On the surface, it might appear to you that of course electric vehicles are
greener because they create no emissions. Unlike gasoline-powered cars, no fossil fuels are being
burned in its engine. So understandably, they are not going to be spewing out all
kinds of polluting gases from the tailpipe like carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and unburned
hydrocarbons that pollute the atmosphere. Electric cars don’t even have tailpipes.
But this is not the whole story. To really understand whether they are less polluting
overall, we have to take a look at the bigger picture. Don’t forget that they
consume electricity. That electricity, depending on the fuel source, can produce greenhouse gases.
And don’t forget that manufacturing the various components of the car,
like the batteries and other components also requires energy and resources. Could it be
that manufacturing the advanced batteries and other components that go into these
cars creates green house gases that offsets any potential savings from burning gasoline?
We will take a detailed look at all that and give you a verdict…that’s coming up right now.
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The climate is changing whether we like it or not. There is some controversy about the
cause of climate change, but very few people dispute that there is a change happening. And,
anyway you look at it, the emissions from gasoline powered vehicles (that’s petrol
powered to some of our international audience) do not help. These cars pollute, and they emit
greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. This is not only bad for the environment,
but also for your health. So this is something we should all be aware of, if not care deeply about.
We’ll focus on comparing electric vehicles or EVs, with gasoline-powered cars in this video.
About 70 million new cars and light trucks are sold each year around the
world. Although the number of electric vehicles being sold is increasing,
it still only about 9% which is a relatively small share of the total number.
And overall there are about one and a quarter billion cars and light trucks in use around the
world, and currently only about 18 million of these are EVs. So they make up an even
more miniscule portion of the total number of personal vehicles on the road, only around 1.4%.
So a full 98% or so of cars and light trucks in the world are gasoline or diesel powered.
To understand why gasoline cars pollute, let’s take look at how they work.
The heart of the engine is the internal combustion engine.
Power is produced from chemical energy. Very simply you take some fuel, typically gasoline
which is a combination of different hydrocarbons, the most common of which are octane and heptane.
These molecules react with oxygen from the atmosphere to produce carbon dioxide and water,
both of which are greenhouse gases. However, they play different roles. Increased CO2 levels
cause climate change, whereas increased water vapor levels are caused by climate change.
The water vapor is not a problem because earth has a very large water cycle given its vast oceans,
and so water vapor can be easily recycled or absorbed. At a given average temperature,
average water vapor levels in the atmosphere remain relatively constant because water
condenses and rains out of the atmosphere. The main issue is carbon dioxide. There
are other minor pollutants as well. Not only are pollutants and greenhouse
gases produced, but the common 4 stroke internal combustion engine overall is quite inefficient.
There are 4 cycles or strokes involved in the combustion process.
You’ll notice that power is only produced in one of the 4 strokes of the engine cycle. So
we have spent energy during 3 of these 4 strokes, taking in air and fuel, compressing this mixture,
and expelling the exhaust gases, without gaining any energy from these 3 cycles. Instead we lose
energy in these processes through friction, heat and kinetic energy. In addition, there are energy
loses in the transmission system which converts the power from the linear motion of the cylinder
to the rotational motion of your tires. As a result, only about 20-35% of the
energy produced from burning the fuel actually ends up turning the wheels. This is not a very
efficient way to propel a vehicle. In contrast, in electrical vehicles, about 75-85% of electrical
energy is actually used to propel the vehicle. How much do gasoline cars pollute then? Well,
it depends on the car of course. But on average worldwide, a gasoline engine car
produces 202 grams of CO2 per km driven. The question is how does this compare to
a fully electric vehicle? Well the number on average worldwide,
when taking into account the CO2 produced from the electricity generated needed to charge the
EV battery is 83 gCO2 per kilometer driven. This is a difference of 119 gr if CO2
in favor of electric vehicles. I want to point out that this 83
grams of Carbon dioxide per km number can vary from near 0 grams in a country like
Iceland where all the electricity comes from green sources such as hydrothermal,
to 187 grams of CO2 in a country like India where much of the electricity is generated from Coal.
So the greenness of electric cars depends in large part on the source of fuel for the
electricity produced in a particular country. But given that electric vehicles always produce
less CO2 than gasoline vehicles, this should be a slam dunk right?
Well, it’s not because this is not the whole picture. To be accurate, we have
to take into account the CO2 generated during the manufacturing process of electric vehicles,
and in particular the battery pack which is a resource intensive process.
The main battery type used in EVs today is the Lithium-ion battery.
And the mining and refining of Lithium uses a lot of energy, and creates a carbon footprint.
This has to be taken into account. It turns out that it’s more expensive
and takes more resources and energy to build an electric vehicle than a gasoline vehicle.
The production of a typical gasoline car releases around 7 tons of CO2,
whereas manufacturing a similar sized electric car release a little over 10 tons.
The difference boils down to battery production which alone produces around 4-5 tons of CO2.
Some of this is made up for by the fact that manufacturing the rest of the electric vehicle
takes less energy than gasoline cars because they are mechanically simpler.
But overall, EV manufacturing still produces about 3 tons, or 43% more CO2.
So, what this means is that electric vehicles, even though they produce on average 119 fewer
grams of CO2 per kilometer, they are not greener compared to gasoline-powered cars
from day one, when considering that they have a substantially larger carbon footprint at birth.
So we have to consider how long, or how many kilometers they would need to be
driven in order to make up for the higher CO2 generated during their production.
We can do some simple math to calculate this. 3 tons is equal to 3 million grams. We divide
this by 119 grams per kilometer, and we get 25,210 km. This means that on average an EV
breaks even in terms of CO2 produced after it has been driven 25,210 km which is also 15,665 miles.
The distance driven per year varies widely in different countries. The average American
drives 14,263 miles or about 23,000 km per year, so they would break even after about
13 months. The average Italian however drives only 7700km per year, so it would take them
more than 3 years to break even. Prior to this time frame, there is no net CO2 saved.
But experts estimate that the average EV battery will last at least 200,000
km. So over the life of the vehicle, in most countries, an EV will be greener.
Now, there are a few exceptions to this. There are in fact at least 5 countries where on
average EVs will not be greener even over their lifetime. This is because the fuel source of
electricity is largely coal or other high CO2 producing sources. Those countries are India,
Estonia, Poland, Czechia and Bulgaria. Electricity generators running fossil fuels can
produce anywhere from 250 gCO2/kwh when burning diesel to run a generator, up to 800 gCO2/kwh
burning coal to run a steam engine generator. Cars generally will not be as efficient as
generators because generators always run at their most efficient rpm.
But it’s probably not much worse than 400 gCO2/kwh for most cars. So in most cases,
cars tend to produce more CO2 per kwh, depending on how the electricity is generated.
So to accurately figure out whether your electric vehicle would be greener, you would have to look
at your individual annual km driven, in addition to the fuel source for the electricity that you
consume wherever you are charging your vehicle. So this idea of electric cars being greener in
all cases is not quite accurate. They are not greener from day one, and they
are not greener in certain parts of the world. But having said that, the overall CO2 footprint
for electric cars in most circumstances in most of the world is better. And in the cases of the
5 countries where it is not better currently, it is projected to be better in the next 10 to
20 years as those countries switch to greener and more efficient sources of producing electricity.
Now so far we have been looking at passenger cars, and that’s for good reason, because they are the
main culprit of pollution in the transport sector. Passenger vehicles make up 41% of that sector,
which also includes trucks, planes, ships, buses and other vehicles.
And overall, the transport sector is estimated to account for around 20-30 % of the total
global emissions, so if you multiply 41% times 20-30%, you can estimate that only
around 8-12% of overall greenhouse gas emissions are due to passenger cars.
Now, you may say that’s not very much, and you wouldn’t be wrong. But 8-12% is not
insignificant. And it’s the one area where you as an individual can make a difference.
Now if we look at the overall picture, you will see that the most significant
contributor to global greenhouse gases, at about 40%, comes from Electricity and heat production.
The majority of this comes from fossil fuels, like coal, natural gas and oil products.
Finding more eco-friendly ways to produce electricity is a subject for another day,
but one good alternative in my opinion would be nuclear. I made a video about it here,
if you want to learn more. In any case, any change in
that sector will not happen overnight, and is largely out of consumer control.
But your personal demand and use electric vehicles in under your control. They are
in general more efficient, with the best electric vehicles approaching
90% efficiency in terms of energy actually used to propel the vehicle. And of course,
they don’t have any direct carbon emissions.In carbon dioxide numbers, you will create
about 19 tons of CO2 over the lifetime of an EV, but more than 55
tons of CO2 for a gasoline car over its lifetime. The bottom line is that unless you live in India,
Estonia, Poland, Czechia or Bulgaria, you will on average be greener driving an EV than an
equivalent gasoline powered car over its lifetime. This takes into account all the CO2 created
during the manufacturing process, and in electrical power generation over its lifetime.
Now, I want to tell you that this is not a panacea. There
could be additional issues we haven’t addressed. For example, one problem is that unlike typical
12V car batteries, the large batteries in electric vehicles are currently not recycled on a large scale.
12 volt batteries have a recycling rate of about 99% in the US, so almost all of them are recycled.
Lithium batteries from electric cars, on the other hand, are recycled at only about a 5%
rate. So the question is what do we do with these batteries at the end of their life?
These EV batteries are not insignificant. They weigh somewhere around 500kg or 1000 lbs and can
release toxic chemicals if put in a landfill. This is not a big problem right now since
modern electric cars are relatively new and most have not reached the end of their life.
EV batteries today have a life expectancy of 10-15 years within the car. So what happens
10-15 years from now when 145 million EVs are estimated to be on the road,
and large numbers start to get to their end of life?
They are not currently designed to be easily recycled, but manufacturers are working on this.
One option is to repurpose them. They still retain 75-80% of their capacity
after the end of their life in cars. They could be reused as stationary energy storage units for
another 10+ years. So that may be an option. If discarded, their environmental impact has
not been taken into account in this video. Finally there is some concern about whether
raw materials like lithium and cobalt may be limited to make the projected number
EV batteries in the coming years. And this could create geopolitical tensions.
So let me end with the overall picture: Over the lifetime of a car, an electric
vehicle will be greener in most countries of the world. They will produce about 1/3 the amount of
greenhouse gases compared to conventional gasoline cars. And the savings will be even
larger if we move to greener power generation. EVs currently would not be a greener alternative
in India, Estonia, Poland, Czechia and Bulgaria. But this is likely to change
over the next 10 years or so, as these countries move to greener fuel sources.
Electric cars batteries will have an environmental impact unless we can create
a cost effective, widespread national and international recycling program.
Raw material supplies may be limited and we should be aware of its geopolitical impact
There are a couple of other issues with EVs I didn’t mention such as questionable cold climate
performance, long charge times and charging station availability for long distance trips.
But I think these are relatively minor and will be worked out as EVs get better
in future generations, just like the problems with early gasoline engine cars were worked out.
I mentioned that low CO2 electricity generation is directly tied to how green
your EV is going to be. One way to do this in my opinion is Nuclear energy which produces
little to no CO2. Be sure to check out my video on that if you want to learn more,
right up here. If you liked this video, then smash that like button and subscribe so you
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