The Carbon Footprint of Electric Cars

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phantom4570

Joined Sep 2011
47 Posts | 2+
Earth
The Zero Emissions Vehicle is a political fantasy. Green Cars Have a Dirty Little Secret
When an electric car rolls off the production line, it has already been responsible for 30,000 pounds of carbon-dioxide emission. The amount for making a conventional car: 14,000 pounds.
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... The life-cycle analysis shows that for every mile driven, the average electric car indirectly emits about six ounces of carbon-dioxide. This is still a lot better than a similar-size conventional car, which emits about 12 ounces per mile.

... Unless the electric car is driven a lot, it will never get ahead environmentally. And that turns out to be a challenge. Consider the Nissan Leaf. It has only a 73-mile range per charge. Drivers attempting long road trips, as in one BBC test drive, have reported that recharging takes so long that the average speed is close to six miles per hour—a bit faster than your average jogger.
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Another thing they never seem to talk about is the expense and carbon footprint of that big battery when it comes time to recycle it. You cannot take one of those suckers to Canadian Tire and expect them to do it properly.
 
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Electric and Hybrid cars have a lot of copper, lithium and "rare earth" metals so they have a good recycle value. I wonder how long it will take for copper thieves to jack these cars for the copper and other recyclable content.
 
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