Mar 21st 2012, 8:56:07
I worked on a project last term at university, that evaluated the ecological balance of electric cars, aka not only look at the use of gas/electricity but also at energetic production costs. e.g. with the current state of tech, you have to exchange the batteries far more often than a normal motor.
We did almost all the comparisons with german data, though, and in germany we're way back on hybrid cars, but on the other hand, we already have a pretty decent part of regenerative energy production.
As a result, as long as the production of electricity doesn't move away from coal, pure electric cars cause about the same exhaust as cars with a slightly better than average gas efficiency(in germany; sorry, but in the us most cars are still an atrocity in fuel efficiency)
nuclear energy isn't the solution for the future either, though, because of long-term disposal of the rods
Long-term, I firmly believe that regenerative energies are the way to go as energy source, but we're still far away from that. And as long as it doesn't happen, pure electric cars are not the solution for the environment.
The have a few pros, like the "smart grid" application, that qz already mentioned and not having smog in the cities. But effective at this moment, if you changed all cars to electric cars, not much would change, apart from the need to build tons of power plants.
Urgh, this got a little confusing, but I don't really have the time at the moment, to order my thoughts for this posts ^^