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Cole Poswiatowski
Professor Malcom Campbell
UWRT 1104
March 31, 2019

An all-electric future? Are all electric cars really saving the environment?
Since 1908, Petrol (more commonly known as gasoline) burning cars have been the craze

and the only source of transportation for millions or even billions of people across the world.

Since the early 2000s people have been concerned about global warming and people realized that

petrol burning cars may have added to the human cause of global warming and started the

Climate Movement was started to help the environment. In 2005 Tesla Motors came out with its

first electric car and in 2010 Nissan came out with its Leaf, a zero emission, zero tailpipe vehicle.

From then on the conversation became a major push for all-electric cars. In the 2019 Cadillac

commercials, they promised a push for an “All-Electric Future” but what if an all-electric future

isn’t the answer? What if the best change is no change to the car manufacturing fleet? is there a

much larger change needed to fix this aspect of global warming?

Each passenger car emits 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year and approximately

505 grams of CO2 per mile. This isn’t including the more potent (as in worse for the

environment) Methane, Nitrous Oxide, hydrofluorocarbons that vehicles also emit. Although

most “all-electric” or plug in cars have no tail pipes and emit very little carbons from the car

itself, we must then look at where the electric car gets its power. Most people get their electricity

through power plants near them, those power plants create power by burning Coal, Natural gas,

and Petroleum, which produce over 1.700 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in the U.S. per

year, combined (EIA). Therefore are electric cars really green if the electricity they use comes
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from a place doing just as much, if not more damage to the environment then petrol burning

cars? David Biello from the Scientific American says that “Electric cars can only be as green as

the source of the power” (Biello, Scientific American) and therefore electric cars at this point are

not better then their predecessors they just cause environmental damage indirectly. According to

the newspaper Investors Business Daily reporting on the University of Michigan’s report on

electric vehicles emissions, electric vehicles in the United States recharged by a coal powered

plant does as much damage to the environment as a gasoline powered car that gets 29 miles per

gallon, and a plug in car charged by a natural gas powered plant causes the same amount of

emissions as a car that gets 55.4 miles per gallon. Worldwide, researchers found CO2 emissions

from electric cars as the same as a 51.4 mile per gallon gasoline burning vehicle. (Editor,

Investors Business Daily). In total, to say that electric cars give off zero emissions is

preposterous, and although they can be better for the environment, electric cars are far away

from zero emissions.

Another issue with electric cars is its effect on the power grid. If 100 percent of cars ran

off of electricity there would be a huge increase in demand of electricity. From the website

Inverse, the author stated, by looking at Americas states that use the most electricity, Texas and

California, there would be a large increase in the demand of electricity. The Demand could reach

upwards of 55 percent, and there still is an unknown cost of changing the current infrastructure

to energy dependent, as well as changing gas stations to “electric stations”, and building more

powerplants to accommodate the demand (Davidson, Inverse). This source shows that there are

many other things to consider when demanding a fully electric car fleet. Another issue with an

increase in power plants due to electric cars, is it would cause more pollution of the atmosphere.

According to news source Clean Technica the current power grid could only handle if about 25
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percent of the cars in America were electric. After 25 percent the power grid would need some

major system upgrades (Hanley, Clean Technica). The telematics company Geotab, reported

many problems with electric vehicles on the current power grid. The first problem Geotab

reported, called the “last mile” problem shows that current local power grids could not handle the

huge spikes in demand. For example, current power transformers can only handle between 10

and 50 kVA (kilo-volt-ampere) and it takes electric cars 7kVA to charge, with multiple

families/houses using the same amount the transformer will get “clustered” and may cause

damage or overload the equipment. The second problem with the current power grid is called the

“Peak demand problem” the simplest way to understand this problem is to first consider what

would happen if everyone decided to recharge their vehicle all at the same time. (Fleetcarma

Staff, Fleetcarma). The business magazine, Forbes has a solution for the power grid. Their article

states that if the companies charge by “time of usage” rates. Basically, “time of usage” rates

work by dividing times of the day into high demand and low demand. With high demand times

having higher prices, or charging discounted rates for low demand times influencing people to

charge their vehicles at low demand periods of the day and allowing the stress on the power grid

to be as minimal as possible (Douris, Forbes). NuEnergen, an LLC specializing in energy

management, says that the easiest solution to the strain on the power grid would be to make sure

that people charge their vehicles at night during low energy usage times and while transformers

go through their cool off periods, there won’t be much extra strain from other sources either

(Nuenergen). The problem I see with this solution is that if everyone is still using the

transformers at the same time say over night, there would still be an overload and there wouldn’t

be any resolution. In my opinion there will need to be innovation in the transformers themselves

to allow them to hold a larger load.

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Of course, the people who really have to make the decision if electric cars are truly better

and have the highest demand are the car companies themselves. From People Management , the

author stated that electric cars at this point are only useful for someone who is traveling into

large metropolitan areas, such as London, to avoid the emission charges. The author did state that

electric cars were much better under the correct set of circumstances, but electric cars weren’t the

best idea for car manufactures at the moment, stating that the range of the cars needed to be

increased for them to become more relevant (People Management). The problem with this source

is that it is from 2013 and the technology being used in electric cars has vastly increased over the

past six years. Electric cars now average over 100 miles per charge, with high-end cars such as

Tesla, that can go over 300 miles in 2018 (Go Ultra Low). But the high-end cars are not

affordable for regular families and most will have to choose the more affordable options that

only average around 100 miles per charge, much less than a standard vehicle which is normally

over 200 miles per tank with hybrids extending to 300 miles or more. According to each of their

websites the 2019 Volkswagen e-Golf has a market sale retail price of $31,895 and has a battery

range of 125 miles per charge (VW).

Another reason electric vehicles are impractical is the charging times. According to the

electric vehicle company Pod Point a standard 60kWh battery with a 7kW charging point will

take eight hours to charge from empty to full (Pod Point). If an electric car owner decided to

drive from Charlotte, North Carolina to Charleston, South Carolina (a 220 mile drive) getting

150 miles per charge traveling at 65 miles per hour will take almost twelve hours to drive what

most petrol cars can drive in just over three hours. As well a standard trip to the gas station will

take five minutes to fill the tank. People will not opt into taking twelve hours out of their day to
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travel just over 200 miles, especially when there is a more viable option that takes a quarter of

the time. At this point affordable electrical cars cannot be as practical as an internal combustion

engine. Although most electric cars have a rapid charger that can charge the vehicle in a shorter

amount of time, that time is still about an hour (Pod Point). The issue with the rapid charge is it

still is impractical as the charge time is still much longer than filling the tank with gas. Another

reason the rapid charge is impractical is because stations will have to opt in for the rapid chargers

which could be an extra expense that most may not be able to afford or could charge a large

amount of money for using them.

Now to look into the batteries of these Electric cars. Electric cars use Lithium-ion

Batteries or a hybrid of lead acid and Nickel and while regular cars still use these types of

batteries they are much more important and much larger in electric cars (Mok, Stanford). The

manufacturing of Lithium-ion batteries for electric cars can cause upwards of 74 percent more

CO2 emissions than conventional cars do today, as long as it is made by factories that use fossil

fuels to power it. Some plants like Tesla’s, are using solar power to run their plants that build

their batteries for their cars but at this point it doesn’t seem like many other companies are

following suit at this moment (Bloomberg, Industry week). This shows again that Electric cars are

indirectly causing a much larger footprint than what they save.

One important ingredient to an Electric Vehicle battery is graphite. According to Black &

Veatch, an engineering company, mining graphite releases “toxic fugitive dust and requires

corrosive chemicals like hydrochloric acid to process it into a usable form” as well as synthetic

graphite being created by oil refining which releases more chemicals into the air (Hambleton,

B&V). Another important ingredient to lithium-ion batteries is Nickel. Nickel mining is very

costly as far as the environment is concerned. While mining nickel, as the newspaper The
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Guardian reports, “plumes of Sulfur Dioxide fill the air, Churned earth is covered in cancerous

dust, and rivers running blood red due to dust and other chemicals running into the rivers” (The

Guardian). The final important ingredient to Lithium-ion batteries is lithium itself. Lithium

mining has a very large effect on the environment itself, according to the website Environmental

Technology it takes 500,000 gallons of water to produce one ton of Lithium, not including the

chemical cocktail that is used to extract the lithium that can find itself into streams and crops

(Environmental Technology). The point of these sources is to show that creating a Lithium ion

battery not only has an effect on the environment from manufacturing the battery but also from

mining and gaining the materials necessary to begin the manufacturing process at all.

Not to say that electric cars are not the future and will not help the environment in the

long run, there just isn’t enough environmental saving innovation to allow electric cars to be any

better then petrol burning cars at this point in time. From manufacturing these cars, to building

the batteries to power them, then to charging the batteries, all of the intersects come with a huge

cost to the environment, one that in my opinion the electric car will never be able to make up for

during its lifetime. The amount of pollution or environmental damage is far too vast to warrant a

complete change at this time. I don’t disagree that electric cars will be better for the environment

at some point when technology improves, but to think that the car is doing as much

environmental damage as a petrol burning car getting 50 miles per gallon, seems to be a much

better option, but we must remember that number is far from zero emissions. Another reason as

to why a major switch to electric cars will be detrimental to society is because it has the potential

to majorly impact the current electrical grid. The power grid could not come close to handling a

change to electric cars. The transformers locally will never be able to withstand such a load as a
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whole neighborhood charging their cars all at the same time, even at night when electricity usage

is lower.

To answer the question asked at the beginning, an all-electric future is the answer, but

some other larger changes need to come first. The best solution is to start with the electric

companies themselves. First society needs to move away from Natural gas and Coal as the

largest producer of electricity and push Hydro, Nuclear, and solar power as the main sources, or

find a new environmentally safe way to generate electricity. Further we must find a safer way to

mine minerals and metals that go into our daily lives. Even though this paper only looked at

Graphite, Nickel, and Lithium, the effects of mining are detrimental across the entire board. If

there is a more environmentally friendly way to mine it is in the best interest of the industry and

society, to find it. Then use those environmentally friendly powered sources to manufacture the

Lithium-ion batteries needed to power the cars. After that the electricity grid will need to be

upgraded to allow for the new demand of electricity. Furthermore, we need to advance the

technology in the batteries to allow them to be much cheaper but still have the range of the

gasoline tank. Electric cars need to have a more efficient charge time more equivalent to the time

it takes to fill a regular gas tank. Some sort of innovation needs to be put into the batteries that

allow them to either hold a much larger capacity or charge in a much shorter amount of time.

Finally, the push for all-electric cars will become not only reasonable for society but

environmentally friendly and overall capable to undercut the large carbon footprint created by

the auto industry. Even though over time electric cars could save the environment by not giving

off any emissions we can not over look the fact that each aspect of the vehicle is hurting the

environment by the source of its parts. Extracting raw materials and manufacturing them into

parts and batteries is an environmentally costly way of doing things. There has to be major
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reforms to how those places get their power to better their environmental impact. When all those

changes are made or are in the process of being made, car companies will be in a better position

to allow for their entire fleet to become electric. It will at that point be productive for society to

move as a whole towards electric cars and finally take car emissions off the list as a contributor

to global warming, but it will also make clearance for multiple major industries responsible for

global warming, to have changed and be more environmentally friendly and overall help improve

human caused global warming.

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Bibliography

“Should You Go Green?(Use of Pure Electric Cars by Human Resource Personnel)(Motoring

Extra).” People Management, 2013, p. 57. Accessed Mar. 5, 2019

Biello, David. “Electric Cars Are Not Necessarily Clean.” Scientific American, 11 May 2016,
www.scientificamerican.com/article/electric-cars-are-not-necessarily-clean/. Accessed
4/01/2019

Bloomberg. “Lithium Batteries' Dirty Secret: Manufacturing Them Leaves Massive Carbon
Footprint.” IndustryWeek, 17 Oct. 2018, www.industryweek.com/technology-and-
iiot/lithium-batteries-dirty-secret-manufacturing-them-leaves-massive-carbon. Accessed
4/15/2019

Douris, Constance. “How To Prevent Electric Vehicles From Stressing The Grid.” Forbes,
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03/29/2019

“How Long Does It Take to Charge an Electric Car?” Pod Point, 28 Mar. 2019, pod-
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International Environmental Technology. “How Do Lithium Batteries Affect the Environment?”

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Jeung, Tiffany. “How Future Fleet of Electric Cars Could Cause the Power Outages of
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Merline, John. “Electric Cars Can Produce More CO2 Emissions Than Gas Cars: Report | Stock
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