Do electric cars have a future

Do electric cars really produce fewer carbon emissions than petrol or diesel vehicles?

There is a spectre haunting electric cars: the question of greenwashing. What if, for all the green hopes attached to zero-emissions cars, the truth is that they fail to achieve their main goal of cutting world-heating carbon emissions?

Our EV mythbusters series has looked at some of the most persistent criticisms of electric cars, ranging from car fires to battery mining, range anxiety to cost concerns. This article asks: do electric cars really produce fewer carbon emissions than petrol or diesel?

The claim

In the US, the Florida senator Rick Scott said there was ample evidence to suggest that EVs are not as clean as people are being led to believe and folks deserve to know the truth. He and other Republican colleagues introduced the (suggestively named) Directing Independent Research To Yield Carbon Assessment Regarding Electric Vehicles (DIRT Y CAR EV) Act, which tried to call for analysis of the carbon footprint of vehicles.

A recent article in the UKs Daily Mail reported that the environmental benefit of electric cars may never be felt because many electric vehicles will never hit their mileage target as owners upgrade to newer models, leaving swathes of used electric cars sitting unwanted on garage forecourts.

But it is not only the rightwing press. In June, the Guardian published an article by the actor Rowan Atkinson in which he said he felt duped by EVs carbon claims and that the reality was very different, citing Volvo research suggesting greenhouse gas emissions during production of an electric car are almost 70% higher than when manufacturing a petrol one.

It seems a perverse choice of hardware with which to lead the automobiles fight against the climate crisis, Atkinson wrote.

The science

Any assessment of carbon emissions associated with a product needs to look at its whole life cycle, from manufacture to scrapping (and, hopefully, recycling). Many claims about electric cars supposedly worse environmental toll focus on manufacturing and ignore the actual use of the cars.

The grain of truth in the criticism is that EVs do indeed take significantly more energy to manufacture. Battery production requires large amounts of electricity to heat ovens to bake electrode materials, and to charge and discharge the battery to prepare it for use. While electricity can be produced with zero emissions, most countries still burn carbon-heavy fossil fuels to turn generators. Analysis by the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, cited by the US Environmental Protection Agency, suggests that manufacturing battery cars produces about 60% more carbon emissions than their fossil fuel cousins.

That means that electric cars start with a big carbon disadvantage, sometimes described as a carbon debt. However, Eoin Devane, a senior analyst for surface transport at the Climate Change Committee, the UK governments climate science adviser, said: If you look at the data, that carbon debt is paid off within about two years of driving the vehicle.

The vast majority of fossil fuel cars carbon footprint comes in use, when exhaust pipes constantly spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Transport & Environment (T&E), a campaign group, calculates that a new petrol car will produce about 27 tonnes if driven for 100,000 kilometres (62,000 miles), and 49 tonnes over 200,000km.

Electric cars, by contrast, use less energy and can charge from zero-carbon sources. Just how much greener electric cars can be in operation depends on how much renewable electricity is used in local grids. Transport & Environment has a handy online calculator that allows you to play with the grid, choosing between different countries energy mixes and whether the battery was made in carbon-heavy China or greener Sweden. Where the lines cross indicates how many miles are needed for a battery car to win on carbon emissions.

Lucien Mathieu, T&Es cars director, said that even if you choose a worst-case scenario vehicles made and driven with electricity largely from coal the electric car will win out after about 70,000km (about six years of driving). The more you drive an electric car, the better it gets, he said.

The picture for electric cars will improve as power from the wind and the sun replaces gas and oil, reducing carbon emissions from generating electricity. Colin Walker, the head of transport at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank, said: Even if you have a really dirty grid, EVs are still better for the environment. That will keep going as the grid gets cleaner and cleaner.

We also need to take into account the future of the technologies. Auke Hoekstra, an energy transition researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology, said emissions from fossil fuel cars cannot fall much further, meaning they are not a viable technology for a zero-emissions world. Yet battery development is still in relative infancy, and is likely to tip the balance further in favour of electric cars.

Batteries are a good endgame solution for the transition to net zero, Hoekstra said. The gasoline engine is basically going nowhere.

Any caveats?

Batteries are not the only way to get cars to net zero. You can fill them with e-fuels petrol made with carbon from the air, hydrogen from water, and green electricity. That technology works and will probably be used to power classic cars long into the future. Other people advocate using the hydrogen in fuel cells to run a motor.

However, in either case the energy efficiency is drastically lower than using that electricity directly, and the fuel is likely to be needed for planes, which are much harder to decarbonise.

And there was an important point in Atkinsons Guardian article: replacing an old, little-used car with a brand new electric car may not make sense because of the carbon debt.

If the vehicle is not being regularly used there is certainly a case to wait until the point youre going to replace it anyway, said the CCCs Devane. However, he and others cautioned that any calculation of relative carbon savings for individuals would be complicated. And, Hoekstra added, not having an electric car is better for the environment if you can rely on public transport instead.

The verdict

The scientific consensus is overwhelming: on any realistic like-for-like comparison a battery car will be cleaner than its petrol or diesel equivalent. Burning fossil fuels to make and drive electric cars will still cause emissions, but at a lower level than inefficient fossil fuel engines.

That is true of todays grid (in richer economies, at least) but in tomorrows grid the benefits will grow as long as countries continue to shift away from coal and gas to generate electricity. Putting batteries in cars so far appears to be the only practical way to shift the tens of millions of light vehicles sold every year towards net zero emissions.

HotCars

If you take a look around, you might get a strong impression that electric vehicles are definitively the future. In fact, Tesla's skyrocketing share price briefly made Elon Musk the world's richest man, and the company reported its first profitable year since it was founded in 2003.

Municipalities are also installing charging ports and adding electric vehicles to their fleets. Further, legacy auto manufacturers like Ford and GM are pledging to scale back on gasoline-powered cars and only produce electric vehicles from as early as 2035, and direct competitors to Tesla-like Lucid are beginning to spring up.

The first electric cars appeared in the late 19th century, and electric vehicles date back even further than that. In 1899, Belgian Camille Jenatzy used an electric vehicle to break the land speed record, hitting 65 MPH. That may not sound too significant to anyone who isn't willingly driving around in a Fiat 500, but back then, breaking the 100 KM/H barrier (just over 62 MPH) was a major achievement.

But is the future really electric? Possibly not. The main driving force behind the hype has been global concern over carbon emissions and a desire to limit them before the situation gets beyond humanity's control.

That's as good a reason as any, but there are other ways of achieving these goals, and electric vehicles aren't as green as they seem in the first place.

Electric Vehicles Aren't As Clean As They Look

They are cleaner than fossil fuel-powered cars over a lifetime, of that there is no doubt. But just because your vehicle isn't releasing any emissions doesn't mean the car hasn't had any impact on the planet. 5-10% of a car's lifetime CO2 can be contributed to carbon emissions coming from the production of the vehicle itself.

Electric cars are on the higher end of the chart due to their batteries. Those batteries are also something that will need replacing, as all car parts do, should someone want to keep their car on the road and reduce its environmental impact.

To their credit, Tesla does work to either extend the life of, or recycle, all of the lithium-ion batteries used in their vehicles.

However, when the vehicle hits the road, the energy to power it has to come from somewhere. As around 60% of electricity generated in the United States comes from oil, coal and gas, fossil fuels are still effectively getting you from A to B in most cases.

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It Also Comes Down To Range

An electric car is well suited to most situations. If you're smart about charging, there isn't much chance of finding yourself stranded on the roadside halfway through your daily commute. But, there is a notable chunk of the population who struggle to keep an eye on their gas gauge, and the consequences of an empty tank aren't as severe.

If you find yourself stranded in your driveway or on the road, you can always get to a gas station, fill a can with fuel, and have enough juice to get your car to the pump and fill up properly. A flat battery on a Tesla requires a generator or a tow truck.

The Tesla will, of course, do its best to warn its driver that it needs to be charged. It will highlight local charging points that are still in range and limit its own speed to conserve energy. But you can still run one flat. People ignore fuel warning lights on standard cars and their cell phones, begging for a charge all the time.

Then there's range. Tesla managed to get over 400 miles out of some of their models, and electric rival Lucid promises to smash through the 500-mile range barrier.

Once again, that's great for everyday use (as long as you're not the electric equivalent of a quarter tank person). But it's not great for long road trips. Yes, not everyone needs to drive from New York to Florida in one blast, but those that do would probably pick five minutes filling a tank over several hours sitting in a truck stop waiting for their battery to recharge.

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What Are The Alternatives?

The two current contenders are hydrogen-fueled cars and hybrids. Hydrogen runs into similar environmental issues as electric, primarily that our current methods of extracting the gas uses a lot of energy. It's also the most expensive of the three options. This may change when hydrogen extraction methods are refined and the cars themselves become more common, but there is a long way to go yet.

Positives include the ability to refill your tank with actual gas in about the same amount of time it takes to refill your current tank with "gasoline". It's also the most abundant element in the universe, so we're unlikely to run out of it any time soon.

Then there are hybrids. A standard hybrid powertrain can be powered by petroleum and battery power, to provide you with extra range. It's a simple concept and works well. It's still not as green as an electric or hydrogen-powered vehicle, but it is better for the environment than a regular car.

You can refuel it in about five minutes, the same way you refuel your regular ride. Plug-in hybrids are also a thing, so you can enjoy the benefits of an electric vehicle but still have that gas tank get out of jail free card when you need it.

Add biofuel into the mix (which can burn up to 86% cleaner than gasoline), and not only do you have a way to make hybrids an even better choice, they make keeping current gasoline-powered cars on the road viable.

Nationwide, electric vehicles are on average 60% cleaner than gas-powered cars, which makes them less clean than both cellulosic and sugar cane ethanol biomass rides.

Electric vehicles have come a long way, but their limitations aren't shared by many other transportation methods. They are going to get better, but plenty of other vehicles could go so much further.

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