Earlier this year, NPR's podcast The Sunday Story reached out for listener questions about electric vehicles. You can hear the resulting podcast here. We're also taking some of the most-asked questions and answering them on NPR.org.
Electric vehicles are sometimes called "zero-emission vehicles." But the batteries that go into them are not zero-emission at all. In fact, making those batteries takes a lot of (mostly-not-clean) energy and hurts the environment in other ways, a fact that's become common knowledge after widespread media coverage.
Does that environmental damage cancel out the green benefits of giving up gasoline? Or, as Jennifer Sousie, who owns a Nissan Leaf, put it: "Does the manufacturing and ultimate disposal of the batteries completely negate all the good that the no-emission aspect of my car does?"
Please select this link to read the complete article from NPR.