Electro-cars are automobiles that are propelled by electric motors, which use electrically chargeable batteries. In the recent years, a renaissance has occurred in electric vehicle production due to improvements in batteries, rising oil prices, and the need to minimize the emission of greenhouse gases. These advances have led to the introduction and adoption of electric cars in the automobile market.
Environmental friendliness of electro cars stems from various aspects such as vehicle emissions, vehicle manufacture and disposal, noise pollution and batteries used in electric vehicles. Currently, governments and businesses in both the developed and developing world are investing in technological innovations so as to increase the use of eco-friendly vehicles and reduce costs. Considering the fact that pollution results to the greenhouse effect, the introduction of electro cars is an advantage to the environment. Electric vehicles have several advantages over ordinary internal combustion engine vehicles. One of the major factors contributing to overall lesser environmental impact is zero emissions. Electro-cars do not produce exhaust fumes in operation. For this reason, they significantly reduce local air pollution, especially in large cities. Moreover, they produce clean air which does not contain tailpipe pollutants like particles, hydrocarbons, ozone, carbon monoxide and lead. The eco-friendliness of electric cars has been improving with the increased use of zero emission technology. It is worth noting that there is more air pollution in cities where the larger percentage of consumers use gasoline powered cars because they emit large amounts of nitrogen oxides, volatile organic emissions and carbon monoxide. Electro-cars also emit significantly lesser greenhouse gases, depending on how the electricity used to recharge batteries is generated. An investigation conducted to determine how electric vehicles are ecofriendly reveals that when assessing how they are friendly to the environment; the quantity of environmental footprint is determined by the source of power used to charge batteries in electric automobiles. In consideration of this, the clean air advantage is termed as local.
Additionally, the pollutant emissions can be moved to the places where generation plants are located. Notably, the quantity of carbon dioxide emission largely depends on the intensity of emission of the source of power and the efficiency of a particular electro car. In countries where hydroelectricity generates most power, electro cars outperform conventional vehicles in their overall impact on the environment. Contrary, electric vehicles are more polluting compared to conventional cars in countries where power is generated from natural gas and power.
Greenhouse gases are normally emitted during the production of any car. Electro-cars are not an exemption, and manufacturing them produces slightly more gases than manufacturing conventional cars. However, on average, a gasoline vehicle produces more emissions in operation than is produced during its manufacture. On the other hand, an electro-car has zero emissions over its lifetime, which makes up for the emissions produced from its production. A study conducted in 2012, found that zero impact of electro-cars in operation outweigh the amount produced during its production. Moreover, the environmental impact emanating from its disposal were negligible because of high rates of recycling the materials. Although batteries used in electro cars have a significant impact on carbon footprint produced from car production, most of the batteries have lithium ion compounds that are primarily manufactured in Asia whereby a larger proportion of electricity generation is renewable. Electro car batteries are recyclable, which reduces their impact on the environment and carbon footprint.
Lithium ion rechargeable batteries lose storage capacity as time passes on. However, they can be reused to store energy in electricity grids for a number of years. A large number of used batteries is connected and used to balance and stabilize electricity grids, and also to supply power when solar panels and wind farms electricity generation is low. Similarly, it is crucial in reducing the environmental pollution of metals that currently cannot be recycled, such as lithium and aluminum. Another factor that puts electro-cars a step forward in eco friendliness is the reduction of noise pollution. Electric vehicles are quieter than gasoline powered vehicles. However, there is an issue on the road users who use noise to keep themselves safe such as the vision impaired who have to rely on noise to tell when a vehicle is coming. This remains a highly-contested phenomenon from an environmental perspective and various groups that require electric car manufacturers to add artificial noise to electro cars. Another common concern that has been raised against the electro cars revolves around the manufacture of electric vehicles batteries. Although these concerns matter, it is clear that electric cars produce lesser negative environmental impacts. This is because, internal combustion engines achieve more emissions compared to electric vehicles which have zero emissions. As a result, they achieve 100% less emissions than ordinary combustion engine cars, and they have been found to have lesser impact on global warming.