When they are charged with electricity coming from renewable energies, driving electric is the greenest way of driving a car.

An Electric car has zero emissions, since they don’t have any combustion. Emissions may appear, depending on the electricity production mix of each country.

The amount of green house gases emissions change with the technology used. However, the emissions are centralized at the electricity generation side, which produce energy much more efficiently than combustion cars. Furthermore most of the countries plan to shift their electricity production to more sustainable forms, i.e. by using solar or wind power, which is reducing the emissions of the electric vehicles (EV) little by little, constantly from now on.

Even if your country uses coal and gas for electricity production, it is likely that the operation of EVs produces less emissions compared to combustion engines, since the efficiency of a big plant will allways be better than the efficiency of a small motor. 

You can read more about how green are electric cars in the Green and Energy’s blog. 

Last updated on February 11, 2011 by Olmo Mezger