Electric cars, more harmful to the environment than gas-burning ones?

The production of electric cars is becoming faster as more companies launch such models on the market. Now, Ford is preparing to introduce C-Max Energi in order to compete with General Motors, which produces Chevrolet Volt, the car of 2011 in the U.S.

However, a new study suggests that electric vehicles are not as “green” as environmentalists believe. Because of the pollution coming from factories where batteries for such vehicles are produced, an electric car has a bigger carbon footprint than vehicles running on gasoline, becoming more “nature friendly” only after it had travelled 130,000 km.

Electric cars are not a “green option”, according to Ed Morrissey, an American journalist.

“Not only do electric vehicles produce just as much carbon in their overall cycle as internal-combustion engines, the need to replace the batteries actually makes them less green than current technology.” If we want a cleaner way to get around, “the answer is natural gas, not electric vehicles,” he says.

On the other hand, other studies suggest that electric and hybrid vehicles will have, over the long haul, a lower carbon footprint than gasoline-based cars, so their use will help the Earth. Half of pollution produced by an electric car comes from the manufacturing process, long before the moment it starts being used on the road.

Even so, the most passionate environmentalists admit that the manufacturing process needs to benefit from several improvements so that these vehicles truly become “green.”