The carbon footprint of producing the battery, even not considering the chemicals, is very large. So much so that you'd have to drive it on many years from a full-renewable source for you to break even with a regular car[1]. Tesla, sadly, maximizes the battery in their cars.
My read is that their main goal is selling batteries and everything from opening their "patents" (i.e. their custom connectors/battery pack) to the home wall-pack is designed to do that.
That doesn't really match up with the next page(8), it shows BEV beating traditional cars in both graph and quote:
"Our base case results suggest that a BEV uses the least amount of energy of all the vehicle types analyzed in this study, followed by a hybrid and a CV. The results of the CV
lifecycle analysis show that by far the greatest source of energy intensity is the use phase, at
95% of the lifecycle energy. This is due to the amounts of energy required to extract and process the gasoline and the energy intensity of the gasoline itself."
The linked report compares BEVs with ICE and Hybrid. Hybrid beats both because of the smaller battery.
BEVs have a very large upfront footprint due to the battery that needs to be paid off overtime by driving from a renewable source. However in US only 14% of energy comes from renewable sources, so it'll be a very long pay off.
Hybrids are the best way to go until we make significant strides in batteries (20-30 years off?). You rely on your charged battery for most of your trips, and the highly optimized gas engine kicks in when you need the extra range/juice.
