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Electric Vehicles Might Not Benefit the Environment After All
New submitter countach44 writes "From an article in IEEE's Spectrum magazine: 'Upon closer consideration, moving from petroleum-fueled vehicles to electric cars begins to look more and more like shifting from one brand of cigarettes to another. We wouldn't expect doctors to endorse such a thing. Should environmentally minded people really revere electric cars?' The author discusses the controversy and social issues behind electric car research and demonstrates what many of us have been thinking: are electric cars really more environmentally friendly than those based on internal combustion engines?"
Reader Jah-Wren Ryel takes issue with one of the sources, and offers a criticism from Fast Company.
The linked article takes you to a 1-page analysis. They must have put a lot of time into that! Corporate mission-statements frequently use more ink.
By comparison, the union of concerned scientists made a more robust, and likely more earnest attempt at understanding total fuel consumption using the "well-to-wheels" benchmark. You can read about it here: http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_vehicles/electric-car-global-warming-emissions-report.pdf
Page 11 (of 48) gives at least an approximation of CO2 consumption as measured in equivalent MPG for EVs, depending on what what's being used to push the electrons to the car in the first place. Coming in first place is geothermal, with an eMPG or 7600, and coal comes in last at 30 eMPG.
Whether somebody involved in this study or that study has erred or has been disingenuous is hard to say, but my guess is that the union of concerned scientists probably followed an actual scientific process where their work is available for full scrutiny by the rest of the scientific community.