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
Electric cars absolutely have a carbon deficit vs. internal combustion engines when they roll out of the factory, entirely because of how much carbon is emitted as a result of the production and transportation of the batteries.
Past that point, EVs will have a break-even mileage, or a point at which they finally work off their initial carbon deficit vs combustion engines and start being better for the environment. However, the EV will more or less always be more efficient on a carbon emitted per mile driven standpoint because, even in the worst case scenario, carbon-based power plants (e.g. coal or natural gas) will be considerably more efficient than the engine in your car. How many miles it takes to get to the break-even point will be hyper-dependent on the local electricity sources. For modernized/Westernized nations, the break-even mileage is going to be between 20,000 and 50,000 miles, but for other countries the mileage will be considerably higher. This becomes a more serious problem for decarbonizing developing nations, as the break-even mileage would conceivably be higher than the designed lifetime of the vehicle.
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