I was recently reading an article in IEEE Spectrum in regards to this very controversial topic that electric cars are not as green as they may seem.

 One of the reporters, Ozzie Zehner, tackles this issue once and for all where the discoveries are not what we would hope for them to be.

 Usually we think of electric cars as using a great amount of energy on order to charge a vehicle's battery by plugging it into a power source. Thus we assume an electric powered vehicle is "Green" as shown by the advertisements from car companies and the media.

 

But truth be told, many researchers debate over valid statistics in regards to the effectiveness of electric cars. And many of these researchers are actually huge vehicle enthusiasts including the man behind an electric-vehicle report from Indiana University's School of Environmental Affairs who was the former vice president of Ford.

 A lot of times these reports are biased because they are actually funded by car companies themselves. Nonetheless, what we don't realize when purchasing an electric car is that a battery that needs to be charged by a natural-gas-fired power plant or using nuclear power defeats the purpose of purchasing an electric car in the first place.

 

You see natural gas requires burning which releases a great amount of CO2 while nuclear power produces hard to store waste.

 So green vehicles are definitely in need of improvements. Statistics have shown that the release of greenhouse gas emissions will only be limited by roughly 1 to 2% in comparison with standard vehicles.

 

Now I am not saying that electric cars are pointless, but they are not what advertisers make them out to be entirely. There is no cookie-cutter way to limit the environmental impact of a vehicle; however, we are headed in the right direction and we can only improve from here on out.

 So over all we have to be careful when deciding to purchase an electric vehicle as many marketing agencies exploit and exaggerate the benefits without exposing any negative potential side effects. Overall, I am glad we are moving towards helping our environment on the motor vehicle front.