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They are the better alternative compared to combustion considering the carbon dioxide footprint.
Yet, of course, to really address climate change and the destruction of our planet we need to get away from cars.
Why?
Because images like this are still relevant no matter how the cars are powered.
Running an electric car is obviously greener than running an ICE car, but producing one is most definitely not environmentally friendly. If we can reduce the number of vehicles on the road, including electric cars, that would go a long way to reducing carbon emissions.
There's also the case to be made around the environmental impact of (sub)urban sprawl, which generally comes about as a direct result of car dependency.
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even then it matters how I generate the electricity. If I have a trillion cows walking hamster wheels and shitting methane into the atmosphere and generate power that goes in your car, that's probably way worse than ICEs.
Using data I am getting from quick googles, a Tesla model S has 95 kWh of power max, with a range of 405 miles (~650 km). That gives us 4.26 miles per kWh (or 6.84 km/kWh). According to the city of LA, there are about 2.5 million cars registered to the city.
Let's assume in this perfect future, the number of cars is not increased and they have all been converted to cars that perform identical to this Model S data. Let's also assume each of these cars are required for daily work commuting, and assuming each Angelino commute the average I found of 41 miles which is about 9.6 kWh per day per car commuting or 24 million kWh total per day just commuting.
Assuming this data is correct and a solar panel can produce 2.4 kWh per day a daily commute requires 10 million solar panels operating at 100% every day. Assuming the average solar panel is 17.6 square feet, then the total area needed for solar panels to charge one car commute per day is 1 square km or 64ish city blocks.
However, if we replace all of these car commuters with a train, which we can say requires 0.05 kWh/km, that comes to 8.75 million kWh for the daily commute, or 36% of the power requirement using cars only. That doesn't even factor in the amount of infrastructure for supporting cars (roads vs rails, parking, public charge stations, mechanics, less power sources, etc).
Replacing every gas powered car with an electric powered one would reduce emissions. However, replacing car transportation with more efficient forms of transportation reduces carbon emissions even further. Again, these are spherical vehicles in a vacuum making a lot of assumptions, but I think my point stands.
Because even if cars ran on pixie dust and emitted nothing but unicorn farts, they would still be catastrophic because of the way we have to ruin our cities to make space for them. Not only is car-dependent, low-density zoning the root cause of all sorts of problems, from the housing crisis, to obesity, to microplastics (most of which come from car tires), to declining social capital due to lack of "third places", the consequences of car-dependency include huge carbon emissions beyond just the cars themselves:
- Producing the concrete to build all those parking lots and widen all those roads is itself a huge and unnecessary source of emissions.
- The energy needed to heat and cool single-family homes is hugely greater than that needed for dense housing, since all six sides are exposed to the environment instead of the also-conditioned spaces of neighboring units.
- All the extra paved surface in car-dependent areas contributes to the urban heat island effect, exacerbating the problem mentioned in the previous point.
