The Electric Car
By: Anan Patel
The Problem: Air Pollution
Air pollution is one of the most serious problems in the world. It refers to the contamination of the atmosphere by
harmful chemicals or biological materials.
Environmental Effects
•Air pollution causes damage to crops, animals, forests, and bodies of water.
•It also contributes to the depletion of the ozone layer, which protects the Earth from the
sun's UV rays.
•Another negative effect of air pollution is the formation of acid rain, which harms trees, soils,
rivers, and wildlife.
•Some of the other environmental effects of air pollution are haze, eutrophication, and global
climate change.
Air Pollution: Transportation
•¼ of the United States’ air pollution is
caused because of the transportation
sector.
• This 2010 statistic, in which a majority
of the cars were run by gasoline, shows
that one fourth of the green house
gasses emitted by the United States
were from transportation.
Air Pollution: Cars
The majority of the
transportation air pollution
is caused by our regular cars
(Light Duty Vehicles).
The Invention: Electric Car
Electric cars have several benefits over conventional internal combustion
engine automobiles
• a significant reduction of local air pollution, especially in cities, as they do not emit
harmful tailpipe pollutants such as particulates (soot), volatile organic
compounds, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, ozone, lead, and various oxides of nitrogen.
Well how about the fossil fuels used to create energy?
• Even when the power is generated using fossil fuels, electric vehicles usually, compared to
gasoline vehicles, show significant reductions in overall well-wheel global carbon emissions
due to the highly carbon-intensive production in mining, pumping, refining, transportation
and the efficiencies obtained with gasoline.
V.S.
Benefits of the Electric Car
•Increased use of electric cars would
reduce the amount of smogforming pollutants produced by
cars by as much as 32 to 99 percent
(Boschert).
•Electric cars use half as much fossil
fuel even when being supplied by
fossil-fuel burning plants.
•Electric cars are 100 percent ecofriendly as they run on electrically
powered engines.
•It does not emit toxic gases or
smoke in the environment as it runs
on clean energy source.
Comparing the Emissions
The Leaf had 51 percent lower emissions
over an assumed lifetime of 179,000 miles
than a comparable mid-size gasoline car,
while the Model S had 53 percent lower
emissions than a full-size car.
2013 measurements
Global Impacts
• The electric car, directly impacts our world. Shown on
the right, the 2013 results show that using an electric car
produces only half the carbon emission a conventional
produces.
• Powering a car on electricity would result in 93 percent
less smog-forming volatile organic compounds and 31
percent less nitrogen oxide emissions than powering a
car on gasoline.
• An electric car fueled by unused capacity in the current
electric system would emit 27 percent less global
warming pollution than a car fueled by gasoline
Global Impacts (Cont.)
• If half of the light vehicles in the World were
electric vehicles powered by completely clean
electricity in 2030, total fleet emissions would be
reduced by 62 percent.
• Many countries worldwide are slowly converting
into an “electric carprint”, countries like Brazil
and France are using more electric cars and their
transportation carbon footprint is a lot lower
than that of India, which has mostly gasoline
powered cars.
Personal Impact
My family has just recently purchased a hybrid vehicle, which is half electric and half
gasoline.
This hybrid car, has a great miles per gallon, almost 50 miles per gallon, when it
travels under 35 miles per hour, the car runs on an all electric engine, which
ultimately saves my family money and reduces the amount of carbon the car emits.
This great investment, has not only benefitted us financially. This car, when it drives is
super quiet, this gets rid of the irritating noise when driving.
The electric/hybrid car is definitely is a great investment, as it can benefit you
personally, and it can benefit out environment globally.
Works Cited
1. "Benefits and Considerations of Electricity as a Vehicle Fuel." Alternative Fuels Data
Center:. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 June 2016.
2. "What Is an Electric Car?" Conserve Energy Future. N.p., n.d. Web. June-July 2016.
3. "Global Warming Emissions and Fuel-Cost Savings of Electric Cars (2012)." Union of
Concerned Scientists. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 June 2016.
4. "Plug-in Electric Cars Can Lower Global Warming Emissions, Oil Consumption and
Unhealthy Air Pollution." Environment Michigan. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 June 2016.
5. "Study: Electric Vehicles Can Dramatically Reduce Carbon Pollution from Transportation,
and Improve Air Quality." NRDC. N.p., 17 Sept. 2015. Web. 07 June 2016.
6. "Emissions from Hybrid and Plug-In Electric Vehicles." Alternative Fuels Data Center:. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 07 June 2016.