As well, I did not see mention that it is safe bet that the electricity to charge up is almost certainly from a coal fueled generating station.
Another quibble, how is pollution defined? 'Carbon pollution' is a religious not a scientific statement.

Same with windmills and solar farms, not only do they monopolize huge sections of land but have had an environmental impact also, not to mention the manufacturing/ delivery/ setup and replacement components.

This is an excellent example of a study that is absolutely accurate but completely misleading. It is accurate in the amount of pollutants produced by the production of an electric vehicle, but it totally ignores that the crucial datum of 'how this effects the environment' is capable of being organized differently - to a different functional outcome.

Chernobyl has amply demonstrated that the greatest ecological pressure to a given area is the presence of a human population, not whether the environment itself is toxic. Wild foxes, bears, Przewalski horses - all of the wild animals have returned to the empty lands around Chernobyl, and are flourishing there.

One of the unremarked but integral characteristics of a gasoline engine is that it produces pollutants in the same region as where it is driven. Since the greatest concentration of gasoline engines occurs where there is the greatest concentration of people, there are two huge ecological pressures applied to the same area.

An electric engine has the capability of having its pollution phase separate from its use phase. We can put the production facility for electric batteries in a low-population area: we will be introducing a toxic environmental stress (a la Chernobyl) but it will be in the absence of a large population stress. We then use the electric battery in an area where there is a large population stress - but not a toxic stress. Both of these environments will be in, or nearer to, the normal elasticity for which the environment can compensate. We would have cleaner and less noisy cities and wilderness areas where the plants and animals 'only' have the toxic stressor of the production itself.

Of course, this line of reasoning is not acceptable to people who use the Green label. These people want to pretend that there is no toxic output from battery production; perhaps they think that if it takes place in China it 'does not count' or something.

Jan

Electric vehicles have been around for a LONG time, and I dare say without government rules and subsidies they will hang around the edges of society for another LONG time.

Not to say that inefficiently burning resources is the ultimate power source, but its much more convenient and cost effective right NOW.

A number of years ago when bio diesel was all the rage, someone sat down and calculated just how much fuel was required to create bio diesel, assuming all fuels involved to create it were themselves bio diesel.

This study took into consideration everything from production of the farm equipment to what it took to run all the equipment, transport all the supplies both ways, etc.

This study concluded that it required seven gallons of bio diesel during production to create eight gallons of bio diesel. The net savings was something near 12% or 13%.

And the difference in the amount of pollutants that were emitted into the atmosphere to create a net of eight gallons of bio diesel was actually more than what would have been emitted by just burning eight gallons of petroleum diesel.

It does not matter.

What matters is that coal derived energy must be killed in the name of global warming. Never mind it is a hoax.

The often overlooked pollution cost is the fact that the vehicles are subsidized to make them affordable for the wealthy that purchase the vehicles means that someone had to go to work and produce carbon by breathing and driving and using electricity in order to subsidize the vehicle and thus adding to the carbon footprint of the "non-polluting" vehicle.

Logic and rational thinking escapes Utopian fans. The hydrogen economy is no better: costly to generate, huge losses from leakage through pipelines, short range due to low density, a mediocre way to store energy at a loss.

Oh, poo, wid all dat. Lookee dino me so oo-wee PC to all my lib friends in my electric car. In all our electric cars.
In all our electric cars we so PC cool. In all our electric cars we are PC legion.
In all our electric cars we hold up our noses to enjoy being so much better than all you deplorable icky ugly caveman fossil fuel gas guzzlers. .
Ooo ooo fossil fuel. Fossil fuel so gag gag cough cough dirty. Fossil fuel so yuck blaugh ugly. And it's greasy too.
So do not bother we your betters wid how dey once diesel did det n' now do dat wid all doze dinky piddly widdly details.
Image is everything up here on Candy Mountain. .

I own a 2012 Nissan Leaf which my wife and I use it for local driving and have ICE car for longer distances. I have solar panels on the roof of my house which I pay set monthly lease fee and the billing from APS has remained low, so charging my Leaf cost next to nothing. I have an extended warranty so I won't be charged when I have the battery pack replaced. Here in Arizona is there is mostly solar, nuclear and hydroelectric. The Navajo Generating Station (coal-fired) supplies electricity for Flagstaff and very northern Az.

I read long ago that the carbon footprint of the batteries used in electric cars is far worse than convention cars. But, the main issue is just how are the electric cars, once millions are plugged in, going to be sustainable?Calif. barely can maintain electricity, some of which coems from AZ, for normal use now. How are millions and millions of cars agged to the power grid going to be a solution that works. Disposal is a nightmare with all those batteries. They are dangerous for resuce personne called in after crashes. This was a government funded additional hoax on the Us taxpayer. It all started with Gorbachev and his Green Religionn place in US schools post Reagan, with the UN, who wants all cars gone, just meke it impossible for them to be charged, or parked.Not the answer.

Humans, rather than adapting to their environment, adapt their environment to suit them.In so doing, they may pollute it, but up until recently their numbers were too small to be significant to matter much. But now, as they pass the 7 billion milestone that situation is rapidly changing. We berate ourselves and try to do what we can to make Mama Earth liveable. But how do we convince the rest of the world to do so?