Most people miss the point. You use less energy generating electricity in a power plant , transmitting the power over high voltage transmission lines, recharging batteries, and using the electricity to provide motion in an EV than burning gasoline in an ICE car. The difference is a factor of 2-3x. The reason for this is that electricity generation, particularly the new generation of natural gas power plants (40% of our electricity comes from natural gas), is very efficient and the losses with high voltage transmission lines is very low. ICE cars are very inefficient in terms of how much of the energy in a gallon of gasoline is converted into motion. Electric motors in EVs convert a high percentage of the electrical energy in the battery to motion. You can also avoid the inefficiencies of having to transport gasoline to filling stations. While they take more energy to manufacture, if they are kept long enough there is a net energy savings. I believe the rational for EVs is that they use less energy.
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Originally Posted by Birdrm
I really thought this was a real comparison between EV and ICE vehicles. I believe that lets say for 100 miles on the road the ICE vehicle will pollute more than the EV. The argument against EV vehicles is first the manufacturing of EV's is much worse on the environment than ICE vehicles. Secondly, the charging of EVs currently is using electricity produced by fossil fuels.
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