On the road to a carbon-free future, millions of drivers across the world are switching to electric cars. ― DW picFRANKFURT, June 18 ― Going electric comes with a lot of questions about cost and efficiency. But how do electric cars stack up against combustion cars when it comes to their environmental impact? Here are six points to consider.
But they don't all agree this is the way forward, pointing out that electric vehicles also come at a cost to the environment. “So even if you were to buy a new gasoline or diesel car and then the next day scrap it and buy an electric car, you're still better off than if you had just driven that diesel car.”
“The power system is very complicated and interconnected, so it can be hard to nail those things down,” says Jeremy Michalek, director of the Vehicle Electrification Group at Carnegie Mellon University in the US. Mining one ton of lithium requires about 2 million litres of water, enough for roughly 125 electric cars, says Georg Bieker, a senior researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation. Despite this, gasoline production demands ten times more water over its lifetime, he says.
“Based on the research that we find the current battery technology is able to run more than 1,500,000 kilometres ,” says Georg Bieker. “We expect that the battery will last much longer than the actual vehicle will be used.”