Isn an electric car simply trading a tailpipe for a smokestack? What about pollution from the power plants?
Electric cars that run on renewable wind or solar power eliminate emissions. But even today, with 50% of U.S. power coming from dirty coal plants, plug-in cars still reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and most other pollutants compared with either conventional gasoline cars or hybrids, because so much of it comes out of tailpipes.