> The idea is right up there with the myth that the United States is powered almost entirely by coal and that EVs are thus worse polluters than gas engines. The reality is that coal makes up about 20 to 22 percent of the national power grid.
Coal is not the only problem. Power stations can also use some forms of oil, gas (whether they call it green or not, is still a pollutant), etc. Building the infrastructure for green energy itself has a carbon footprint that takes a while to pay off.
Secondly, in the Reuters article it assumes the comparison vehicle is brand new, and starts with a carbon offset: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/when-d...
Under the assumption you already have the Toyota, and the question is "should I scrap my Toyota to buy an electric car", and the electricity is generated from 20% coal (not including other carbon sources), the answer is simply no - keep driving your old car.
> There are lots of >10 year old Leafs and Model S's on the road. And Leaf is the worst case scenario. Without temperature management they wear out a lot quicker than every other car battery does. And remember that used batteries don't get thrown out, they generally get repurposed into stationary storage. They can be recycled but generally aren't because they're too useful as is.
I think the Nissan Leaf has survivor bias - it's one electric car that was successful, plus all the ones with failed batteries are no longer on the road, you only see the good ones still driving. What's really important though is the remaining capacity. An EV that claims 500 miles that can only do 200 miles after some years will start to become a hindrance.
As the capacity of the battery drops, I imagine the internal resistance of the battery increases and more of that energy gets converted to heat. Put simply, the EV gets less efficient as time goes on. Unfortunately we don't really have good numbers for this yet.