Electric vehicles don’t produce tailpipe emissions, but there are other factors to consider when judging their environmental impact. Manufacturing is a big one, as well as where their electricity comes from. This is often used as an argument by naysayers against the environmental benefit of EVs, but a new study reaffirms that, yes, a car that doesn’t spew pollutants as it’s driven is in fact the lower-emission option.
The said study was published in May in the Environmental Research Letters journal. The headline stat is that EVs can reduce emissions by 40-60% compared to internal-combustion vehicles “in most locations.” However, the exact amount of emissions reductions depends on several factors, the most important being the composition of the local grid where they’re being driven. Coal-fired power plants increase the effective emissions of the EVs charged with the power they generate, but the reverse is also true of renewable alternatives.
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