If most of our electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, how are electric cars better environmentally?

Answer 1

Electric cars are indeed eco-friendly. To show exactly why, we need to examine the premises of this argument in greater detail.
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The efficiency of electric vehicles, as compared to gas vehicles, is the key.
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Internal combustion engines are 25% efficient at best. The practical efficiency is reduced further by idling, braking, and otherwise running the engine outside of its optimum powerband.
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Gasoline also requires energy to refine - large amounts of electricity is used in this process! Also reducing the efficiency of fuel is the wasted energy of fuel transportation - gasoline must be delivered by truck to your local gas station. After all this, we are lucky to get even 10% of gasoline's energy to the road.
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By contrast, large electric motors are 95% efficient. Battery storage systems are close to 90% efficient. And the power grid is 95% efficient (far more efficient than delivering fuel by truck.) Unlike gas engines, electric engines don't idle, they can recover braking energy to recharge the batteries, and have very wide powerbands - so nearly all the energy gets to the road. Fuel also burns far more efficiently in a large powerplant (nearly 85% in some plants) than it could ever burn in your car.
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The fact that electric vehicles are several times more efficient means that far less pollution-per-mile is generated, even when dirty fuel is burned at the plant. The story is even better than this, though, since a significant portion of electricity is now generated from clean sources.
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In fact, in the near term, EVs will create NO pollution from powerplants at all - there is currently excess power generated at night (off-peak), because most power plants can't be shut off overnight, even when their power isn't needed. So cars charged at night create no new pollution at all, until EV usage grows to several million, at least. By some estimates, 30 to 50 million cars can charge at night before powerplant upgrades will be needed. By then, I hope most of us have solar cells on our roofs.

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Answer 2

That is the big downside to energy. It still has to come from somewhere. Fossil fuels give us a lot of cheap energy but at an environmental cost. Solar and wind provide us environmentally safe (for the most part) energy but not the amount we can get from fossil fuels and not nearly as cheap. Nuclear can provide cheap energy but yowza at the environmental damage (especially if it goes wrong).

An electric car will need to be charged and that eletricity will for the most part come from fossil fuels. There might be overall less emissions because of benefits of scale production. Burning gas in a car for a thousand cars vs burning coal at one plan for produce electricity for a thousand cars might result in the plant able to produce a little less CO2 but I would not bet it would be much.

Another downside to electric cars at the moment, we do not have the infrastructure to handle them. California already experiences electricity shortages. Imagine if the number of electric cars doubled. That is even more eletricity the system will need to produce. If we converted to electric cars (or even a 20% conversion), we would need to produce more electricity at the power plants and have more power lines to handle the load.

Which has "cleaner" emissions? A modern car or a modern coal burning plant? That would be an interesting answer to know.

Answer 3

You have a good question. Power plants are more efficient than internal combustion engines. Modern plants meet many emission standards. Using coal for electric power at least cuts the use of foreign fuels. Not all electric power plants use fossil fuels. There is hydroelectric, wind, biomass, solar, geotheral nuclear and etc.

Answer 4

i'm happy i do no longer drink the kool aide a number of you have drank on the EV1. The EV1 replaced right into a disaster waiting to take place.. It has develop right into a larger lie/Legend than Dracula. Face it, below the dems, we will not build a nuclear plant. we will not build any dams. we are able to objective to construct wind, however the fee will make the Iraq conflict appear like a miles low-priced chinese language toy while it contains pay the bill. AND PV isn't a mainstream using fact of expenditures. SO, you lovable electric powered vehicle would be a 50% coal burner, in basic terms love it incredibly is immediately.

Answer 5

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. fossil fuels emit a lot of harmful fuels whereas in electric crs fossil fuels are not used. this prevents the pollution of the environment

Answer 6

electric cars don't pollute

Answer 7

They aren't, unless you charge them up with solar or wind or hydroelectric or even nuclear power.