Electric cars, though a welcome development, are neither as useful nor as green as their proponents claim

"a carbon tax"

Add the word 'tax' to anything and you will get spit on.

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we must stop using coal for power generation. That will entail a move to natural gas (about 1/2 the emissions). Having accomplished that, we will need to minimize natural gas use through adoption of nuclear, solar, and wind technologies, some of which have yet to mature. As part of the effort, moving from liquid petroleum fuels to electrically powered vehicles will help, but only after you start shutting down coal plants, and the effect will always be secondary.

A government that is serious about greenhouse gases will focus on power generation and coal first. All other efforts are just window dressing.

This is The Economist. Some tables and graphs could have been presented to get some feeling about 'quantities'. Production costs for Electric car vs conventional car or hybrid.

Nice to see an article devoid of auto makers spin though. most info I see on this subject is very subjective and not backed up by hard facts.

"At this particular time, throwing more taxpayers’ money at the car industry seems a daft thing to do."

The article leaves out two extremely important considerations: security and affordability of oil supply, which is a "daft" thing to do. For 2010 the cost of importing oil for US is estimated at $181 bill; for 2008 it was around $260 bill, due to higher prices. This is a huge drain on US balance of payments. Thus, subsidies that develop a domestically manufactured alternative to oil (i.e., battery powered propulsion technolgoies) are a worthwhile investment in a future tax base. Also, if one of the major oil exporters (Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iraq) were to shut off the flow of oil, an alternative motoring technolgy that doesn't require oil would be a very good thing to have. Finally, a "carbon tax" and a subsidy for electric cars need not be mutually exclusive.

It seems to me that given the fate of UK's own car industry (which imploded in the 70s and 80s); US government support is exactly what's needed for the US domestic car industry. When foreign competition has state support (China, Japan, Germany to a lesser extent), the argument for a purely "liberal" economic approach to car industry woes is a recipe for accelerated erosion of US manufacturing base.

Carbon taxes and carbon credits are just a way to transfer pollution from one institution to another, all while screwing the general public in the form of inflation. It's the daftest of all ideas. The best solution is to wait until the fuel runs out. Since human-caused climate change -at least any of consequence- is complete nonsense, there's no harm in waiting until the oil runs out and then there won't be much choice but to adopt another method. Give it a hundred years at the current rate of growth in consumption. If life has existed on Earth for half a billion years, a century isn't long to wait. The planet will be just fine, and there won't be any oil to complain about by then. By then electric cars will probably be pretty well perfected and we'll all get our juice from nuclear plants. Everyone wins.

It is ridiculous. Electric cars are just another example of protectionoism. Of course countries like the US and Germany want to keep their car industry healthy and flourishing but at which costs?

Given a free market, engineers working for GM or VW could eventually be working on useful things, such as the proposed "desert-tech", providing solar energy (both photovoltaic and heat generated energy) for Europe from North African countries. But if our big governments swallow the creative and efficient market forces with taxpayer money in form of subsidies, we will never live in a "greener" world.

Please governments, use economics to make our world greener but do not pump subsidies in the pockets of the car manufacturing lobbies. Cars are in excess supply in the rich world. I'd rather save taxes than enjoy the pride of our national car industry.

Oh wonderful! Does that mean the UK and US governments will start subsidising our bicycles to a similar tune if its our only personal transport? Funny, I thought the torries just gutted the already feeble and burdensome cycle to work scheme.

"An electric car in Britain today, for instance, produces around 20% less in CO2 emissions than a car with a petrol engine."

This estimate of carbon savings is absurd. The refining of oil for petrol production is extremely energy intensive. It must then be distributed in tankers to filling stations across the country - which in itself uses >10% of the fuel by mass. Then, average operating efficiencies of internal combustion engines in automobiles range from 9-13%.

Compare this with an oil burning power plant, which burns crude oil directly at efficiencies of 39-46%. The grid distribution of electricity then loses <4% of power per 100km. There are significant energy losses in battery charging, but these aren't detrimental. And electric motors in vehicles are typically run at efficiencies of 80-90%.

I'm confident that with the UK's current energy mix, your hypothetical all-electric world of cars would save >50% of carbon emissions. And marginal carbon emissions for new generating capacity are far lower (these are what really matter).

I would love for your source on that "just 20%" number to be quoted. Was it, by chance an off the cuff exaggeration by Richard Pike, in attempt to hammer home his point?

Nonetheless, the underlying sentiment in the article is correct. Current subsidies for electric vehicles are an inefficient means of abating climate change. They are expensive for the treasury, and make large payments for the already-rich to purchase status items.

As ds1817 says, switching away from liquid petroleum-based fuels does reduce our dependence on foreign oil and help with the balance of payments. But please let's call it what it is, and not pretend that it makes a difference with greenhouse gasses. And subsidizing yuppies to switch from Camrys to hybrid or electric Camrys won't have half the impact of a gas/deisel tax, which might convince people to switch from SUVs to Camrys, electric or not.

I can't disagree with most of the article or the comments posted.
But what about all the costs of the batteries, ie. the mining and processing
of materials, the financial cost of the batteries, and the financial
and environmental costs of disposal of depleted batteries.

Most of the countries where these cars might be used are cold in the winter and or hot in the summer.I doubt you would get very far when you have to heat or cool your car.In the part of Canada where I live we go from -35c to + 35c almost every year they are for a niche market only.

The article is very misleading in that it calculates the reduction in CO2 based upon today's electric generation mix. But isn't the UK already making a big push to add wind generation to its portfolio? Since large-scale deployment of electric cars is not expected for several years, it seems more reasonable to look at the future generation mix. The wind generally blows stronger at night and this lines up nicely with people charging their plug-in cars when they are sleeping.

I have to agree with shaun39 - usually the Economist is better than this, but your fact checker really blew it on what appears to be the crux of your article: that electric cars are only 20% less GHG emitters than gasoline. Maybe UK 'petrol' cars are just way, way more efficient than the crappy internal combustion engines we use in the US but the estimates I've done says the Chevy Volt (which GM would admit is not the end-game in electric car efficiency) is the equivalent CO2 emitter as a 144 mpg car in California - -like I said we don't have many of those in the US [and that's not including shaun39's point about emissions of refineries]. Finally, IC engines also have this little issue with ozone pre-cursors which your article neglected.

I would suggest the writer review the Fisker which will debut 1st quarter of next year. Of course the Fisker cost will not be for the average consumer but as the tecnology matures, it will be more affordable to the masses. And it is both green and useful using dual electric and gasoline power.

If electric cars appear to be the trend of the future, won't oil companies lower prices in a panic to get rid of their product before prices collapse entirely? This will make SUV's a viable option on a personal cost basis.

This article doesn't take into consideration the potentially positive effects of the electric car on electric consumption. Given that electric cars would mostly be charged at night, when electricity consumption is at its lowest (and cheapest), these vehicles would help to "flatten" the electric consumption curve, thus making production more manageable, less dependable on "manageable sources" (fossil, generally), and would help to better take advantage of non-manageable renewable sources such as wind, that also produce at night when normally there is not enough demand for their production.

Great article... right up until the last paragraph. I've been making the same argument about merely changing the polution point from the tailpipe to the smokestack for a while now. However, I don't necessarily agree that a carbon tax is the only solution. This nation could go 100% nuclear, with reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel (eliminating waste). At that point, electric cars become true "zero emission" vehicles.

Regarding the remark about subsidies almost always being a waste of public resources, I would point out, solar PV subsidies are very much a part of why the solar industry is as far as it is today. There has been a dramatic decline in cost of solar pv panels. The electric cars, in my opinion, are a move in the right direction. But it is important that it is only one part of the strategy. As the generation portfolio shifts toward solar and wind, and if we could finally start building new nuclear plants, electric cars will certainly become very attractive. For now, in these carbon dependent portfolios, we are transferring the emissions of many small polluters into a remote, consolidated location. With centralized emissions, we can implement mitigation strategies easier, at lower costs. I believe this is a benefit the author did not consider.

Sure subsidies are the greatest idea but we HAVE to move away from the 60%~70% efficient combustion engine and move to the 95+% efficiency of the electric engine. Seen this as what it will give us RIGHT NOW is the wrong attitude, promoting electric cars will take the world to became more energy efficient. Never mind pollution or any other 'debatable' topics.
Simply stated: an energy efficient society is the solution and so I welcome any push to such goal.

In laymen's terms,whether the electric car can make great contribution to carbon emission or not depends on how the electricity is produced.