Are EVs really cleaner, or are they simply shifting emissions from the tailpipe to the power generating plant?
Except in the Pacific Northwest, where better than 90% of our electricity is from a renewable hydroelectric source, it is true that a very large percentage of electrical energy is from fossil-fuel burning power generating plants. Two things need to be said about this. One is that it is a well-documented fact that it is much easier and more effective to control emissions from a central source than from hundreds of thousands of individual tailpipes. Fuels can be combusted at much higher temperatures (extracting a greater proportion of their stored energy) in controlled power plant conditions than we can achieve in a typical automobile engine. Another important consideration is the relative efficiency of electric motive power versus that of combustion. In a recent test at the American Tour de Sol, an energy efficiency event held annually in New England, it was established that an electric Geo Metro could go about twice as far on the same amount of oil (converted to electricity) as a conve
