The best case scenario looks like what’s happening today in Norway, Europe’s largest EV market: the nation draws most of its energy from hydropower, giving all those EVs a minuscule carbon footprint. These emissions, says Paltsev, vary enormously based on where the car is driven and what kind of energy is used there. 3 The major source of EV emissions is the energy used to charge their batteries. 2īut just like with gasoline cars, most emissions from today’s EVs come after they roll off the production floor. 1 This intensive battery manufacturing means that building a new EV can produce around 80% more emissions than building a comparable gas-powered car. As a result, building the 80 kWh lithium-ion battery found in a Tesla Model 3 creates between 2.5 and 16 metric tons of CO 2 (exactly how much depends greatly on what energy source is used to do the heating). The use of minerals including lithium, cobalt, and nickel, which are crucial for modern EV batteries, requires using fossil fuels to mine those materials and heat them to high temperatures. One source of EV emissions is the creation of their large lithium-ion batteries. And in time, that comparative advantage of electric cars is going to grow.” But electric cars are actually much, much better in terms of the impact on the climate in comparison to internal combustion vehicles. “We shouldn't claim victory that with this switch to electric cars, problem solved, we are going to have zero emissions,” he says. Over the course of their driving lifetimes, EVs will create fewer carbon emissions than gasoline-burning cars under nearly any conditions.
Nevertheless, says Sergey Paltsev, Deputy Director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, electric vehicles are clearly a lower-emissions option than cars with internal combustion engines. Battery-electric cars may not emit greenhouse gases from their tailpipes, but some emissions are created in the process of building and charging the vehicles. Yes: although electric cars' batteries make them more carbon-intensive to manufacture than gas cars, they more than make up for it by driving much cleaner under nearly any conditions.Īlthough many fully electric vehicles (EVs) carry “zero emissions” badges, this claim is not quite true.
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