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
This is a very complex topic and there have been some detailed articles written, but generally speaking an EV will generally produce less pollution during it’s life.
The pollution comes from two main places, the processes required to create the car and it’s constituent parts, and the pollution is generates through your usage of it. In general EV’s create more pollution during the production process than ICE (internal combustion engine) cars but significantly less during the life of the vehicle.
During production, it’s usually the batteries that are the bigger hitter, requiring some rare and harder to find metals. In the early days, the batteries would need a lot of these metals (cobalt and lithium for example) and there is controversy about ther workers conditions where these materials are mined. However modern EV’s are much better at this and the processes have improved significantly but they are still not perfect. The argument against EV’s here however seems to forget that a) we need all of these materials for all the other batteries that we need in modern life and the materials in EV’s can be recycled and b) many of these materials are needed in some form for ICE cars too, like cobalt which is used (and can’t be recycled) during the production of petrol and diesel.
Then we get through life pollution. with ICE cars, this typically refers to the emissions that come from the vehicle exhaust but really should include fuel production too. EV’s don’t have an exhaust but obviously the electricity must be generated somewhere. If your electricity comes from wind farms and solar panels then it will be very green. if it comes from coal and gas it will be a lot less green.
However there’s some important points to register here too. the pollution from an ICE car exhaust is created next to you. it surrounds us in our towns and gardens and schools. the pollution in electricity generation happens far away at the power station, where even with nasty coal, you get massive economies of scale in terms of kW per gram of CO2 (and other things) and they often have pollution controls in place.
Also, you often have an input into where your power comes from. my electricity company promises to only supply green energy for example, and this can and will change over time. Petrol and diesel will eventually be replaced by synthetic alternatives I imagine, but that’s a long way away from being available to the majority of the population. Electricity is.
At the end of the day, all forms of car propulsion are compromises. EV’s are better at some things, petrol cars are better at others. Petrol is massively energy dense for example, significantly more so than hydrogen and current battery tech, but it pollutes.
People get very religious about these kinds of things but it’s a car. choose something that works for you. EV’s work for me because most of my days end at home, I have off street parking and a home fast charger. I have a tariff that charges a lot less for electricity in the nmiddle of the night and thus a “fill up” for me is hugely cheaper than when I had a diesel. but YMMV.
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