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

Cars aren’t green. However if your car is fuelled by petrol you are using fossil fuels to power it which is worse for the environment. Powering a car via electricity potentially could use wind hydro or other sources to produce that electricity. Mining lithium like most mining is bad for the environment, but mining lithium is a slightly less damaging resource to mine than most other items. The unusual item for lithium mining is it requires a significant amount of water which may have a big local impact.

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