China’s electric vehicle market is absolutely booming and by the year 2020, five million EVs could be on the country’s streets. Unfortunately, this EV push isn’t all positive.
Rather than many developed countries developing EVs which generate much of their energy and electricity from clean sources, China remains heavily reliant on fossil fuels to power its factories and overall, its electric vehicles actually consume more energy in their lifetime than traditional gas and diesel-powered vehicles.
Bloomberg reports that in the United States, the average electric car has about half the greenhouse gas impact of a conventional car over its life. In various parts of the country where renewable power is more prevalent, EVs have even less greenhouse gas impact. In China, it is a different story.
A study by Chinese engineers suggests that locally-built electric vehicles actually generate about a 50 per cent increase in greenhouse gas emissions and total energy consumption over their lifetime simply due to the dirty energy sources used to build them.
Evidently, China has a long way to come to match the shift to renewable energy of developed nations.
PHOTO GALLERY
