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Written by Paul Horrell
It"s the first rock lobbed at electric cars, so let"s deal with it first. Electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, so how can you ignore that CO2? Well, we"re not ignoring it, we"re factoring it in. Power stations are more efficient than car engines, so if you transmit that electricity over the grid, put it into an EV (and they are very efficient, actually), then your EV is responsible for half the CO2 per mile than even an economical petrol or diesel car. Both those numbers include extraction and refining and distribution inefficiencies for the petroleum well-to-wheel in the jargon. And on a summer"s day, the UK actually gets all its electricity from renewables. Yes, in winter the UK uses some fossil-fuel electricity. Yes, nuclear is counted as renewable" in this analysis and it isn"t really carbon-free because of the immense energy in its mining and waste-disposal. But even so, EVs do far better than even that worst-case one-to-two ratio of entirely fossil-fuel electricity. As a happy bonus, because electricity supply is moving rapidly towards renewables, an EV bought today will be responsible for less and less CO2/km as it gets older. Now, manufacturing. The most recent studies I"ve seen, including one by the immensely thorough ICTT (the guys who unearthed Dieselgate), put the carbon impact of manufacturing an EV at just under three times a piston car*.
Date written: 26 Apr 2019
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 15523
It"s the first rock lobbed at electric cars, so let"s deal with it first. Electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, so how can you ignore that CO2? Well, we"re not ignoring it, we"re factoring it in. Power stations are more efficient than car engines, so if you transmit that electricity over the grid, put it into an EV (and they are very efficient, actually), then your EV is responsible for half the CO2 per mile than even an economical petrol or diesel car. Both those numbers include extraction and refining and distribution inefficiencies for the petroleum well-to-wheel in the jargon. And on a summer"s day, the UK actually gets all its electricity from renewables. Yes, in winter the UK uses some fossil-fuel electricity. Yes, nuclear is counted as renewable" in this analysis and it isn"t really carbon-free because of the immense energy in its mining and waste-disposal. But even so, EVs do far better than even that worst-case one-to-two ratio of entirely fossil-fuel electricity. As a happy bonus, because electricity supply is moving rapidly towards renewables, an EV bought today will be responsible for less and less CO2/km as it gets older. Now, manufacturing. The most recent studies I"ve seen, including one by the immensely thorough ICTT (the guys who unearthed Dieselgate), put the carbon impact of manufacturing an EV at just under three times a piston car*.
Date written: 26 Apr 2019
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 15523
around the 300quid mark ,
