Do Electric Cars = Zero Emissions? Part 1

Preface:  The initial thought for this post and topic was for it to be much longer, but I have decided to break it down to multiple parts to better analyze different aspects of electric vehicles.  

Electric Cars are not truly Zero Emissions, like the manufactures, and the government would have you believe.  A 2012 analysis in the Journal of Industrial Ecology showed that almost half the lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions from an electric car comes from the energy used to produce the car, especially the batteries; conversely a gas-powered car accounts for only 17% of its lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions from manufacturing.  This equates to 30,000 pounds for an electric car and 14,000 pounds for a gas car at the completion of manufacturing.

Currently, the Nissan Leaf has an estimated range of 73 miles per charge, and Nissan estimates that after five years the batteries will degrade down to approximately 55 miles per charge.  Assuming that the car is driven a very conservative 10,000 miles per year, and most people will then trade in the vehicle at the 5 year mark due to the degradation in battery life, then the very large initial emissions from its manufacture will cause it to put more carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere than a gas powered car of similar size driven the same number of miles.  A similar sized gas powered car puts out 12 ounces of carbon-dioxide for every mile driven.  Assuming that the electric car is charged from an electric grid that is still using fossil fueled power plants (which most are and probably won’t be changing over to nuclear anytime soon, due to the fear of nuclear energy, but that’s for a different post) the electric car will be responsible for the emission of close to 15 ounces of CO2 for every mile driven. 

Doing a little math we can break it down this way:

	Electric         Car	Gas Car
Carbon Output at Manufacture in Pounds	30,000	14,000
Ounces per Mile Driven	15	12
Miles Driven	50000	50000
Total Carbon Output in Pounds	76,875	51,500

The electric vehicle will not have a lower carbon footprint until the gas vehicle has traveled at least 84,000 miles.  Given the current average lifespan of a car at 200,000 miles, by driving an electric car you would reduce carbon dioxide output by 46.8%, but that is only if you drive one electric car and then stop driving all together.  Over the life span of a gasoline car of comparable size to that of the current electric cars, such as the Nissan Leaf or Ford Focus, the carbon output is 164,000 pounds.  Let us assume that once the batteries in your “Zero Emissions” vehicle start to decline at 50,000 miles, and you trade in your car and buy a new one, you have just added 30,000 pounds of carbon without even driving a mile.  In fact, in order to go the same distance in an electric vehicle as a gas vehicle, you would have to go through four electric vehicles resulting in a total carbon output of 307,500 pounds. That equals 143,500 more pounds of carbon than would have been produced by only driving a gasoline car.  Of course, all of the figures assume that you never drive a gasoline car at all, which most people are unable to do at this time because of the limited range of current electric vehicles. 

Comparative Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Conventional and Electric Vehicles

Nissan Leaf Specs

This is only part 1, in later posts we will look at the day to day costs of driving electric vs conventional.     I'm interested to hear your thoughts below.