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The Electric Car: Not Squeaky Clean
Farmer's Weekly
|March 30, 2018
An electric car is environmentally expensive to manufacture, and its ‘fuel’ is only as clean as the nearest power station.
Only two plug-in electric cars are currently available in South Africa: the Nissan Leaf, which sells for about R500 000, and the BMW i3eDrive, for about R612 000. Overseas, however, electric cars are selling in respectable quantities in big cities.
Most people think an electric car is completely green, but that’s not quite true. This can be understood by looking at how greenhouse gas emissions from different vehicles are usually compared. Three comparisons are used.
TAILPIPE EMISSIONS
A typical 1,5-litre petrol engine car will emit CO2 at a rate of about 140g / km. Similar sized turbo-diesels will emit about 120g/km, and hybrids will emit about 85g/ km. The pure electric plug-in will score a round zero.
ENERGY SOURCE
This story is from the March 30, 2018 edition of Farmer's Weekly.
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