Also, even if the total lifetime carbon was equal, it's still better to buy a vehicle that produces all that carbon in localized places where it could possibly be captured instead of all over crowded urban areas.
Where I live, my power comes from mostly nuclear sources, so the production of my car has been the only major carbon impact that it's had.
Nuclear power is a very bad power source. There is no final depot for nuclear waste on earth. We have to get rid of nuclear power. Hundreds of generations past us will have to deal with this shit of our generation.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/hold-smugness-tesla-might-...
How do you can capture carbon?
My 2c: The real "secret plan" here is that converting us to electric vehicles paves the way to develop (and creates structural demand for) 0-emission ways to recharge them, like:
- resurgence of large nuclear plants
- self-contained micro-nuclear reactors that you could bury in your yard
- solar on your garage (paired with a Tesla Powerwall to recharge your car at night)
Source is an independent german energy research institute btw.
You link them up to nuclear, wind, or solar and drastically reduce the total pollution output across the life of the vehicle, versus a gasoline or diesel vehicle.
EVs are as clean as their energy source. Gas and diesel cars are the exact opposite: extremely polluting no matter what you do to them. EVs win period. There's no scenario in which they don't, especially over the next few decades as they leap far ahead of traditional vehicles in every regard. At worst they're less polluting than gasoline vehicles over time, at best they're far less polluting.
It isn't a Landrover style SUV that you could legitimately take off road.