Electric Vehicles often much worse for the environment than Petrol Vehicles

This is a great example of how the media often confuses the complexities of environmental impact. Here's why:

1. This study is limited to particulate matter pollution, not greenhouse gas emissions. Most readers nowadays associate "environmental impact" with climate change, so it's deceptive of the publisher to not specify that electric vehicles cause less greenhouse gas emissions overall than petroleum vehicles.

2. The particulate matter pollution in this study is a solvable problem, even if you keep the coal plants. Equipment like bag houses and static precipitators are already installed on a lot of coal generators to remove particulate.

3. We are currently in peak coal. Even China is starting to decrease the amount of coal generators that they are building. So the argument that we shouldn't switch to EVs because coal is dirty is pretty useless over the next few decades.

Conclusion: The Economist knowingly published an article meant to deceive the reader and discredit electric vehicles.

The quoted study "...assumes for all cars that present and future emission-control technologies will be more widely used in 2020, especially particulate filters which have a marked effect on cleaning diesel exhausts."

Why wouldn't you assume similarly optimistic scenarios for large scale power generation. It's clearly easier to retrofit and regulate about a 100 power station to trap particulate matter etc. than assuming that millions of gasoline and diesel cars on the road will each individually have correctly functioning filters.

Also, a large number of EV's on the road means that any future power plants' improved cleaner nature instantly affects the pollution impact of all the cars on the road.

Keep in mind that electric vehicles will get cleaner over time (as more electricity is generated from renewable resources), whereas gas-powered cars will not.