Some Electric Cars Are Greener Than Others, Study Finds | Edmunds.com

Edmunds.com

Some Electric Cars Are Greener Than Others, Study Finds | Edmunds.com

Not all owners of electric vehicles are being as environmentally friendly as they think they are, according to a new study.

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dat2

Something not considered in all of these studies that I've seen is that the power plants have to be "on" all the time, so when EVs typically charge at night, the power plants are in idle mode, and the energy that's being generated would have been wasted anyway as there's nowhere to store it. So although it's sold to the EV owner, it's really excess electricity. A better way to explain this would have been "EVs charged by coal-fired plants actually increase the impact by 80 percent or more IF CHARGED DURING THE DAY!"

A lot of variables are at play and most of these studies are too simplified or assumptive to be very effective.

eviator

It assumes oil is refined and transported with zero pollution as it happened outside of their research area (the US), as if global warming isn't global and as if oil isn't pumped, refined and transported in the US. In fact, EV's will off set oil burning cars, which means less refining is needed. As the electricity for the refining alone is already enough to power EV's at a similar distance, the whole outcome of this paper is the other way around even for dirty electricity. It's indeed very assumptive.