Widespread Adoption of EVs Would Lead to Negative Impact on Environment Due To Dependency on Coal

What is the environmental impact of widespread use of EVs? Well that all depends on where you live. For example, an EV driven in France emits only 15 g/km of CO2, but the same vehicle driven in India would emit a staggering 160 g/km of CO2. Why such a difference? France provides most of their electricity through nuclear power plants which generate very little CO2 emissions where as India still provides most of their electricity through the burning of coal which is extremely high in CO2 emissions. For comparison purposes, diesel fuel emits approximately 130 g/km of CO2. With those numbers, you can easily see that converting India from diesel vehicles to EVs would actually have a negative impact on the environment in terms of CO2 emissions, at least until India could find a cleaner method fro producing electricity. The real problem lies in the old electrical grids and antique methods of supplying electricity. These methods, such as the use of coal, are still in widespread use today. Even in China, where they aim to be leaders in EV use and production, 90% of their electrical capacity is generated by coal. We all hear claims of clean coal technology and other methods of generating electricity with lower emissions, but they are not widespread realities at this point. EVs would not have a positive overall impact on the environment until the rest of the associated infrastructure moves into the 21st century and provides electricity through more advanced means. Source: Wards Auto (Login Required)

By Jordo P. #1, Posted: 7/3/2009

Where did you get your numbers??
By JC Jacquemin #2, Posted: 7/3/2009

Such generalizations are doing no good to the EV cause.
Please you must put a lot of "quotes" around this "information" because the assumptions are largely biased.
JC NPNS
By Author #3, Posted: 7/3/2009

All of the info in this article in regards to numbers are taken directly from Wards Auto, nothing has been added in or changed in any way. I made no personal assumptions in this article, just reworded the original source piece.
By jrup #4, Posted: 7/3/2009

This is the kind of disinformation campaign coal and oil spends our tax dollars on (if they didn't spend it on 'advertizing' or 'research' they'd have to pay taxes on it) all the time. My EV will get its power from the sun and wind, as nature intended (and my house already does) ...
By Noel Park #5, Posted: 7/3/2009

It would seem that there are some sort of "lifecycle", or "well to tailpipe" issues involved here as well. If the diesel fuel starts out as crude in the middle east is shipped halfway around the world in an oil tanker, refined in a process that takes a lot of energy, and trucked to the gas station, what is the C02 output of all of that?
By Noel Park #6, Posted: 7/3/2009

And that's not to mention the disastrous geopolitical, economic, security, and military consequences of overdependence on imported oil.
By J Man #7, Posted: 7/9/2009

I think if you have the money to spend on a EV and are getting it for the right reasons you would be willing to spend the money on the needed solar panels or turbine to produce the electricity needed to recharge the batteries in you EV. But that is just my opinion.
By J Man #8, Posted: 7/9/2009

In response of #5, has anyone ever done a study on the CO2 output of producing a new car (EV included) versus keeping your existing car?
Just for the record, I am not against making new cars as I work for an auto company, this is just more of a curiosity.
By Chris C. #9, Posted: 7/10/2009

Yes, of course such studies have been done, and the results are WILDLY in favor of EVs even if powered by coal! This is simply a disinformation campaign.
I only recently started keeping up with AllCarsElectric. If this is the quality of story that is typical here, then I'm taking the RSS feed right back out of my newsreader.