IN DETAIL
THE INNOVATIONS TRANSFORMING OUR DRIVING WORLD
Electric cars are cleaner in use but dirtier to build. What causes this green paradox, and how can EV manufacture be cleaned up?
The spotlight is on car manufacturers to cut the amount of carbon they and their products emit. If that lamp is shining brighter right now it’s because it’s become clear their preferred solution to zero-carbon motoring, electric cars, create far more CO2 in the production phase than combustion-engine equivalents.
The battery is the guilty party here. Despite cutting out the Dickensian foundries needed to cast engine blocks, an EV has roughly double the production footprint of a typi-cal internal-combustion vehicle, according to a recent re-port from consultants McKinsey.
That’s because making a battery requires a number of high-energy actions, from mining raw materials some-where far off like Bolivia, to refining them most likely in China with its fossil-fuel-rich energy-generation, then manufacturing cells in another energy-intensive process.
In total, McKinsey reckons, 40-60 per cent of the CO2 emissions created during production of an electric car come from the battery, 15-20 per cent for steel, 10-20 per cent for aluminium and 10 per cent for plastics and rubber.
To use the jargon, that extra embedded carbon is in the upstream side of the production process for EVs. In the case of combustion cars, the biggest problem is in the downstream use phase ie burning petrol or diesel.
The automotive industry is the world’s largest carbon producer, accounting for up to 15 per cent of all emissions, according to the consultant Bain. Currently, 85 per cent of the car industry’s footprint comes from tailpipe emissions.
There are a great many variables involved in any at-tempt to calculate how soon an EV will be cleaner than a combustion vehicle. A UK-focused study from the consul-tancy arm of supplier Ricardo, published in late 2021, cal-culated an EV will reduce CO2 emissions by around 65 per cent compared to an equivalent petrol car, based on the UK’s 2020 renewable energy mix, rising to 76 per cent in 2030 (when our electricity will be cleaner).
THE POWER GENERATOR AT VW’S WOLFSBURG PLANT IS SWITCHING FROM ONE FOSSIL FUEL TO ANOTHER
