- 'Zero emission' is a misleading term.
- All 'zero emission' electric cars are not equal.
Today, the marketing claim is that EVs are 'zero emission', or more correctly, 'zero emission at the tailpipe'. As you know, carbon emissions are generated at the power station and - more difficult to measure - in the supply chain, the manufacturing process and at end-of-life. There is no such thing as a zero emission car, and there are significant differences in the emissions generated by different electric cars in use.
If you charge up a G-Wiz during the day in the UK, it will emit around 50g CO2 / km taking into account the generation of electricity at the power station, the carbon footprint for extracting and transporting the raw materials to the power station, the generation losses between the power station and the vehicle and an amount for decommissioning.
A Mitsubishi imiev is around 55 g CO2 / km.
If you drive a Nissan leaf, then the number is around 84 g CO2 / km - 65% more than the G-Wiz and 50% more than the Mitsubishi. As Mike Boxwell, author of Owning An Electric Car says, the reason is simple - it's because the Nissan is 50% bigger and heavier.
Unsurprisingly, bigger, heavier cars require more energy to move them and therefore generate more emissions in use, unless they are charged using 100% renewable electricity. To achieve the UK's 2027 emissions reduction targets we will require cars that are smaller and lighter and cleaner than the Nissan Leaf, which by 2027 will be at the upper limit of what is acceptable. For clean diesel and ultra low emission petrol cars the game is over, because these are simply misleading terms for vehicles that cannot be part of the solution for the next generation of motorists.
We need to educate consumers and to do this we need to find a better method of measuring and comparing the emissions of electric cars and conventionally fuelled cars, one that in the short term includes the emissions generated well-to-wheel by conventional cars. And we need to move away from the term 'emission free' as it does the EV technology and its supporters no favours.
[Figures quoted from Owning An Electric Car by Mike Boxwell)
