would be shut down next.
EVs are still worth it if they're powered by coal or natural gas. But quoting them as getting cleaner as the grid decarbonizes is wrong, until the existing load is satisfied with renewables (even instantaneously).
The only exception is if EVs allow you to increase the renewable share beyond what you'd otherwise be able to do eg with demand dispatch.
Campaigning is not going to cut it, private car use will need to be regulated with clear YoY reduction targets and big enough incentives to reach them (eg high gas taxes, supplemented with income transfers if social fairness is desired by voters).
I agree that perfect is the enemy of good, but I think EV production is net harmful and your numbers overoptimistic, so the argument does not apply in my view.
The only pro ev argument that still has legs IMO is that since we'll have to stop the remaining oil and coal from being exctracted and burned in any case, EV availability can provide popular support for it. But it's much better if we can just rein in car dependency.
I think people have to bear in mind this is also about industrial scale. One person buying an electric car brings down the price for another, each new person brings down the price more and opens up the possibility to more people, and at some point you’ll get a mass transfer. Electric cars are only something like 0.3% of cars on the road but already have the scale to get quite close to competitive. They're already cheaper for high mileage cases.
Although I do agree we will need concerted effort, it’s likely this will be in conjunction with, not opposed to, these kind of individual decisions.