The electric car is not “100% green”, as some of its proponents claim. Its impact on the environment is undeniable but depends on a lot of factors and can vary greatly from one case to another. In this case, are hybrid cars the solution?
For the hybrid vehicle, the environmental interest also depends on its use. Mr. Contino also believes: “a hybrid car perhaps relevant for someone who makes long journeys and who will rather tend to use a heat engine for these long roads and when he arrives in a city, the vehicle switches to hybrid mode. It’s totally relevant as long as it’s still a car that’s relatively decent in mass.”
A study published in the scientific journal Nature indicated, however, in 2020 that electric cars were already useful, under the conditions of this year, to fight against greenhouse gases in 53 regions of the world out of 59. In general, there is a scientific consensus to establish that the electric car has an overall less negative impact on the environment in comparison with its thermal counterpart.
Research is also underway to limit this impact, in particular the significant impact of CO2 emissions during the manufacture of batteries. The question of the energy mix, that is to say the way in which each State obtains its electricity supply, is also one of the key elements for limiting the ecological footprint. The more carbon-neutral these sources are, the greater the interest in driving on electricity. “Electric vehicles will improve, says a specialist in electric vehicles Yannick Perez to our colleagues from France Info. Their batteries could, for example, promote renewable energies by storing energy produced intermittently for other uses. The development of recycling channels, in particular for the elements that make up the battery, is another key point.
Finally, beyond these challenges, many issues related to the development of electric cars can also have an influence on the environmental impact of these vehicles:
– Regulation of the conditions of extraction of raw materials at the ecological level.
– Autonomy, size, power, recycling and technologies used for batteries.
– The development of retrofit, fitting an electric motor on a thermal car.
– Development of alternatives such as synthetic fuels, “e-fuels”, such as e-methane, e-kerosene, e-methanol produced from renewable electricity.
– Individual and societal choices, such as the size and power of vehicles or the use of shared cars or other alternative means to the individual car.
At present, cars with electric motors are not ecologically neutral, but over a normal lifespan in Europe, comparable vehicles are less harmful to the environment. Many challenges remain to be met for the industry and States in order to increase the difference with internal combustion engines and further limit the impact of electric cars on the planet in the years to come.