A new analysis wades into a much-debated topic
How many miles do you have to drive an electric vehicle before its carbon footprint is smaller than a gas-burning car?
Reuters has come up with some answers by examining data from the Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago.
The news service analysis notes that EVs start off generating more CO2 than gas vehicles during the process of manufacturing EVs and the batteries that power them. EVs can still add to the carbon footrprint when they draw power from an electric grid fueled by coal.
But once a new EV gets on the road, the carbon footprint of a gas car quickly overtakes the electric vehicle, Reuters found. The news service says it takes the typical electric vehicle about one year of driving, or roughly 15,000 miles, to reach "carbon parity" with a gas-burning car.