"About 65% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels"
These EV cars should be renamed "Coal Cars" so people understand the true harsh carbon footprint. Because you plug the car into a wall doesn't mean the energy is clean.
> These EV cars should be renamed "Coal Cars" so people understand the true harsh carbon footprint.
That's just incredibly dumb. If you do this, you have misunderstood the entire point of EVs.
An EV could be fuelled by coal today, and wind/solar tomorrow. They are extremely flexible and becomes greener as the grid does.
If you're concerned about the environment and green technology, you're obviously going to fight for both EVs and a cleaner grid. Both those solutions are absolutely necessary to solve the problems.
Meanwhile, an ICE is just not part of any viable solution at all.
The only time perspective that matters for the environment, is the long term. It doesn't matter what 100'000 EVs emit today. What matters is where we are in 20 years: hopefully with 100s of millions of EVs charged by a mostly clean grid.
This "EV fuelled by coal" talking point is primarily pushed by the fossil fuel industry btw. They are not concerned about the environment. They're just interested in protecting their industry. I haven't heard anyone who actually cares about the environment focus on this, because if you do care, you know better.
This has been proven false back in like 2008. Even if electric cars were to run off coal plants, they would still be more efficient because the plants can capture and reuse heat with boilers.
That being said, coal has to go anyway.
I run my electric car from 98% hydro power and 2% wind power and I pay 6,9 cents per kWh, and that's Canadian money, pretty cheap.
From my view I have 2 nuclear power plants, a couple of natural gas/oil generators, a bunch of small solar plants, and a single coal fired plant in the state for our grid. No one from this part of the state is getting their power from coal in any appreciable quantity. So no, coal cars is not an apt name since not everyone is getting power from coal.
How does the emissions of a coal plant (plus the loss from transfering over the power line, battery, into motors) compare to the emissions of a regular petrol or diesel car?
These EV cars should be renamed "Coal Cars" so people understand the true harsh carbon footprint. Because you plug the car into a wall doesn't mean the energy is clean.
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3