Are Electric Cars Worse For The Environment? Myth Busted

The article doesn't talk about greenhouse gas emissions, so the power grid and fuel source isn't really relevant to the point, especially since oil is an extremely small part of the energy mixture in most places.[1] If they were talking about greenhouse gases, then the answer seems to be that it depends on where you live and how/what you drive, but an electric vehicle almost always produces less emissions than an equivalent gas powered one. [2] does a decent job explaining though I feel he leaves a few parts out for the sake of clarity. For example, driving a P100D isn't the equivalent of driving the average car. It's more like driving a sports sedan (like a BMW M5), so those sorts of vehicles would probably be a more fair comparison. In the same vane, the whole US car fleet includes lots of SUVs and other trucks, which if there were equivalent electric models, would obviously not go as far as a Leaf. It would be great if there was a US calculator that worked like [3] does for the UK so that we could do the same sort of comparison based on the mix where we live. [1] [link] [2] [this video] [3] [link]

For anyone looking to research that, this[1] video aggregated some source studies. tl;dw: estimates are between 2-17 metric tons of CO2 emissions to produce a new car (SUVs are more). And during operation an average car emits 5.2 metric tons of CO2 per yer. For a concrete example, a 2021 Toyota Camry Hybrid at 52mpg emits 170g/mile of CO2[2]. A 2000 Camry 4cl at 24mpg emits 340g/mile[3]. Assuming you drive an average 13,500 miles/year[4] the break-even point for CO2 is about 4.5 years. If you have the 2000 V6 Camry at 20mpg then the break-even is closer to 2.5 years. [1] [this video] [2] [link] [3] [link] [4] [link]

Engineering Explained went into this in some detail in a video about five years ago[0]. The key takeaway: If two people were driving the same car, and one sold their car and bought an electric car whilst the other kept driving the old car, it would take less than five years (on average) for the electric car to have less emissions than the old, ICE vehicle. There are certainly some other moral questions here, involving treatment of labour in places where, e.g., we mine for lithium, but those are a bit harder to quantify. The quantifiable aspects are pretty clear, and electric cars are the clear winner. 0. [this video]