
China's Electric Cars Are Actually Pretty Dirty - gestalt
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-04/china-s-electric-cars-are-actually-pretty-dirty
======
jamesjue
I found the title to be misleading. How clean electric cars are, as the
article discusses, is determined by the sources and processes used to generate
electricity. It's a national energy infrastructure problem, much bigger than
electric cars alone.

------
xg15
I don't quite understand the logic either. Yes, electric cars may be powered
by coal, but the coal plants were there anyway. If they kept with combustion
engines instead of shifting, they'd have the same coal plants but
_additionally_ CO2 emissions from the combustion engines.

The argument would only make sense if electric cars were so inefficient that
they caused more CO2 to be burned by power generation than a combustion engine
would cause by burning fuel.

Also the point stated by others that electric cars can later reduce "their"
emissions should power generation be switched to renewables. In contrast, the
emissions of combustion engines are fixed.

~~~
mcv
Electric cars do increase the demand for electricity. So you need to compare
the extra coal burned for power the cars, with the petrol that would be burned
in regular cars.

I believe recent research showed that it took 2.5 years of average use for a
coal-powered electric car to become more environmentally friendly than a
petrol powered car, whereas it would be 1.5 years with a green energy powered
electric car.

So the coal matters, but it's still better than petrol, because internal
combustion engines are incredibly inefficient.

------
thisisit
The article is focused on the "now" part of the equation instead of the
future. "Now" quite a lot of places in Europe and US rely on renewable sources
for production lowering their "total carbon output".

This might be resolved as things go forward. That said article is kind of
clickbait. The actual point is hidden towards the end - "both the
manufacturing of the batteries and the operation of the vehicle produce more
pollution than they would elsewhere."

That said recycling figures, though they are for steel and not batteries are
concerning. Its "renewable" only if it can be reused.

