Another article showing that there is a lot more to consider than just the tail pipe emissions.
Not as clean cut a decision as the greenies would have you believe? And you want the tax payer to subsidise this.
Nuclear Power stations will solve a lots of the problems for a cleaner, more stable power supply to move us into the EV era.
A worker unloads a Tesla Model 3. Tesla uses solar power at its Gigafactory for batteries in Nevada, and has plans for similar plants in Europe and Shanghai. Bloomberg
by Niclas Rolander Stockholm | Beneath the hoods of millions of the clean electric cars rolling onto the world's roads in the next few years will be a dirty battery.
Every big carmaker has plans for electric vehicles to cut greenhouse gas emissions, yet their manufacturers are, by and large, making lithium-ion batteries in places with some of the most polluting grids in the world.
By 2021, capacity will exist to build batteries for more than 10 million cars running on 60 kilowatt-hour packs, according to data of Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Most supply will come from places like China, Thailand, Germany and Poland that rely on non-renewable sources like coal for electricity.
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The average German car owner could drive a gas-guzzling vehicle for three and a half years, or more than 50,000 kilometres, before a Nissan Leaf with a 30 kWh battery would beat it on carbon-dioxide emissions in a coal-heavy country, Berylls estimates show.
"We're facing a bow wave of additional CO2 emissions," said Andreas Radics, a managing partner at Munich-based automotive consultancy Berylls Strategy Advisors, which argues that for now, drivers in Germany or Poland may still be better off with an efficient diesel engine.
The findings, among the more bearish ones around, show that while electric cars are emission-free on the road, they still discharge a lot of the carbon-dioxide that conventional cars do.
Just to build each car battery-weighing upwards of 500 kilograms (1100 pounds) in size for sport-utility vehicles-would emit up to 74 per cent more C02 than producing an efficient conventional car if its made in a factory powered by fossil fuels in a place like Germany, according to Berylls' findings.
Yet regulators haven't set out clear guidelines on acceptable carbon emissions over the life cycle of electric cars, even as the likes of China, France and the UK move towards outright bans of combustion engines.
"It will come down to where is the battery made, how is it made, and even where do we get our electric power from," said Henrik Fisker, chief executive officer and chairman of Fisker, a California-based developer of electric vehicles.
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Mercedes' upcoming EQC crossover will have an 80 kWh battery.
For perspective, the average German car owner could drive a gas-guzzling vehicle for three and a half years, or more than 50,000 kilometres, before a Nissan Leaf with a 30 kWh battery would beat it on carbon-dioxide emissions in a coal-heavy country, Berylls estimates show.
And that's one of the smallest batteries on the market: BMW's i3 has a 42 kWh battery, Mercedes's upcoming EQC crossover will have an 80 kWh battery, and Audi's e-tron will come in at 95 kWh.
With such heavy batteries, an electric car's carbon footprint can grow quite large even beyond the showroom, depending on how it's charged.
Driving in France, which relies heavily on nuclear power, will spit out a lot less CO2 than Germany, where 40 per cent of the grid burns on coal.
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BMW's i3 has a 42 kWh battery. Bloomberg
"It's not a great change to move from diesel to German coal power," said NorthVolt AB CEO Peter Carlsson, a former Tesla manager who is trying to build a 4-billion-euro ($6.5 billion) battery plant in Sweden that would run on hydropower.
"Electric cars will be better in every way, but of course, when batteries are made in a coal-based electricity system it will take longer" to surpass diesel engines, he said.
To be sure, other studies show that even in coal-dominant Poland, using an electric car would emit 25 per cent less carbon dioxide than a diesel car, according to Transport & Environment Brussels, a body that lobbies the European Union for sustainable environmental policy.
The benefit of driving battery cars in cities will be immediate: their quiet motors will reduce noise pollution and curb toxins like nitrogen oxide, NOX, a chemical compound spewed from diesel engines that's hazardous to air quality and human health.
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Audi's e-tron will come in at 95 kWh.
"In downtown Oslo, Stockholm, Beijing or Paris, the most immediate consideration is to improve air quality and the quality of life for the people who live there," said Christoph Stuermer, the global lead analyst for PricewaterhouseCoopers Autofacts.
But electric cars aren't as clean as they could be.
