Credit: Green Car Reports
Opponents of electric vehicles often gleefully claim that electric vehicles (EVs) produce as much carbon dioxide as internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles because coal is burned to produce the electricity.
Such an "analysis" is flawed because, although it takes account of almost all of the the CO2 produced upstream of the EV (unless the source is hydro, or some other green source), it ignores the enormous amount of CO2 produced upstream of the ICE petrol tank. Issues involved have previously been discussed in these pages.
A further issue is "imbedded energy". I.e. the energy consumed in producing a vehicle. EV opponents have recently suggested that the embedded energy in an EV is greater than that in an ICE equivalent.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has recently tweeted that he will undertake an exhaustive investigation into relative amounts of imbedded energy in EV & ICE vehicles.
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1085997_teslas-musk-promises-deep-dive-into-electric-car-emissions / LiIon EV electric vehicle embedded energy battery cell lithium ion manufacture rare earth metal well to wheels accounting cradle to grave coal power station brown dirty grid carbon dioxide CO2 fossil fuel non-fossil non fossil /
