Why are electric cars better for the environment? How do they work?
In: Engineering
From a carbon emissions perspective, internal combustion engines are very inefficient at converting fuel into energy. It is much more efficient to generate power at a large central power plant, and distribute the power via the electrical grid system than it is for each vehicle to generate their own power by burning fuel. This is true even if the power is being generated by a dirty source such as coal. Also, electric cars get better and better carbon footprints as energy generation switches over to renewables, and to cleaner fossil fuels like natural gas.
Also, carbon emissions aren’t the only environmental concern. Air quality is also a really big deal. Air quality is degraded significantly by internal combustion engines. Air quality reduction has a statistically noticeable increase in the number of deaths that occur. Electric vehicles don’t have emissions, so they don’t reduce air quality where the vehicle is. They do reduce air quality at the point of power generation if the source is dirty, but cars tend to be concentrated near population centers, whereas power generation stations tend to be far away. This means that number of people negatively impacted by bad air quality drops.
So in summary, even electric cars that source their power from dirty coal have a net positive environmental impact, and they have the potential to become greener as our power grids increase the amount of clean energy sources.
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