The Inconvenient Truth About Electric Cars - Part 1

Today, we're looking at just how clean electric cars are versus their ICE counterparts and if what we believe, EV's are better for the environment and cheaper to run, is really true.

Interestingly, the results are indeed not quite what we first thought.

[mitchellbarnow]

They never talk about how dirty it is to drill for oil, refine oil products and distribute petroleum products! It takes lots of electricity for the whole process. Thank you for talking about it!

[fyank]

The other issue that doesn’t get mentioned is the £12 billion the UK government dishes out in fossil fuels subsidies each year!

[garryhopkins]

Re your Australia comment: I live in the capital Canberra, which lies in the Australian Capital Territory and I am very pleased that from October last year the ACT has obtained all its electricity from renewables. That’s 100% renewables. We now just have to bring the rest of the country with us and progress is being made.

[danielthunder]

Despite our federal government in Australia, we are building huge amounts of renewable energy in Australia. We are sitting at around 28% renewable energy at the moment but it is increasing quickly as we have over 20GW of projects on the books. We also have the highest uptake of rooftop solar in the world with 1/4 homes having it.

[PaulMansfield]

I read on Quora from a reputable source that a fair sized refinery takes 200MW feed. You can charge 4000 EVs simultaneously at 50kW with that. In the UK the average daily journey is under 20 miles, or 5kWh, that's 960, 000 vehicles a day.

[robsmitha]

Even if the grid were filthy the improvement in local air pollution alone is worth the switch to electric propulsion. The things that also need to switch are Vans trucks and buses to really clean things up. Hope you are all making the most of the lockdown.

[MichaelWascher]

Cleaning up a large power plant is much cheaper and more effective than trying to clean up a small plant like a car engine. Anti pollution measures on a vehicle are especially difficult as adding weight requires running the engineer harder in order to have that additional weight around. This negates some of the cleanup effort.

Some power plants process and sell the pollution removed from their effluent, ie the sulfer is valuable.

[MarkGarnettUK]

Good stuff. But it’s even better than that because many EV owners opt for a green only electricity tariff, so closer to zero emissions.

[davidbarr]

Glad you brought in the real costs of running a fossil car. Great video. Like to point out that the Scottish Government has been pushing renewable energy for over a decade.

[pluginIndia]

Thank you for making such a great fact oriented video. Everything about Pollution Cars and scooters are awful. They cause air pollution, they are noisy and they use fuel that is transported from countries that hate us.
We have been using Electric Cars and scooters for the past 8+ years and we will never ever go back to dirty oil !
We have subscribed to your channel and are happy to see another EV advocacy channel in the world. We have been doing it since 2014. But we need more and more like yours.
Keep up the good work!

[stephenclay]

Good video. You should send this video to Harry’s garage. Take a look at his latest video.he sings the praise of petrol in faves of electric but fails to mention extraction shipping and refining of the fuel not to mention the distribution by lots of fuel tankers. I did point this out to him but as yet he’s not come back to me. I wonder why.

[Ifyoudonttakeitucantfakeit]

I charge 100% from renewables with my EV. Octopus energy and my solar panels.

[Pete.Bernfeld]

After a shakey start, where I thought you'd gone totally tonto and I nearly changed the video, this turned out to be totally brilliant. I recently commented on a vid put out by Harry's garage where he tried to give a balanced view of EVs, but completely ignored the emmissions involved inproducing petrol/diesel. The charging infrastructure-in particularly dear old Ecotricity (I am a customer)-really need to up their game before there is mass adoption, but it's coming. I'm just waiting for the Nissan dealer to reopen so I can collect my Leaf Plus.

[mcqueen]

I live in Ontario, Canada, where we eliminated coal fired generation in 2014. We went from 25% coal and 11% gas in 2003, to 0% coal and less than 3% gas today. My E.V. is running almost as clean as can be.
Another important issue to consider, is the emissions/particulates that ICE vehicles continue to pump out in addition to C02. These emissions are concentrated in the most densely populated areas where people are forced to breath in poison. Even if coal is your only source of electricity (nearly unheard of today), it is still better to run electric, knowing that the carcinogens are not being pumped directly into populated areas.

[paulspiers]

Kate, that was a first class video production, well done. You should do a part 2 to this video comparing cost of ownership over a 5 year period. A lot of people are more motivated by the economics than the environmental impact.

[davidmccarthy]

USA also, Billion$ in gas subsidies that could go towards greening our energy supply. But personally I ignore where and how my energy is produced since I have no control over it. That is controlled by the energy lobby and which senators get the largest packets of cash. At least the cobalt used in my EV can be recovered later while the much more cobalt used in refining gasoline is lost.

[richardburnett]

I run an electric car, my power comes from hydro, I prefer driving it to my Mazda which also costs 3 times more to run. We are basically paying big oil to spew toxic crap into our environment. Trillions are spent to prop up the fossil fuel industry each year, our tax money. Everything we do has an environmental cost but it's about time we said no to the more toxic methods of energy production. How many millions more have to die from pollution each year just to keep a few mega rich companies turning a profit from our misery.

[mikecarter]

Plus, it is cheaper and more efficient to deal with air pollution at a few point sources than on every car. And you no longer need "smog tests". Good episode - refreshing after the PotH depression.

[StevePowell]

Excellent video, thanks for taking the time to put this together 🙏👍👍👍

[RotimiOrimoloye]

In California, many EV owners install solar panels from Tesla, SunRun and SunPower.
Their homes give back more sun energy to the grid than they take from the grid.
So their electric cars are NET zero emission vehicles.