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Green Cars, More Pollutant to Build Than Own

There has been a lot of debate in the past two years or so over how green green cars really are. Obviously less harmful to the environment once on the road than regular cars, electrics and hybrids still use electricity, which needs fossil fuels to be produced, and are still manufactured in a polluting manner. So, how green are green cars?

A study published by the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership and conducted by Ricardo, probably the first one on this subject, reveals an unexpected answer to that question: green cars are not at all green. In fact, the production of such vehicles is more pollutant in nature that the production of regular internal combustion engined cars.

According to Ricardo, the main reasons behind this fact are the production processes used at the moment. For example, an electric vehicle generates 46 percent of its expected lifetime carbon footprint (estimated 18 tons of CO2) before it even leaves the factory, as it travels down the production lines.

Some manufacturers, but far from all of them, have begun upgrading the facilities so that they can use renewable energy in the manufacturing process. Big names like Ford, Toyota and Nissan have already detailed plans of turning production operations as green as the vehicles they produce are, but the large scale implementation of green manufacturing processes is still a long time away.

“This work dispels the myth that low carbon vehicles simply displace emissions from the exhaust to other sources. However, it does highlight the need to look at reducing carbon emissions from vehicles throughout their lifecycle,” said Greg Archer of the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership.

“The automotive industry is already taking positive steps to address this issue - the recent announcement by Toyota of a solar array to provide electricity to power the hybrid Auris production facility and wind power at the Nissan Leaf plant are excellent examples of this."
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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