MIT Study Finds That EVs Are In Fact Cleaner Than Gas Counterparts
Since their popularity boom, electric vehicles have battled skeptics questioning whether the supposed environmental benefits are fact or fiction.
A recent study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a perpetual voice in finding the truth in a world where that is not necessarily the case, has drawn a line in the sand, stating that even though there is coal behind the EV industry, the cars themselves are still net positive on their environmental impact.
Emissions are a convoluted thing to discuss.
Most people think of them as simply what comes out of a tailpipe, but what about cars that don't emit emissions (i.e., electric vehicles)? To really get the lay of the land, you have to look at the vehicle's start-to-finish impact on the environment as far as emissions go.
To fully analyze this, you're looking at battery and vehicle manufacturing, shipping, the production of the fuel and/or electricity involved, and so on through the end of the vehicle's usable life.
The MIT-led research indicates that EVs have 40 to 60 percent lower emissions than their fully internal-combustion-powered counterparts.
In short, a big factor is the fact that ICE cars don't actually use all of their stored energy, instead burning a lot of the fuel and turning it into heat. Though the grid and power plants behind them aren't perfectly clean, they do much less harm than the gas-powered cars that still populate most of the car parc.
As a reminder, MIT's study focuses on greenhouse gases over the lifecycle of a vehicle. This incorporates a lot, but not everything; mining, water consumption, consequential pollution, the recycling of metals and batteries, and so on were not factored in.
Still, it's worth noting that as energy becomes cleaner—such as via solar, wind, hydro, and even nuclear—the gap favoring EVs will only improve.
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Based in Connecticut, Ross hosts The Hooniverse Podcast. He has been in the off-road world since he was a kid riding in the back of his dad’s YJ Wrangler. He works in marketing by day and in his free time contributes to Hooniverse, AutoGuide, and ATV.com, and in the past has contributed to UTV Driver, ATV Rider, and Everyday Driver. Ross drives a 2018 Lexus GX460 that is an ongoing build project featured on multiple websites and the podcast.
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Who is funding the MIT research? That could determine the outcomes.