Quote:
Originally Posted by upflying
No problem with EV's as long as owners know their fuel comes from places like this coal fired generating plant. Do you want Green House gasses from power plants or do you want them from tailpipes?
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If you only consider the green house gases from operation of the vehichle, the EV comes out on top. National average of lbs. CO2 per KW is 1.34 (0.61 for CA). You can travel about 3 mi. on one KW. So, you you travel 12000 miles in a year using the national average that is 5,360 lbs of CO2. If a car gets 26 mpg and travels the same number of miles it will uses 461 gal of gas. Burning 1 gal. of gas releases 19.6 lbs of CO2. That's 9,036 lbs of CO2 per year, or 3,676 more than the EV vehicle.
However, the amount of CO2 released is greater in the production of the EV currently, and the batteries have their own environmental drawbacks. Both will undoubtedly get better as time goes on.