Eli5: are electric cars greener?

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Clarkson and others always ask the question, ‘where does the electricity come from?’

There are other stats that say it’s only better after a certain amount of miles driven or that the Lithium quarries produce significant amount of pollution.

What and where do these claims come from, how true are they and how false are they?

In: Engineering

25 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

With 10k miles on the odometer gas cars are greener. With 100k miles on the odometer electric cars are much greener.

Electric car production is more carbon intensive because of the minerals required for the battery. But even if you use a dirty power source like coal to charge your car electric production at scale is FAR more efficient than an internal combustion engine; so through the life of the car an electric car will be more environmentally friendly. If you can use something like wind or solar to charge it then it will be even better.

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