Electric Cars vs. Combustion Engines: What the Environmental Footprint Really Says

More and more electric cars are on the road in Carinthia.

As of 31 August 2026, 16,016 fully electric passenger cars were registered. At the end of 2023, there had still been 7,644; at the end of 2019, just 1,492. The total has therefore more than doubled since 2023 and increased more than tenfold since 2019. Electric cars now account for around 4.2 percent of Carinthia’s passenger car fleet (5 Minuten, 2026 [1]; VCÖ/Statistics Austria, 2026 [2]).

The trend is even more pronounced across Austria.

By the end of August 2026, 309,392 battery-electric passenger cars were registered. That corresponds to around 5.8 percent of Austria’s total passenger car fleet. At the end of 2019, there had been only 29,523 (Statistics Austria/VCÖ, 2026 [2]).

The market is changing considerably faster when it comes to new cars.

From January to August 2026, 53,449 fully electric passenger cars were newly registered in Austria. That amounts to 25.2 percent of all new passenger cars. In August alone, the electric share had already reached 29 percent. Petrol and diesel cars combined accounted for just 30.4 percent of registrations that month (Statistics Austria, 2026 [3]).

So we are indeed witnessing a significant transformation.

But this transformation is also fuelling a backlash.

Time and again, you hear:

“Electric cars aren’t clean at all.”

“Battery production causes more CO₂ than a combustion-engine car.”

“Entire regions are being dried out for lithium.”

“After eight years, the battery has to be disposed of.”

“The electricity comes from coal-fired power plants anyway.”

“Because of their high weight, EVs produce more particulate matter.”

And this is often followed by the conclusion:

In the end, combustion-engine cars may even be more environmentally friendly.

I wanted to find out what is true.

And what contains a kernel of truth but leads to an incorrect overall conclusion.

First, an important clarification: An electric car is not emissions-free

When manufacturers refer to “Zero Emission Vehicles”, they generally mean this:

The vehicle produces no tailpipe emissions while driving.

That is correct – because a battery-electric car has no exhaust pipe.

But emissions are still generated, of course.

In steel production.

In aluminium production.

In the manufacture of plastics.

In transporting components.

In battery production.

In electricity generation.

From tyre wear.

And ultimately in recycling.

A serious comparison must therefore not look at the exhaust pipe alone.

It must consider the entire life cycle.

In other words:

Raw material extraction.

Vehicle production.

Battery production.

Energy supply.

Vehicle operation.

Maintenance.

Service life.

Recycling.

This is precisely what a so-called life-cycle assessment, or LCA, does.

And this is where things become interesting.

In production, the electric car initially loses

One of the most common claims about electric cars is:

“Producing an electric car causes more CO₂ than producing a combustion-engine car.”

That is true.

At least in most cases today, when comparable vehicles are considered.

The main reason is the battery.

The latest major life-cycle assessment by the International Council on Clean Transportation for vehicles sold in the EU in 2025 concludes that manufacturing a battery-electric car causes roughly 40 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than producing a comparable combustion-engine vehicle (ICCT, 2025 [4]).

So an electric car does indeed begin its life with an environmental disadvantage.

You could call it a CO₂ backpack.

Anyone claiming that producing an electric car is just as clean as producing a petrol car is therefore wrong.

The decisive question, however, is:

What happens afterwards?

Because a combustion engine keeps producing its CO₂ backpack with every kilometre

After production, the balance changes.

A petrol or diesel car needs more fuel throughout its entire life.

Crude oil has to be extracted.

Transported.

Refined.

Transported again.

And finally, the petrol or diesel is burned in the engine.

The carbon compounds produced in the process do not disappear.

They are released into the atmosphere as CO₂.

And the process starts again with every kilometre driven.

An electric car produces no direct CO₂ emissions while driving. Instead, its operational footprint depends on how the electricity it uses was generated.

That is exactly why it is necessary to look not only at the exhaust pipe, but also at the provision of petrol, diesel and electricity.

The latest EU comparison is quite clear

In 2025, the ICCT calculated the full life-cycle emissions of an average mid-size car.

Among other things, it considered:

Vehicle production.

Battery production.

Recycling.

Fuel production.

Electricity generation.

Real-world energy consumption.

Maintenance.

And the vehicle’s expected service life.

The result:

An average petrol car comes to around 235 grams of CO₂ equivalents per kilometre over its life cycle.

A comparable battery-electric car, charged with the projected average European electricity mix between 2025 and 2044, comes to around 63 grams of CO₂ equivalents per kilometre (ICCT, 2025 [4]).

That corresponds to a reduction of around:

73 percent.

If exclusively renewable electricity is used, the advantage rises to around:

78 percent, according to the ICCT.

In the same analysis, diesel comes in at around 234 grams, practically the same level as petrol.

A conventional hybrid reduces life-cycle emissions by around 20 percent compared with a petrol car.

A plug-in hybrid reduces them by around 30 percent in real-world operation.

Battery-electric drive is significantly lower (ICCT, 2025 [4]).

Austria’s Environment Agency reaches a very similar conclusion

Austria’s Environment Agency has also compared different powertrains across their entire life cycles.

Its central finding:

Compared with petrol and diesel passenger cars, battery-electric vehicles produce around 67 to 79 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions across production, use and disposal (Austrian Environment Agency [5]).

That is noteworthy.

Two different institutions using different modelling assumptions arrive at a very similar range.

ICCT:

Around 73 percent less.

Austrian Environment Agency:

Around 67 to 79 percent less.

This makes one frequently repeated claim difficult to sustain based on the current state of research:

That an average battery-electric car produces similar or even higher CO₂ emissions over its full life cycle than a comparable modern petrol or diesel car.

For Europe – and especially for a country with a relatively climate-friendly electricity system such as Austria – the scientific evidence clearly points in the opposite direction.

When does the electric car make up for its worse production start?

This is probably one of the most interesting figures in the entire debate.

For an average European mid-size car from 2025, the ICCT arrives at roughly:

17,000 kilometres.

After this mileage, the electric car’s additional manufacturing emissions compared with a petrol car have been offset (ICCT, 2025 [4]).

For electric cars powered by renewable energy, Austria’s Environment Agency gives a range of roughly:

10,000 to 33,000 kilometres, depending on vehicle class and battery size (Austrian Environment Agency [5]).

After that, the climate advantage grows with every additional kilometre driven.

This does not disprove criticism of battery production.

On the contrary.

Battery production is indeed an environmental disadvantage.

But that disadvantage is not large enough to negate the substantially lower-emission operation of the vehicle over many years.

And Austria has a significant advantage when it comes to electricity

An electric car is only as climate-friendly as the electricity used to charge it.

At least, that is often said.

This formulation is not entirely accurate, because even an electric car using comparatively CO₂-intensive electricity can outperform a combustion-engine car over its life cycle due to its high efficiency.

But the electricity mix has a substantial influence on the advantage.

And Austria has favourable starting conditions here.

According to Eurostat, 83.1 percent of Austria’s electricity generation came from renewable sources in 2025. That placed Austria second within the EU, behind Denmark (Eurostat, 2026 [6]).

For Austria’s 2025 electricity disclosure, E-Control reports an even higher share of 87.34 percent renewable energy sources (E-Control, 2026 [7]).

These two figures do not measure exactly the same thing and should therefore not be confused.

In addition, electricity does not come from the same source at every time of day.

Austria imports and exports electricity.

When hydropower, wind or solar generation is low, fossil-fuel power plants can also play a greater role.

It would therefore be wrong to claim:

“An Austrian electric car runs on 87 percent clean electricity.”

The electricity system is more complex than that.

But it would be equally wrong to claim that an Austrian electric car runs predominantly on electricity from coal or gas.

Austria is among the European countries with particularly high shares of renewable electricity generation.

But what about China and coal power?

Here, too, it is worth taking a closer look.

Many battery cells are indeed produced in China.

In 2025, more than 80 percent of global battery cells were manufactured in China. Chinese manufacturers supplied around three quarters of the batteries used in electric cars worldwide (IEA, 2026 [8]).

This worsens the production footprint because China’s industrial system is still partly heavily dependent on coal.

The current ICCT analysis shows this difference very clearly.

For an LFP battery, production in Europe is estimated at around 52 kilograms of CO₂ equivalents per kilowatt-hour of battery capacity.

For production in China, the figure is around 69 kilograms.

For NMC batteries, the range is around 59 to 80 kilograms of CO₂ equivalents per kilowatt-hour, depending on chemistry and production location (ICCT, 2025 [9]).

So it does make a real difference:

where a battery is produced.

And:

what electricity the factory uses.

A huge battery is not a good idea just because it is electric

This brings us to a point that, in my view, receives far too little attention in the debate on electric mobility.

Not every electric car is automatically environmentally sensible.

A small electric compact car with a small battery and low energy consumption is something entirely different from a two-and-a-half-tonne electric SUV with a huge battery pack.

Austria’s Environment Agency expresses this distinction particularly clearly:

Producing a small electric vehicle can generate only around half as many greenhouse gas emissions as producing an upper-class vehicle (Austrian Environment Agency [5]).

Battery size also matters directly.

More kilowatt-hours mean:

More cell materials.

More lithium.

More graphite.

Depending on the chemistry, more nickel and cobalt.

More weight.

Higher production emissions.

The average battery of an electric car sold in the European Union in 2025 was around 70 kWh (IEA, 2026 [8]).

Electric mobility therefore does not automatically solve the problem of ever-larger, heavier vehicles.

An unnecessarily large electric SUV remains an unnecessarily large car.

Now to the battery: How problematic is its production really?

This is where the debate enters the territory in which both sides like to exaggerate.

Supporters of electric mobility sometimes downplay raw-material problems.

Opponents occasionally act as if lithium mining were an environmental catastrophe that exists solely because of electric cars.

Reality lies somewhere in between.

A lithium-ion battery requires various raw materials.

Depending on the cell chemistry, these include:

Lithium.

Graphite.

Copper.

Aluminium.

Nickel.

Cobalt.

Manganese.

Extracting and processing these materials causes real environmental impacts.

Mining changes landscapes.

It produces waste rock.

Requires energy.

Can affect groundwater and surface water.

Can release pollutants.

And can destroy or fragment habitats.

The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre also cites social risks such as land conflicts, problematic working conditions, corruption and human rights violations in certain raw-material regions (JRC [10]).

These are not invented problems.

Lithium and water: The accusation has a real basis

Lithium extraction is particularly often linked to water scarcity.

And there are good reasons for that.

According to the International Energy Agency, more than 50 percent of today’s lithium production is located in regions with high water stress.

In certain processes used in South American salt flats, lithium-containing brine is pumped to the surface and concentrated in evaporation ponds.

For this form of lithium production, the IEA cites an order of magnitude of around two million litres of water per tonne of lithium (IEA [11]).

However, this figure needs to be understood correctly.

It does not automatically mean two million litres of drinking water withdrawn from a municipal water supply.

Brine, groundwater, freshwater and evaporation losses are hydrologically different quantities.

Nevertheless, interventions in already dry regions can place considerable strain on local water systems.

Criticism of lithium extraction in water-scarce areas is therefore factually justified.

Cobalt is also problematic

Cobalt is controversial above all because of where a large share of production originates.

Nearly two thirds of global cobalt mining most recently took place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Some of it comes from small-scale or artisanal mining, where substantial risks involving occupational safety, human rights and child labour have been documented (IEA, 2025 [12]; JRC [10]).

Anyone who ignores these problems is oversimplifying matters.

But this common statement is just as wrong:

“Every electric car needs huge amounts of cobalt.”

Battery technology is changing very quickly.

Almost half of the global market now manages without cobalt and nickel

LFP stands for:

Lithium iron phosphate.

These batteries require neither nickel nor cobalt as cathode material.

As recently as 2020, LFP batteries accounted for less than ten percent of the global EV battery market.

Today, their share is almost half (IEA, 2025 [13]).

Their share is also growing in Europe, though more slowly.

In addition, new cell chemistries are being developed:

Sodium-ion batteries.

Manganese-rich batteries.

Solid-state batteries.

NMC chemistries with less cobalt.

This does not mean raw-material problems are disappearing.

Lithium and graphite, for example, remain important.

But the statement:

“EVs inevitably require cobalt produced through child labour”

is simply no longer technically correct.

A battery requires raw materials – but so does a combustion-engine car

This comparison often involves a methodological error.

For electric cars, all battery raw materials are made visible.

Lithium.

Nickel.

Cobalt.

Graphite.

For combustion-engine cars, by contrast, people often look only at the finished vehicle.

Yet a combustion-engine vehicle also requires:

Steel.

Aluminium.

Copper.

Plastics.

Catalyst materials.

Electronics.

Engine oil.

And, above all, a constant supply of new fossil fuel throughout its entire service life.

Crude oil has to be extracted, transported and refined throughout the vehicle’s life.

In an electric car, by contrast, many of the additional raw materials are locked into a battery once.

And a substantial share of them can later be recovered.

This difference is important for a complete environmental assessment.

Recycling: Will we eventually be sitting on mountains of old batteries?

This claim is heard regularly.

At present, reality looks different.

The recycling industry currently faces a surprisingly simple problem:

There are still too few old vehicle batteries.

The large wave of electric cars has only reached the roads in recent years.

According to the IEA, most EV batteries in use today will remain in service until the mid-2030s – in some cases longer.

There is therefore roughly a 15-year lag between the strong ramp-up of electric mobility and the point at which corresponding volumes of batteries become available for end-of-life recycling (IEA, 2026 [14]).

As a result, much of the recycling feedstock currently still comes from production scrap and defective cells, rather than from old electric cars.

The EU is now pushing the battery industry towards a circular economy

The EU Batteries Regulation has introduced binding recycling and recovery targets.

For lithium-ion batteries, a recycling efficiency of at least 65 percent by weight has applied since the end of 2025.

By the end of 2030, this rises to 70 percent.

Even more important are the requirements for individual materials.

By the end of 2027, recycling must recover at least:

90 percent of cobalt.

90 percent of copper.

90 percent of nickel.

50 percent of lithium.

By the end of 2031, the requirements rise to:

95 percent for cobalt, copper and nickel.

80 percent for lithium (European Commission, 2026 [15]).

From February 2027, electric vehicle batteries must also have a digital battery passport, containing information on composition, critical raw materials and the CO₂ footprint, among other things (EU Batteries Regulation [16]).

The regulation also increasingly requires companies to identify and address social and environmental risks in their raw-material supply chains.

This does not mean Europe’s battery industry is already fully circular.

We are still far from that.

But the idea that old batteries will simply end up in landfill as a rule does not describe the European system.

However, recycling will not replace raw-material extraction immediately

Here, too, we need to remain realistic.

Recycling sounds appealing:

We take old batteries and build new ones from them.

But as long as the electric-car fleet is growing rapidly, far more new batteries will be needed than old batteries are returning.

Recycling therefore cannot replace primary extraction in the coming years.

The IEA does, however, expect a substantial long-term effect.

In a scenario aligned with national climate targets, recycling could reduce the need for newly mined lithium and nickel by around 25 percent by 2050, and the need for cobalt by around 40 percent (IEA, 2024 [17]).

Recycling is therefore not an immediate solution.

But it is a central part of the long-term raw-material strategy.

“The battery is dead after eight years” – is that true?

No.

Eight years is often the warranty period, not the technical service life.

These are surprisingly often confused.

New research now shows that modern electric vehicles can be much more durable than early models.

An analysis published in Nature Energy in 2025 evaluated data from around 30 million vehicles and nearly 300 million UK roadworthiness inspections.

The statistically expected service life of battery-electric passenger cars was around:

18.4 years.

That brings them close to the lifespan of petrol vehicles.

Electric cars even exceeded petrol cars in expected lifetime mileage (Mehlhart et al./Nature Energy, 2025 [18]).

That does not mean every battery will work flawlessly for 18 years.

Individual battery packs can of course fail.

Repairs can be expensive.

And older vehicles can become economic write-offs if an entire pack has to be replaced.

But:

A routine battery replacement after eight years is not a realistic picture of today’s electric cars.

Interestingly, batteries may even last longer than previously assumed

Researchers at Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory studied real-world load profiles of modern lithium-ion cells over two years.

The result surprised even the researchers.

Batteries operated under realistic driving profiles involving acceleration, regenerative braking and rest periods lasted in some cases up to 38 percent longer than batteries in conventional laboratory tests with constant discharge cycles (Geslin et al., 2025 [19]).

This does not mean every battery automatically lasts 38 percent longer.

The study involved a specific cell chemistry and defined conditions.

But it shows:

Previous laboratory tests may have partly underestimated the actual lifespan of vehicle batteries.

And what about the higher weight?

Here, again, the criticism has a kernel of truth.

Electric cars are often heavier than comparable combustion-engine cars because of their batteries.

More weight can cause more tyre wear.

And tyre wear is a relevant environmental problem.

Electric cars therefore do not eliminate all particulate matter from road traffic.

However, they substantially reduce another source:

Brake wear.

Through regenerative braking, the electric motor is often used as a generator during deceleration.

As a result, the mechanical brakes are used much less.

An OECD study therefore reached a nuanced conclusion:

Lighter electric cars can produce lower overall non-exhaust particulate emissions than comparable combustion-engine cars.

For particularly heavy electric cars with large batteries, however, additional tyre wear can partly offset the advantage for very fine particles or, in an unfavourable case, even result in slightly higher PM2.5 levels (OECD [20]).

The right conclusion is therefore not:

“EVs produce more particulate matter.”

But:

Vehicle weight remains an environmental problem for electric cars, too.

Electric cars do not solve the transport problem

This point is sometimes completely forgotten in the discussion.

An electric car requires:

Roads.

Parking spaces.

Raw materials.

Tyres.

Energy.

Infrastructure.

And space.

It can sit in traffic.

It creates traffic.

It contributes to land consumption.

Austria’s Environment Agency therefore expressly points out that while electric mobility is a core technology for reducing transport emissions, a technological switch alone is not enough.

Real climate protection also requires less motorised private transport and greater use of public transport, cycling and other modes of transport (Austrian Environment Agency [5]).

I consider this a crucial point.

An electric traffic jam is still a traffic jam.

Yet the electric motor is dramatically more energy-efficient

The original 5 Minuten article states that electric cars require around two thirds less energy than combustion-engine cars.

This statement is fundamentally well supported.

When considering the full life cycle, Austria’s Environment Agency concludes that electric vehicles require around two thirds less energy than vehicles powered purely by fossil fuels.

Compared with hybrid vehicles, energy demand is around 55 to 63 percent lower, depending on the comparison (Austrian Environment Agency [21]).

The reason is relatively simple physics.

A combustion engine converts a large share of the energy stored in fuel into heat.

An electric motor uses a much larger share of the energy supplied for actual movement.

It also recovers part of the vehicle’s kinetic energy when braking.

An electric vehicle therefore needs substantially less primary energy for the same movement.

This is also geopolitically interesting

Austria does not produce significant volumes of crude oil of its own for road transport.

A substantial share of the fossil energy required has to be imported.

Electricity, by contrast, can increasingly be generated domestically:

Through hydropower.

Wind power.

Photovoltaics.

Biomass.

Electric mobility therefore changes more than the climate footprint.

In the long term, it can also reduce transport’s dependence on imported crude oil.

That does not mean new dependencies disappear.

Europe currently also has substantial import dependencies when it comes to battery cells and their raw materials.

China dominates large parts of battery and raw-material processing (IEA, 2025/2026 [8][12]).

So we are partly replacing one dependency with others.

The key difference:

Electricity can increasingly be generated regionally.

Battery raw materials remain in the vehicle for years and can, in principle, be recycled.

Petrol and diesel are burned after a single use.

What does charging infrastructure in Austria look like now?

A great deal has changed here as well.

At the beginning of 2026, Austria already had more than 37,000 publicly accessible charging points.

By early September, the number had risen to around 40,000 public charging points, including more than 5,100 ultra-fast charging points (eMove Austria, 2026 [22]).

Of course, a high number of charging points does not mean the situation is equally good everywhere.

People without their own garage or parking space often still face greater difficulties than homeowners with a wallbox.

Charging tariffs can be complicated.

Ad hoc charging can be substantially more expensive than charging at home.

And there is still a need to catch up on infrastructure, especially in apartment buildings.

But the idea that Austria has hardly any public charging infrastructure no longer reflects reality in 2026.

An interesting detail in the 5 Minuten article

The article’s basic figures match the current data from Statistics Austria and VCÖ.

However, there is one small error – or at least an unfortunate wording.

The article essentially says that Carinthia’s EV stock rose from 1,492 vehicles at the end of 2019 to 16,016 in August 2026 “within almost five years” [1].

In reality, almost seven years elapsed between the end of 2019 and August 2026.

That does not change the underlying trend:

The number has increased more than tenfold.

But in articles based on statistics, the period should be correct as well.

Perhaps the most important question: What are we comparing at all?

When someone says:

“Electric car versus combustion-engine car”

we should immediately ask:

Which electric car?

Which combustion-engine car?

Which battery?

Which electricity?

How many kilometres?

How long will the car be used?

How large is it?

How heavy?

How efficient?

Is it charged at home using photovoltaics?

Or with a particularly CO₂-intensive electricity mix?

Is a small petrol car being compared with a large electric SUV?

Or are two as similar vehicles as possible being compared?

This is exactly why study results can sometimes differ greatly.

Not every study uses the same assumptions.

A life-cycle assessment can be distorted surprisingly easily

The ICCT demonstrates precisely this problem in its current study.

For example, if you assume only a very short vehicle lifespan, the manufacturing emissions of the electric car are spread across fewer kilometres.

This makes battery production appear disproportionately large.

If you use only official standard fuel consumption for a combustion-engine car but account for real-world electricity consumption for an electric car, you also skew the comparison.

If you consider only combustion in the engine for petrol and diesel, while ignoring extraction, refining and transport of the fuel, you favour the combustion-engine car.

And if you assume exclusively renewable electricity for the EV even though it is actually charged from the grid, you do the opposite.

A serious life-cycle assessment must use the same system boundaries for both technologies.

This is exactly why large, transparent comparative studies are so important.

And what about an existing combustion-engine car?

This makes things even more complicated.

If you own a working combustion-engine car today, its production CO₂ already exists.

A new electric car, by contrast, first has to be built.

This means the question:

“Should I scrap my working five-year-old petrol car immediately and buy a new electric car?”

is not the same as:

“Which powertrain should I choose if I am buying a new car anyway?”

A life-cycle study in the Journal of Cleaner Production examined precisely such replacement timing and showed:

It can make environmental sense to continue using an existing vehicle for a while before a new one is produced. However, the optimal time depends heavily on age, fuel consumption, mileage, electricity mix and replacement vehicle (Montoya-Torres et al., 2023 [23]).

No general number of years should be inferred from this.

But one basic principle should:

In some situations, the most environmentally friendly car may be the one that has already been built.

At least as long as it is used efficiently and no new purchase is necessary anyway.

But if a new car is being bought anyway, the answer is much clearer

Anyone deciding today between two comparable new vehicles – a petrol or diesel car and a battery-electric vehicle – faces a relatively clear situation from a climate perspective in Austria.

The electric car initially causes higher manufacturing emissions.

These are offset after relatively low mileage.

After that, its climate advantage grows substantially over its service life.

The latest European calculations arrive at around 73 percent lower life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions.

Austrian studies arrive at 67 to 79 percent.

At the same time, electric drive requires around two thirds less energy over its life cycle.

This is no longer a particularly controversial finding.

Even so, the electric car is not a “clean” technology

And perhaps that is the most important correction in language.

There are no clean cars.

There are vehicles with different environmental impacts.

An electric car requires mining.

Industry.

Roads.

Tyres.

Electricity.

Land.

Infrastructure.

A battery.

And eventually recycling.

An electric car also has an environmental footprint.

The scientifically meaningful question is therefore not:

“Is the electric car environmentally friendly?”

But:

“Under comparable conditions, is it less environmentally harmful than the alternative?”

And for greenhouse gases in Europe today, the answer is quite clear:

Yes.

The picture is less clear for other environmental impacts

When it comes to climate change, EVs have a clear advantage.

For some other environmental categories, the result can be more nuanced.

Raw material extraction causes local environmental impacts.

Large batteries increase material requirements.

Mining can affect water systems and biodiversity.

Heavy electric cars can cause more tyre wear.

Battery production has significant energy needs.

And a growing vehicle fleet requires ever more road and parking space regardless of the powertrain.

The climate advantage should therefore not lead to this claim:

“Electric cars solve our environmental problems.”

They do not.

Above all, they solve one particular problem much better than combustion engines:

the continuous burning of fossil fuels in road transport.

The biggest mistake, then, would be simply replacing the motor

Imagine Austria replaced all five million passenger cars with electrically powered vehicles.

We would have substantially lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Fewer local exhaust emissions.

Less engine noise at low speeds.

But we would still have:

Millions of cars.

Demand for parking.

Roads.

Traffic jams.

Accidents.

Tyre wear.

Resource demand.

Sealed land.

That is why electric mobility is an important part of a transport transition.

But it is not the entire transport transition.

So what is true – and what is not?

“Producing an EV is dirtier.”

Fundamentally true.

The battery in particular causes additional manufacturing emissions. For a comparable mid-size car, production emissions are currently around 40 percent higher than for a combustion-engine car [4].

“That means an EV is worse overall.”

Not true.

The manufacturing disadvantage is offset by substantially more efficient and lower-emission operation. Over the life cycle, greenhouse gas emissions in Europe are around 70 percent or more below those of a petrol car [4][5].

“The electricity comes from coal anyway.”

Wrong for Austria.

Austria is among the European countries with the highest shares of renewable electricity generation [6][7].

“Lithium mining is harmless.”

Wrong.

Lithium mining can cause substantial environmental problems, especially in water-scarce regions [11].

“Every battery needs cobalt.”

Wrong.

LFP batteries require neither nickel nor cobalt and now account for almost half of the global electric-car battery market [13].

“The battery is dead after eight years.”

Wrong as a general claim.

Eight years often corresponds to a warranty period. Modern batteries and vehicles can be used for considerably longer [18][19].

“Batteries cannot be recycled.”

Wrong.

Recycling is technically possible and is increasingly mandated by law in the EU. Recovery rates for key metals will be substantially increased in the coming years [15][16].

“EVs produce no particulate matter.”

Wrong.

Tyre, road and, to some extent, brake wear remain. Regenerative braking reduces brake wear, while higher weight can increase tyre wear [20].

“Electric cars solve the climate problem.”

Also wrong.

They substantially reduce the climate impact of motorised transport, but they do not replace fundamentally sustainable transport policy.

And back to Carinthia

At first glance, 16,016 electric cars sound like a great many.

At the same time, a share of 4.2 percent means:

More than 95 percent of passenger cars in Carinthia are still not fully electric.

Electric mobility is therefore growing rapidly.

But the vehicle fleet changes far more slowly than new registrations.

That is exactly why current new-registration figures are more interesting than the overall fleet.

If around one in four newly registered passenger cars in Austria is already battery-electric, the vehicle fleet will inevitably change in the coming years.

The real question is therefore hardly whether electric cars will take over a significant share of Austria’s passenger-car market.

Much more interesting is:

How do we make this development as resource-efficient as possible?

Smaller, lighter and used longer would be better electric mobility

When the research is considered as a whole, a fairly clear list of priorities emerges.

Not:

The largest possible battery.

The heaviest possible SUV.

The most power possible.

But:

Smaller vehicles.

Smaller batteries.

High energy efficiency.

Long service lives.

Repairable battery systems.

Clean battery production.

Renewable charging electricity.

Consistent recycling.

And wherever possible:

Fewer car kilometres overall.

This sounds less spectacular than the simple message:

“Buy electric cars.”

But environmentally, it is the much more sensible message.

My conclusion: The battery is a problem – but the combustion engine does not solve it

After this research, I find one thing particularly striking.

Many arguments against electric cars are not entirely invented.

On the contrary.

Battery production causes additional emissions.

Lithium mining can worsen water problems.

Cobalt has problematic supply chains.

Electric cars are often heavy.

Tyre wear does not disappear.

Battery recycling also requires energy.

And Europe’s dependence on Asian battery supply chains is real.

All of that is true.

The error only occurs in the next step.

Namely, when the conclusion is:

“So the combustion engine is just as good or even better.”

Today’s life-cycle assessments do not support exactly that conclusion.

A combustion engine also has a production footprint.

And then its real problem begins:

It needs new fossil fuel for every kilometre driven.

Again and again.

Over ten, fifteen or twenty years.

That fuel has to be extracted, transported, refined and ultimately burned.

With the battery, by contrast, a substantial share of the environmental impact is concentrated in production.

Afterwards, it can be charged again and again with electricity for many years.

And the cleaner that electricity becomes, the better its footprint becomes during its lifetime.

That is the fundamental difference between the two technologies.

The most honest answer is therefore: Yes, but.

Is an electric car emissions-free?

No.

Is its production problematic?

In some respects, significantly.

Does it require problematic raw materials?

Yes.

Do supply chains and recycling need to improve?

Absolutely.

Can a huge electric SUV be environmentally misguided?

Of course.

Can it make sense to keep driving an existing efficient combustion-engine car for some time?

Depending on the situation, yes.

Is a new battery-electric car more climate-friendly over its entire life cycle in Austria than a comparable new petrol or diesel car?

According to the current state of research, very clearly yes.

And it is precisely this nuance that I often find missing.

Electric mobility does not need fairy tales.

It needs neither the story of the perfectly “green” car nor that of the alleged battery monster that is secretly worse than a diesel.

Reality is much more interesting.

The electric car is not an environmentally friendly machine.

It is a machine with environmental impacts.

But compared with the fossil-fuel combustion engine, it is clearly the less harmful technology today when it comes to the greenhouse gas footprint that is decisive for climate change.

And perhaps that is exactly how we should talk about it.

Not as a matter of belief.

But as what it is:

a matter of physics, raw materials, energy – and measurable data.

RECHERCHE