Is The Argument That Green Cars Pollute More All Based On Bad Math?

It’s time to bust this thing wide open.

‘Electric cars aren’t green’ is a great bit of counter-intuitive headline bait, but it’s bad maths. This is how the argument goes, again and again:

Electric cars have higher manufacturing emissions than normal cars. Electric cars also use electricity that has its own footprint. And put together these two factors are a ‘dirty little secret‘ that negate any climate benefit of electric cars!

No. Let’s clear this thing up once and for all.

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MeanVulcan - 6/8/2013 9:57:13 PM

+1 Boost

A very basic argument which does not include all the complex variables. An attempt at pushing an agenda based on wording which does nothing to convince those educated in the field. Having written a paper on Sustainability of alternative energy sources for vehicles I have read hundreds of papers and looked at thousands of sources of data. Sorry, but effective carbon consumption does not, by itself define ANY argument.

The author does not in any way consider the use of the vehicle or the cradle-to-grave expectancy of the vehicle. A typical hybrid buyer in the US is the "must-have-it-first techie". This is the kind of person that will move to the next best hybrid as soon as it comes out. So what happens to the old hybrids? they get recycled earlier than expected. What does this mean? the savings on vehicle emissions expected over a lifetime of about 10 years is now shrunk to much less than 10 years, really about 5. So the additional emissions of manufacturing are not recovered with lifetime use. Thus this argument over fuel being the deciding factor is meaningless without considering other factors. This is just one factor.