Research: Many drivers might spew out less CO2 with a diesel engine than with ‘clean’ electric

“Beneath the hoods of millions of the clean electric cars rolling onto the world’s roads in the next few years will be a dirty battery,” Niclas Rolander, Jesper Starn, and Elisabeth Behrmann report for Bloomberg. “By 2021, capacity will exist to build batteries for more than 10 million cars running on 60 kilowatt-hour packs, according to data of Bloomberg NEF. Most supply will come from places like China, Thailand, Germany and Poland that rely on non-renewable sources like coal for electricity.”
“‘We’re facing a bow wave of additional CO2 emissions,’ said Andreas Radics, a managing partner at Munich-based automotive consultancy Berylls Strategy Advisors, which argues that for now, drivers in Germany or Poland may still be better off with an efficient diesel engine,” Rolander, Starn, and Behrmann report. “Just to build each car battery—weighing upwards of 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) in size for sport-utility vehicles—would emit up to 74 percent more C02 than producing an efficient conventional car if it’s made in a factory powered by fossil fuels in a place like Germany, according to Berylls’ findings.”

“‘It will come down to where is the battery made, how is it made, and even where do we get our electric power from,’ said Henrik Fisker, chief executive officer and chairman of Fisker Inc., a California-based developer of electric vehicles,” Rolander, Starn, and Behrmann report. “As it is now, manufacturing an electric car pumps out ‘significantly’ more climate-warming gases than a conventional car, which releases only 20 percent of its lifetime C02 at this stage, according to estimates of Mercedes-Benz’s electric-drive system integration department.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Noise pollution, however, is immediately reduced, regardless of battery origin or electric grid power sources.
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