Is an Electric Car a Zero Emission Vehicle?

With ever-increasing fuel costs and worries over climate change, the humankind is facing a difficult question: how are we going to move from place to place? Sooner or later the oil will be gone, and then what? Electric car is touted as the future of motoring by many scientists and marketing experts. The latter want us to believe that electric car is a zero emission vehicle. At least that's what all the advertising messages say.

It is, in fact, very far from truth. Although no CO2 comes out of an electric car, you cannot call it 0-emission. Your electric car is as green as the electricity that powers it. Unfortunately, production of electricity pollutes the environment in a pretty similar way to a petrol car.

In USA 51% of electricity consumed comes from coal plants (36% in the UK). The remainder is somewhat split between natural gas, oil, hydro-plants and nuclear stations. Only 2 to 3% of all world's electricity is generated from green sources such as wind or sun. Well, nuclear stations are close to being green but many people don't want to live near one and, really, you cannot blame them.

So on average, considering CO2 contribution of the electricity plants, your so called 0-emission vehicle will account for around 130g CO2 per mile. That is almost as much as a small petrol car. There we are - we need to generate more green electricity in order to make an electric car a good idea.

Are there any Zero Emission Vehicle Available?

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to create a perfect zero emission vehicle. Let's see what other means of alternative propulsion are there. Compressed air - we need energy to compress the air. Hydrogen. Again, energy is consumed to generate free hydrogen and more energy to compress and store it. To do that, we either use fossil fuel or electricity that also comes from fossil fuels.

The only truly autonomous vehicle that doesn't even come close to consuming fossil fuels (and only if we disregard the expensive and carbon-intensive production process) is a solar car. Indeed by using a solar battery, we draw energy from the sun. Even considering the current political and social situation, the sun is free to everyone. However, a solar vehicle can only accommodate one person and it is neither safe nor fast. The weight should be kept to minimum because modern solar batteries cannot produce enough energy to power a full-size car.

Before that next big scientific breakthrough that will give us the perfect free energy, the future of green motoring is likely to be dominated by hybrid cars. Imagine: both gasoline and electric engines on board plus a solar battery on the roof - the ideal package to meet the CO2 emission guidelines.

Is electric car a hype or a good idea? Find out more by reading pros and cons of Electric Cars. Would you like to drive one?