If electric vehicles are the way to go to reduce emissions, wouldn’t charging them use up a lot of power, therefore still being costly and polluting? How does it work?

Question

I know very little about today’s climate actions despite routing for them, so I just want to take an opportunity to better understand them. How some things may just be temporary solutions or revolutionary ones.

I do not want climate change debates, I just want to know if powering electric cars has its trade offs or are really going to help.

In: Engineering

Answer 1

Even if all the power used to charge them came from burning fossil fuels, they’d still be more efficient per unit than an internal combustion engine *and* they have the benefit of reducing air pollution in populated areas. As it happens, though, increasing portions of most industrialised countries’ electrical supplies are generated from renewable sources, and the closer that number gets to 100%, the “cleaner” electrical cars get.