• Question: how better are electric cars for the environment are they bad in anyway though

    Asked by LIAM.W to Olga, Madhumidha, Connor, Aruna, Anthony on 4 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Anthony Newell

      Anthony Newell answered on 4 Mar 2020: last edited 6 Mar 2020 12:15 am

      Electric cars are much better than petrol and diesel cars because they don’t add any local pollution. This reduces the likelihood that people with lung problems will get sicker as air pollution is one of the largest causes of reduced life expectancy worldwide. They do have their own disadvantages though, to charge an electric car’s battery we need electricity and in Ireland, we make a lot of that with fossil fuels like gas and coal. This means that for CO2 emissions, driving a new electric car isn’t much better than new petrol or diesel cars right now in Ireland. Ireland’s electricity generation is getting cleaner as we build more wind power and reduce our use of coal and gas so in the future electric cars will likely be preferred by most people.

    • Photo: Aruna Chandrasekar

      Aruna Chandrasekar answered on 4 Mar 2020:

      Electric cars are good for the environment because unlike petrol or diesel cars they do not emit CO2, nitrous oxides into the environment.

      However lead-acid batteries (that are currently used in electric vehicles) contain corrosive materials and need to be handled with care in the manufacturing process and need to be disposed carefully.

      Other options for batteries are lithium batteries (a larger version of the batteries used in out phones and laptops), these are very efficient, but lithium is a rare metal and mass manufacturing and mining these metals may cause more pollution in the long term. So every technology for the future needs to be carefully assessed.

    • Photo: Connor McGookin

      Connor McGookin answered on 4 Mar 2020:

      At the moment if you buy a new electric car to replace your 7-8 year old diesel car that would half the the amount of CO2 emitted by driving around. This will get even better as we build more and more renewable sources of energy. Currently the electrical grid is about 30% renewable but by 2030 the ambition is to have 70% renewable.
      However, there are other issues to consider like where does the material for making electric cars come from? particularly the batteries that power the cars require precious metals like cobalt and lithium which have to be mined.
      In my opinion the most sustainable form of transport is public transport, we should be investing in making our cities more accessible so people don’t always need to drive.

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